#will add the stat page & an interest tracker later | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ticktickblog · 5 years ago

Text

Build a Healthier and More Self-Disciplined Life With the Evolved "Habit" Feature

An improved "Habit" feature is rolling out now and ready for use at TickTick. Read to explore what’s new!

🆕 A brief version:

1️⃣ Enriched Habit Gallery

2️⃣ Customizable Habit Icon

3️⃣ Customizable Habit checking frequency

4️⃣ Newly added “Unachieved” status for Habit-checking

5️⃣ Divided reviews of checked and unchecked Habits

6️⃣ Quick emoji add in the Habit Log

7️⃣ Display of both Current Streak and Total Days

8️⃣ Individual switch for each Habit Log

9️⃣ More beautiful and inspiring images to share

🔟 Access to creating and editing Habit on desktop

📝 A deep-dived version:

1. A more customizable experience to create, check and review your Habit

1) To create:

Say Hi to the enriched and categorized Habit Gallery

There are not only some common habits being added in the Gallery, like Track expenses, Do skincare, and Do push-ups, but also some interesting ones, like Be a good cat keeper, and Roll eyeballs (in a way for your eyecare of course 😂). With a wider range of habits covering four major scenarios: Life, Health, Sports, and Mindset, I’m sure it’s much easier to find yours. If no one rings in your mind, see what habits we suggest in the Gallery. If there still isn’t a fit, you know you can always create your own ones.

Customize your Habit Icon to make it unique

Not only to customize your own habits, but also to make your own habit icons! In addition to the previous way of choosing an existing icon from our list when crating a new habit, there is new way -- DIY! Name a new habit ➡️Pick a background color ➡️Type a letter or emoji in. Ta-da! Here comes your very own unique icon. For example, “Go for a Stroll = 🚶‍♀️+ 🟡”.

Create and Edit Habit on the desktop versions

Enhanced accesses to Habit on the desktop allow you to create, edit, check and manage your habits anywhere and anytime!

2) To check:

Set up your own Habit-checking Frequency

Previously, when it comes to the frequency for Habit checking, only Daily and Weekly can be picked. However, we understand your needs for more flexibility. Therefore, “Interval” is introduced here for you to freely decide at what intervals you wish your Habit to be checked.

Check your Habits as “Unachieved” if necessary

Say NO to the situation that your habits can only be checked as achieved. Now, it becomes possible to see what you’ve missed at what time and also for what reason, by checking your habits as “Unachieved”. This is helpful for you to reflect on your habit-building process at a later point. I know some of you may only wish to see what you’ve achieved and may also be a little afraid of seeing the failures. However, what TickTick Habit promotes is always a healthy lifestyle, never a burned-out one. We wish you to know that it’s totally OK to fail sometimes, and reflecting on it is what keeps you moving forward.

3) To review:

Distinguish what’ve been checked from what haven’t with a more clear view

When you used to review your daily Habit, there wasn’t a divided space for which one is checked and which is not. Therefore, to help you better distinguish them, we’ve improved the view by separating the already checked ones from what remains.

See both the Current Streak and Total Days of Habit

Another subtle change here is the review of the Current Streak of a Habit and the Total Days you’ve insisted on doing it. To make it easy to access and also to save space, what you need to do is simply tapping the time to switch between each other.

2. A more personalized experience to record, share, and analyze your Habit

1) To record:

Freely decide whether to keep a Log for each Habit

Previously, we’ve provided an overall switch of Log in Habit settings. This, however, isn’t the best solution for those who'd only like to keep logs for some instead of for all. To address this, Auto-Display of Habit Log has been made more flexible with individual switches included in the editing page for every habit.

Quick add emoticons in the Habit Log

Apart from texts, Habit Log can also support quick adding emoticons now. This feature may function for some of you who not only wish to record your progress of a Habit, but also your feelings in doing it. 😄

2) To share:

Share your progress with a more beautiful image

We’ve made the picture of your Habit achievement more shareable! The number of days you’ve persisted in doing something and also your account avatar, are included in the image ready to share (Example below).

3) To analyze:

Get to know your stats better with Habit Statistics

For this moment, we’ve included the Weekly Habit Status in the data overview within My Profile (access via settings). On this page, "Task Statistics", "Focus Statistics" and "Weekly Habit Status" are respectively presented.

For what’s next: Like what we’ve improved on Focus Statistics, we are also going to extend it on Habit! This means a more well-rounded and in-depth data analysis for Habit will be coming on the next stage!

To wrap up, now with enriched and categorized Habit Gallery, customizable icons, separate controls for Habit Log, mood trackers in the Log, newly added “Unachieved” status and a more clear review for Habit-checking, you can build and track your Habits in a much easier, customizable and more personalized way.

A healthier and more self-disciplined life starts here at TickTick. Planting a good habit now and reaping it in autumn 🍁

Click HERE to reach Apple Store

Click HERE to reach Google Play Store

Click HERE for other platforms

#ticktick #gtd app #productivity #worklife balance #good habits #habit change #healthy lifestyle #self-discipline #positive life

2 notes · View notes

lucashawro · 5 years ago

Text

CognitiveSEO Review: How All-in-One SEO Toolbox Can Help You With Your Organic Traffic

CognitiveSEO provided me with access to their SEO tools, and I thought I'll do something productive and review the entire tool collection. I like to look at the SEO tools from a purely pragmatic angle or with the entrepreneurial mindset: "Get me the SEO data fast - the less friction, the better. And have some of it quickly copy-pasted/shown to my clients such that they understand it without me explaining too much."

Use CognitiveSEO all-in-one SEO software suite to rank your business on top of SERP with Keyword Explorer, Content Optimizer, Site Explorer, Site Audit and other SEO Tools

(TL;DR) After running my SEO errands through entire CognitiveSEO Tools Suite, I've concluded that founders successfully built a highly specialised all-in-one SEO toolkit, especially for technical SEO and link building, organic ranking and affiliate marketing. Practical SEO uses you're getting with CognitiveSEO Tools:

detailed website analysis that can work for an SEO expert but also stand as a beginners guide to technical SEO (it can replace Screaming Frog SEO for most important SEO analysis)

Keywords Rank monitoring lets you see the direction your SEO strategy is heading toward - all accessed with nifty data slicers for a super-fast ranking assessment and SEO analysis

inBound Link Analysis follows the suite and presents all the data you may want to analyse your/competitors backlink profile and their relationship with your domain (note: the link explorer is surprisingly accurate - more on that below)

(my personal favourite) Content Optimizer & Keyword Tool will make your content rank your pages and keywords better with half (or none!) of the backlinks that you'd normally need - super easy to use and built for 100% practicality in mind

BONUS: they also have a reporting tool that alerts you on Google Search volatility, algorithm update changes and potential ranking alterations. In essence, it's great not only to make you aware of the "search algorithm updates", but you can also use it to inform your online marketing endeavours. And let your clients see that you have your finger on the pulse (by the way, that feature should be added to Google Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console by default).

CognitiveSEO Tool can help you monitor the Google Algorithm updates and its impact on the Search Ranking and SEO

SEO Campaigns

In-depth metrics for advanced SEO and search engine optimizing

After the initial step-by-step campaign set up - I must say, it's very quick and to the point - the SEO Campaigns Dashboard welcomes you with "Quick Overview" modules similar to what you'd seen in other SEO Tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs and others. You got a standard set of:

Crawled Pages

Referring Domains

On-Page SEO errors

Traffic/Sessions

Data about Keywords and SEO Visibility

And scrolling below you'll see a selected data from your Google Search Console and Google Analytics (providing you've plugged them in during the initial campaign set up).

Dashboard overview of all CognitiveSEO SEO Tools

So how can I use the data, and what is the point of those SEO metrics?

I would mainly use it for the client meeting and to support the overall direction of my... well, SEO campaigns. The Dashboard could also easily replace separate premium data analysis tools like Reportz.io. Having everything in one place is convenient and greatly reduces the time you would spend on putting the entire SEO campaign together for yourself or your customers. CognitiveSEO even lets you add widgets or change the placement of the modules and shown data. For me, however, the default dashboard is spot on as I lean towards a quick general overview of the stats that it gives me right away. The Dashboard's reporting aspect is then further expanded under Reports & Schedules tab where you can plan and build branded PDF documents that get automatically delivered to your clients' inboxes (note, the full Whitelabel Reporting feature is only enabled with the Business Plan).

Site Audit

You can use the On-Page SEO Auditing Tool as a beginners guide to technical SEO

During the SEO Campaign set up, CognitiveSEO recommends to also sent an SEO spider to analyse a targeted domain thoroughly. So upon the first launch of the campaign, the spiders went and shortly after returned with expected large-number of in-depth data that they grabbed from my website. For any project I'm working with, I prefer to build websites correctly right from the beginning, and for any out-of-the-ordinary project, I use Screaming Frog SEO, which means that I use my on-page auditing tool sparsely.

Use CognitiveSEO Site Audit and start your Google Search Rank domination

However, I was pleasantly surprised by CognitiveSEO's website analysis and the way it sorted out and displayed the data. They're doing that in a very concise and task-oriented manner. I can easily see myself just launching the Site Audit and after several minutes taking it for a spin squashing most of the "SEO bugs" on my sites: - all meta tags, title tags, image alt tags, etc. - broken link and duplicate content checks - XML sitemap and structured data review etc. etc. And if there is something I don't understand they've sprinkled informative tooltips all over the place so you could easily use it as a beginners guide to SEO analysis (and any SEO expert should also benefit). The PageSpeed Insights tab was also available, but "the data was missing" - this is possibly one of those SEO analysis tools that they still working on. For a to-the-point fast SEO website audit software, I actually prefer CognitiveSEO over Screaming Frog SEO. The latter gets overwhelming sometimes. So well done CognitiveSEO.

Schedule and auto-send whitelabel SEO reports via CognitiveSEO Reporting feature

Rank Tracking

Organic keyword rank tracker with a direct comparison to your competition keywords positioning

CognitiveSEO goes in lengths analysing Google Search results to assess the daily keyword standing, and it does help you see if your SEO rank strategies are making dents in the search results grid. They also implemented "data slicers" or a type of quick view tabs that filter out the keywords in the areas of importance. For example:

Keywords Ranked in top 1-3 positions or 4-10 / 11-20 and so on until 100

Keywords you're "not ranking" yet

Only the keywords that "improved ranking" and also the ones that remained "static"

and below the chart, you can find a timeline slider to narrow down to a point in your ranking project instantly

Monitor and measure how your domain ranks on Google Search Engine with targeted keywords, and compare your SERP positions against your competitors

These slicers are amazing, and with provided search volumes, you can quickly predict your expected organic traffic. The tracking tools also lets you pin the competitors' tabs with their keywords rankings and, later, check up on them and see if they're working on the same keywords positioning. However, it would be even better if there was some way of a direct side-by-side comparison between my focus-domain and my competitors. Maybe CognitiveSEO will figure it out at some point. To summarise CognitiveSEO Rank Tracking tool is decent for what it is, however, I'd like to see them expanding it into more automated organic keywords data gathering. A type of advanced SEO tool that encompasses LSI and recent Google's neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP) - BERT update from the end of 2019. I think this is the future of keyword tools.

CognitiveSEO Site Explorer and inBound Link Analysis

A great contender to Ahrefs Site Explorer

Their backlink database and crawling scope are surprisingly accurate and resemble Ahrefs backlink checker that is often touted as the "backlink gold-standard" in the SEO industry. I've made several side-by-side random domain comparisons, and in most instances, CognitiveSEO came very close in showing the number of backlinks to that of Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Check your domain SEO score and analyse linking performance and anchor text distribution with CognitiveSEO Site Explorer

Although, this small sample is by no means a comprehensive study of "which SEO site analysis software found more backlinks" but a pleasant surprise I wasn't expecting to see. And the Ahrefs Site Explorer was still slightly better in any case. What is also interesting is that you can upload your own backlinks to increase the accuracy further. I can't recall that backlink feature with any other Site Explorers I've used, and I found it worth exploring. In summary, CognitiveSEO is a reliable source of SEO backlink analysis for sure.

Link Rank Checker

It's worth mentioning the CognitiveSEO Link Rank (measured from 0-100). This is a more targeted SEO website grader that we already know from Majestic SEO Trust Flow (TF), MOZ Domain Authority (DA) or Ahrefs Domain Rank (DR).

InBound Link Analysis helps you dive deep into the domain on-page and off-page SEO data

CognitiveSEO Link Rank is influenced by a host of different SEO metrics as calculated by their link explorer, website audit and other SEO analysis tools. The score I got my domain was the harshest of the above-mentioned research tools (and probably closest to Majestic SEO). Also, the Link Rank score is only accessible at the SEO Campaign level. When you research via the CognitiveSEO Site Explorer, the score is replaced with vague Page/Domain Influence score marked as either "Low", "Average" or "High".

Peek at your competitors' websites, assess page and domain authority scores and check backlinks and SEO ranking performance

Among the other SEO metrics, the most prominent are: - Referring Domains - Total Links (note, they cap their backlink checker showing up to 20 strongest backlinks from any given domains) - Link Velocity with Visual Explorer that can stand as a link building guide Then there is a boat-load of SEO data, filters and slicers. Among all CognitiveSEO optimization tools, this one is the most overwhelming and requires a lot of time to familiarise yourself with. I'm using Ahrefs Site Explorer already, and I have a tough time to switch - its mechanics and the interface is much different than to what I'm used to.

Side note: I suspect that as Ahrefs grows more and more popular, their web crawler bot will become a persona non-grata blocked now by various hosting providers in an effort to save server load. In such circumstance, the multi-source data agglomerates like CognitiveSEO may take precedence and show more accurate SEO stats in some areas.

How can Site Explorer help you in your SEO positioning?

To me, the whole backlink checking option serves one purpose - recognise the general trend. Meaning, I want quick info on whether a particular domain/page holds any SEO authority or not. And also monitor what, if any, spam attach to my website backlink portfolio. I won't bother making sure the tool finds every single backlink. Why? Because it NEVER will.

Use Link Velocity and backlink analysis to build an effective link building strategy

All SEO Tools will always just attempt to follow Google, but they will never be 100% accurate or even close to being correct. It has always been just a guestimation at best - and the Traffic Estimators, Backlink Checkers or Keywords Ranking tools role is just to show us the general trend and pointers for the next step in our SEO strategies. And same goes for CognitiveSEO Site Explorer - I use it for:

domain authority assessment (they have this great and straightforward Page Influence and Domain Influence at the top bar - by the way, it's NOT vague, it's perfect for showing your SEO clients and prospects on a sales meeting)

backlink analysis and anchor text redistribution as a quick link building guide or to simply check my links health

BONUS! Broken Pages: this is a unique feature most push to SEO Site Analysis only; I love that CognitiveSEO shows the 404-data in the Site Explorer, and they're making it a superbly useful to quickly analyse outdated content or subjects you could attempt to revive or repurpose. All without resorting to a tedious SEO Audit.

There is a slight difference between Site Explorer and inBound Link Analysis wherein the latter CognitiveSEO seems to combine multiple tab views from the Site Explorer detailed overview under one. The inBound Link Analysis appears only under Campaign SEO for a given project where the tracking and data measurement is also updated in real-time from several sources at the same time (including Google Analytics and Google Search Console if you've connected them). If you're doing some search engine positioning work and focusing on a particular domain, it would be advisable to launch a full-fledged SEO Campaign and monitor things that way rather than searching the Site Explorer each time.

Content Optimizer & Keyword Research Tool

A secret SEO tool that gets your pages and content ranked on Google without link building

I was raving about the CognitiveSEO Content Optimizer in another post already. And I'm also planning to shoot a video about it soon. Here I just wanted to summarise quickly what it is and why I like it so much.

What is CognitiveSEO Content Optimizer all about?

CognitiveSEO Content Optimizer is a web text editor that scans your submitted text (article) and lists tons of supporting keywords and topics to improve your article and, ultimately, your content marketing strategy. The tool bases its recommendations on Google's complex algorithms (mostly LSI, NLP, and large data comparisons). Content Optimizer starts with a regular Keywords Explorer that we know from many other SEO tools. As per usual, you plug your main keyword idea (seed keyword), set the country and off you go.

Search and analyse best performing keywords with CognitiveSEO Keyword Explorer suite

Keyword Explorer

I like the fact that CognitiveSEO decided to trim the fat, leaving us with the most important factors related to the Keyword Explorer:

Content difficulty from 0-100: it's calculated based on the top-performing articles on the subject - highly relevant score based on CognitiveSEO's LSI and sophisticated article scanning; this is one of the best keyword difficulty metrics I've seen around; as it informs you with what you'd be doing next - namely, optimising your content

Links Difficulty 0-100: same as before but you should consider the amount of backlinking efforts that will go into the project

Monthly Searches: a Google Trend graph to see the overall search volume course over the years

Relevancy score 1-5 "stars": i.e. how close the (long-tail) keyword is to your seed keyword - this is great for a quick "search intent" assessment

No. of words: you can check the "long-tail"-ness factor of any given keyword

Search Volume: CognitiveSEO Keyword Explorer uses "from-to" brackets rather than absolute numbers - this is also my preference

CPC $-value: this one is something I wouldn't expect there, and I'm a bit unsure about its ultimate purpose in that space - possibly to know if the keyword is monetised via PPC ads (?) (but what impact that would have on your optimisation decisions, I don't know...)

Research & Analyse thousands of money-making keywords, pick the most relevant and export on CSV

Similarly to the Keyword Tracking approach, CognitiveSEO implemented a lot of data slicers to filter out the most important SEO bits from a substantial volume of keywords. So other than the filters referred to the data points mentioned above, you can refine your keyword search with:

Search Suggestions

Focus Keywords

Questions

And then you can also:

Group by Topic

Copy All or

Export All to CSV spreadsheet

I must say, the keywords research is comprehensive and lands a lot of keyword suggestions to look at. On the Standard plan, it may not be the biggest keywords database out there (Ahrefs lands about 10-30% more depending on the query), but CognitiveSEO keyword analysis serves you the most relevant SEO keyword ideas you should be considering on your website. And apparently, you can also expand the results count up to 3x on higher paid plans. There is so much more to keyword analysis than you could ever see on Google Trend or Keyword Planner from Google so give it a go.

Side note: the "search intent" behind the keyword is one of the most important factors in generating revenue from the content that many SEOs struggle with, and I find CognitiveSEO's Keyword Explorer makes it a little bit easier.

Rank Analysis

CognitiveSEO also lists top 20 articles/pages that currently occupy the top search grid for a given "seed keyword". This is the next logical step (tab) in your SEO Content Optimization journey which reveals who you are up against via the following self-explanatory data points:

Content Performance

Focus Keywords

No. Of Words

Domains To Url

Domains To Site

Date Published

SERP Analysis SEO tool helps you see who ranks what, where and why

The most apparent is the Content Performance progression bar from 0-100 that you can eye-ball and immediately grasp who makes an SEO effort and where. I also found myself using the tool as a unique content curator:

The grid is a swift SEO checker and gives me a quick insight into the web pages that comprise of the juiciest content.

While using it as a rank checker, I can filter-out a blog post or two that ranked due to backlinks alone, got a low number of keywords or were published a long time ago (and are possibly outdated).

I can also click on the given record and analyse the LSI keywords that are prominent in the article! In any case, CognitiveSEO Ranking Analysis equips me with the most important data points that allow me to see what's behind the Google Search curtains.

I'd love to see CognitiveSEO expanding on that content curation theme a little bit more and provide the full top-100 pages breakdown with data slicers and filters. Note, you can expand to the top-100 articles on their higher-paid plans (but I'm not sure if it comes with any additional features). Again, they offer so much more than what you can find in other keyword explorer tools or even SEO toolbar and Chrome extension widgets. And definitely more than plain keyword suggestions you get out of Googles Keyword Planner.

Content Optimizer

Once you know what you are writing about or you already have something that needs optimizing, you can go ahead and fire the Content Optimizer tool. Again, I've devoted a few good words in an attempt to perform the Content Optimizer's detailed analysis in my other article, so definitely check it. Here, I'll just quickly recap why I find their SEO optimizer so essential to my digital marketing activities.

Content Optimizer helps you to create better articles by providing LSI keywords, long-tail keyword suggestions and NLP data from Google Search index

Firstly, the Content Optimizer interface is superbly intuitive. With the use of colours and strategic layout, it takes very little guesswork on what you need to be doing there. This is essential for speed of implementation and handing it over to VA or someone who might not necessarily want to learn some complex SEO-tool (i.e. non-SEO content marketers) but would greatly benefit from it anyways. For any ambitious content marketer or resourceful digital marketing strategy, that tool is a must. Secondly, I've ranked unbelievable keywords for my clients on top of Google completely without launching any link building campaigns. Simply by using Content Optimizer and producing a great article. This isn't to say that "tHe bAcKlinKing iZ DeAd". I'm saying that there is more to the keywords LSI (and now Google BERT updates) than one might conclude from following a basic "beginners guide to SEO" or "SEO keyword research tutorial" on YouTube. Slapping all your H1-H3 with "{marketing consultant|consultants of marketings}", duplicate content and a broken grammar is slowly but surely a practice that Google is working hard NOT to reward anymore. And last but not least, I truly believe that with the proper use of Content Optimizer in your online marketing you're going to produce a much better, juicer and, what we like to call, well-researched articles. With this tool, I often find myself deriving new ideas as I'm optimising the content within the tool. The "Keywords you should use" or "you should use more often" suggestions, as well as "content ideas via questions people ask" are a fantastic resource in and of itself. Many times I found pointers to the new ideas and avenues about the subject that I've missed or not realised before I sat down to write the piece. To simply put, optimization tools like Content Optimizer make the Internet a better place.

Content Optimizer can help you rank your website on Google Search Engine without backlinks

What I'd like to improve about Content Optimizer

The one thing that is apparent in the keywords software is how detached it is from the rest of the platform. It almost seems like it's done as a side-kick to the main SEO Campaign tools. At the moment, the articles are mixed up all over the "Continue Where You Left Off" section, and it would be nice to have them at least categorised or assigned to different projects (domains). So what I'd love to see is better integration with the rest of the SEO toolkit. For example, it would be nice to be able to launch an SEO campaign project and have the selected pages and articles listed for "content optimization". And while we're at it, why not have a trigger button for the tool to scrape the existing content from the selected pages for you to optimise it. Further, have it automatically calculating the improved LSI performance - listing the organic keywords ranking that are popping up on Google Search. This could be similar to the Site Auditor step-by-step SEO guides but for all your projects content optimisation instead.

CognitiveSEO Review Summary

As Google Search Algorithm becomes more and more complicated and new layers of complexity are added on top of an already intricate network, an all-in-one SEO software companies will have to make a choice.

Either they'll attempt to predict and replicate what the biggest company in the world is up to next. That means pouring resources in an attempt to the ultimate SEO toolkit by combining everything there is while trying not to sacrifice baseline user experience (think how convoluted Google Analytics Dashboard is - and that's just analytics!).

OR they will take a specific direction and put all their efforts to help their customers achieving targeted results (think MOZ Local)

From a pragmatic point of view to the whole SEO, I see the second possibility much more compelling. And fortunately, I see CognitiveSEO taking precisely that direction - to become a highly specialised SEO tool for organic SEO projects and affiliate campaigns. And this isn't to say they don't have their bases covered - quite the contrary. The software interface is very responsive and didn't take me long to learn the basics (apart maybe from the Site Explorer). I found all the SEO features highly practical and aligned to make a substantial difference in my organic SEO rankings - whether for my domain or my clients. There are also Free SEO Tools available to take a look but they are very limited. If you're an SEO beginner and you're looking for free SEO tools at CognitiveSEO you will need to supplement them with something else like Answer The Public.

The entry-level CognitiveSEO package cost $129, which is $30 more than popular SemRUSH or Ahrefs basic packages (or Majestic SEO / MOZ Pro). However, neither SemRUSH nor Ahrefs provides Content Optimizer, and eventually, you'll have to look for it somewhere anyway. Maybe it would be a good idea for CognitiveSEO to offer it separately for a smaller price?

CognitiveSEO Paid Plans Pricing - Monthly or Yearly (30% off) with 7-day Trial

Additionally, big "all-in-one" marketing agencies and everyone who also require PPC analysis, social media marketing or some complicated data associations while exporting hundreds of spreadsheets with unlimited data to play around with - those will need additional solutions anyway. Still, if you specialise in organic SEO or in search of fast and practical SEO guide both for SEO experts and beginners (even to jump start their SEO training), I recommend investing in CognitiveSEO. It'll be worth it, and the software will pay itself back faster than you think. Article originally posted on https://colorpeak.co.uk/cognitiveseo-review/

0 notes

top1course · 5 years ago

Text

💰 AMAZON FBA PRODUCT RESEARCH FOR BEGINNERS | $25K/MONTH PRODUCT IN MINUTES!

youtube

What is up ninjas I’m so sorry I’ve been gone so long been traveling around in South America with some on my best friend but now I am, back and have the absolute best content, back so let’s just get started on the first thing I’m going to do is just search Amazon best sellers, baby right into this is the first thing I want to look at, let’s take a look through some of these I’m going to show you a tactic that I use and is probably the one tactic gets found me the most FBA product, for my business has been the most successful right, take a look through somebody’s email kind of walkthrough you know what I’m looking for you know obviously avoid the big Brands were not look, me at Peter Rabbit we’re not looking at you know Fisher-Price VTech, i’m somebody’s larger ones right so the first page on best sellers, I’m especially on a category you know usually I like to go one deep in subcategories right so baby right, you choose one subcategory deep of a main section and that’s how I like to start on when I’m doing this specific, type of product research, so this could be interesting I’m doing this life for you guys so you know I’m not going to can’t see that every single one of these, is it going to be, you know, home run but I’m going to show you exactly how I’m going through this in the process and then I’m kind of going through, brighton, something that people don’t actually know a very often is that you can actually run jungle Scout on store, front pages into the interesting part about this guy’s, as you just simply use the best sellers list to find these really successful storefronts are companies on Amazon, And then basically. You can just take a look at everything they’re selling, and seeing you all of the related stats with their products right so it looks like this, company is really only selling 6 products, obviously they’re destroying it in every single one of them but the reviews are super high right so this might not be one, that we want to consider, so let’s head back, ella stickler silver, can find something, a bit better, so what I’m looking for here guys as you no no no big brand name that I’m recognizing, maybe like a product that would be, reasonable, to be able to copy, not not a silly copy but to emulate and, able to just kind of add features to add value to in some way, i’m so sick of looking another one, yeah I mean usually what I’m going through this guy’s I’m just trying to find basically the most, Random product right if I’ve never heard of it that’s even better.

You want to have things that are kind of difficult to, come up with, you know yourself right, and so this looks like another company where they’re pretty much selling the same thing, silicone nipple, breast feeders, cell tracker, something else, interesting one breast milk, feeding gift set, what she’s always want to open on, this morning, go take a look at their seller store records, just clicking to their seller store on any product listing you can see, okay here we go, so these guys are selling a bunch of different stuff right, some of the reviews are low enough to enter, there’s also I’m some room for improvement on the quality obviously so this is what we look, looking for right so it took us three tries, Imma but we found it, and so I just want to show you guys really in a real-time how quickly you can actually kind of do this, and be able to find really successful products by doing it, the next thing that I like to do here guys is I look at their storefront right into the shows, especially with with larger companies, please you have a variety of different on product offerings, it shows all of them, and so what I like to do is I sit here and once it loads, i pressed extract pages, is the super powerful part of the Chrome extension on Jungle Scout that not enough people are utilizing in their product research right, so what I’m looking at products I’m not just looking at the first page I’m looking at every, 3 page right and when I find something, Like this right with a 12-ranked, some of the stuff is 50 reviews doing a 10-month rights with these guys are obviously doing a great job on Amazon so I want to see, every single product that they’re selling, and I want to and I want to let you know once I have extracted every single page of their products, then I’ll restart the video and I’ll show you guys what to do then, i got so four hours later I’m doing this for you I had to press that actually so many times this, this company has a ridiculous amount of products, but, because they have a ridiculous amount of products it means that we’re going to, find a ridiculous amount of products to potentially be able to enter into the market and free ourselves from corporate slavery, alright so, what I like to do here is Sesame initial filter dry higher than I usually do, But let’s cut it down a bit, rights of 75 of used 3000 Revenue a suit that have, i like to sort by reviews what I’m doing this, speakers reviews in my opinion are kind of the you know the number one factor, as far as entering into a market, right, okay, so they actually have more than, thinking so let’s actually move the filter even a bit farther, 275, 5011, so that brings it, down a bit, drop it down, good morning, 6000, so, now we’ve got something going on here queso, 6000 monthly Revenue with one review, right, aC power adapter, quick wipes, mesh bag for, dishwasher, mesh bag for, dishwasher, for 8, 8000, breast milk, google so, how to sell random, all right, membranes, tom Sachs, breast milk bags, i mean Deezer, these are perfect, write this is a such a ridiculously random products, and so what I do here guys, Is I’d simply just add.

Every single one of these to my heart, bright and you can you can find products, so quickly this way guys I mean if you find a seller that’s really doing a great job they’re killing it obviously they, they have a huge portfolio of products, all you have to do guys is just add you know 10, 20 30 40 50, price your car, and then just use, vA or do the work yourself with you know one of the plugins stock heat or whatever you want to use for a unicorn, extension to do kind of the method trick for you and then just all you do is throw it into Excel, wait 5 to 7 days and then based on that sales volume you’ve basically identify products right, and so just for the sake of assumption let’s let’s say that, is this product right here was one of the ones that after tracking, We were able to kind of see that it was a winner, wrightsman what we can do now that we’ve seen this is a winner, we can go down in here and look at the customers who also bought this item, also bought section right and so, take a look at some of this, breastmilk removal soap, hands-free bust your white I mean these are these are great products like look at this, hands-free breast pump bra, i mean do you have a lot of reviews but I mean, 17 pages of this gas and go through, 250 reviews extra valves and membranes like I have no idea about baby stuff to be honest, but you know you can already tell, even just selling like collard rings, replacements for bottles right just random stuff like the complimentary items that you know are going with every bottle that every parent, That’s fine, so you know you can just go down these rabbit holes I mean people who tell me that they have problems with product research I mean it is to, getting started I understand that and that’s why I’m making these videos for you guys just kind of get the, creative juices, processing, and your brain, right but once you kind of get into this process I mean the opportunities in the the possibilities are endless, you can go down all of these you know, different, pass and you can find all these amazing products just bite you know just, doing the research going down clicking through all these different things right, and so, i’m going to pause the video now and I’m going to wait and do the 999 cart trick for the ones that we identified and we’re go, quickly look at that and then I’m going to show you a super-secret method that I used basically to use Amazon’s profit of, Ability experts against them right the people from Amazon were part of Amazon basics for selling FBA, i’m private label products, for Amazon are incredibly good at finding products that are extremely profitable, how to sell through FBA, and so we can actually use that against them, a kind of identify products that they’ve already identified, you know complementary products potentially, bundle the same products, optimize Amazon cuz they’re not looking through their PPC campaigns they’re not optimizing they’re not providing customer, they’re not taking specifically, pictures that are you know, specifically attuned to that target audience, it’s a lot of people get scared about competing against Amazon but I would actually argue if you do it right it’s an advantage for you sore, going to go through that but quickly running look through the eye track method for these products and take a look all right we’ll be right back, Like I said here is the I track numbers over the past few days and so.

For those of you who don’t know the itrack i999 cart trick basically just go into your normal Amazon car, quantity 10 plus, adrian 9 9 9, an error message saying you know, this seller only has 545 available right until you do that same exact thing over sea, series of days at the same time, and you’ll say okay well on this day they only had 5:45 on this next day they only had 538 right so you can tell that they, they probably sold 7 here right and so I like to do it over enough days to kind of see a pattern right and so will let’s go through a cup, alright so they told seven here eight here to hear right to a little bit of an outlier so it’s a little bit more data, Yeah it looks like they sold 13 here which is great and 12 right so this is definitely, this is definitely a good one, 7373 72 right so they’re only selling one every couple days or two you know on one day soon, this isn’t great volume so let’s go ahead and click that on that, price of six here 15-year right that’s great, 6, 1414 rights of this is great volume, sofive, to 6, sometimes when this happens when you see a guy jumping products in inventory, you can kind of assume a few things are happening right if you see a huge, difference, going down it means the Amazon might be moving around their inventory to different FBA warehouses and when it’s moving it shows not, available right so you might see 522 here in the next day 400, prices are not probably selling 122 units that day it’s probably just an inventory movement, I’m similarly when you see a huge jump up and means that they potentially got a new shipment in, right or if you see like a change of one going up and maybe means that they got a return, so for this one we need more info, so we continue eye-tracking this one for a few more days, but as you can see from this info you can kind of tell which one of these on to pursue, fox are probably going to be profitable based on their itraq methods, the second one step further guys, i’m so the first one that we identified as being profitable would be this Medina are Medela Pump, right so let’s let’s take a quiz, quick look, author listing, wrestler things are going to be looking for here guys are optimized bullets, no well done images, Obviously they have one image terribly done only 39 reviews, about the product for collection storage in, freezing breast milk right there’s no imagination there it’s not drying you in as a customer, i’m just definitely a listing that we could compete with, right and so much even go one step further just so you guys can get kind of, demos, detailed like front-to-back process of how, people are you know identifying, potentially product are potentially profitable products, so Amazon FBA, bAC calculator, retro and what I did hear that were watching is I took the a sin right you can find me a sin, how much is basically Amazon’s identifier for the offer all the products in their catalogs in the URL they always look the same, things you can spot them kind of like that, heading to the FBA fee calculator and you can just find this by Googling Amazon FBA fee calculator, Right.

And so let’s put that a sin in here and let’s quick search, and so this is the park we’re looking at or selling for $33, and so we can go ahead and throw in the Amazon price year, right and so once you, i’ve talked to a couple manufacturers, something you can do is, you can get a shipping estimate, right so you can talk to your fate for to say you know I have used this amount of products, there this way I’m shipping this many cartons and then once you get that I’m ship to Amazon fee, right you can slice a year you’re ordering a hundred products and it’s going to cost, you know $1,000, to ship them so that means they are Bonnie per product, basis, it’s going to cost, $10 to ship, right that’s probably not realistic is probably more realistic that this would cost you know three to $5 to ship, And it’s probably realistic that this is going to cost you know between 3 and $5 to manufacture so let’s say for here press you have, have the price, your shipping estimate what you get from your Freight forwarder, and the cost of your product what you get from your manufacturer and then once you have all that you can calculate your guys right so this this, tell you the Amazon FBA, refuse rights lawyer referral fee, i’m your fulfillment by Amazon fees is Pick and Pack, and this is like the 15% that Amazon takes for you know bringing traffic to your listing, and then you can get a pretty good idea guys immediately of what your net margin would be on any product right and you can do this for NES, all you have to have is a, price of cells at like an estimate of a cost, Of shipping per unit, an estimate or a real quote from your manufacturer of cost of goods sold, are guys in the last thing I want to do here is again just in the real time I’m going to show you guys exactly how we’re going to do this right so we’re going to go, go to Google Amazon best sellers, home & Kitchen, rachel tried different categories used to simulate will show you exactly how we’re doing this one last time just going to you know Samantha, the process all together and get your guys’s, in the kind of mindset that is required on to kind of do product research in this way, and find a ton of products to sell, in a very quick time, i’m so let’s I like to go I’m second to your right so this is the main category home and kitchen, I like to go one more beyond that right because the main categories are usually huge companies, for moving entirely, i’m ridiculous amount of products per month, right and so what we’re going to do is go one deep in a kitchen and dining and we’re going to take a look at some of these, right so we’re going to avoid things like brawny, we’re going to avoid things like Brita, so let’s go to the second page, they are probably going to avoid things like Keurig, non blend Dixie recipes are all pretty large company so far, rights of Zuri I never heard of, wellness cilantro looks, similar to something else that might be used on a scale, blinking right eye, price of Reynolds Wrap, lifeStraw, and some of the best products some of the gems you guys are going to find on pages that are not you know one through three so don’t get discouraged if you’re not staying, Anything you know right away.

I’m right here at hear something right there’s no brand here, masika look at this, only 240 reviews, write a generic seller names you know that they’re not you know, watermelon slicers extraordinaire, price of this okay here we go, right cake batter dispenser, cake batter to spell, that I’m not a product that exists just a sleep cuz my mind sometimes, why would you ever need a cake batter dispenser, maybe you do, so let’s do the same thing as let’s run through, go ahead and, press play on the jungle Scout Chrome extension, on, i’m their product page and let’s take a look, practice, $80,000 a month selling watermelon slicers, i’m not absolutely ridiculous and their cake batter dispenser is actually not doing that either, select extract the next page, Earmold ice maker, that is ran, i like that actual, i’m still look at, take batteries, i love I love products they just make me laugh because it’s so Random I could never imagine someone needing it but I mean that’s the beauty of, amazon if you for filling Niche where there’s enough traffic and there’s enough people looking, benji, can two huge numbers and with the most random parks in the world, rightmesh, mesh screen food covers right, isn’t doing huge volume but like you know as a first product these are probably incredibly cheap to make, great impulse buy range right here, right on the 8th reviews, so this is definitely something that you can take a look at, this seller doesn’t have as many parts of the last one we looked at right because we already extracted the full amount of pages, but that was kind of the process for you guys like just start to finish, Very quickly it took me five minutes right I found two interesting products here, a spherical mode ice maker, and mesh screen food covers, of 3 items actually and the cake batter dispenser right, add these all to my cart similarly as we did last time, i will take a look at customers who bought this also bought, you know maybe see if there’s anything here that I see, right cupcake carrying cases, you know, the possibilities are endless you guys and I think now that you’ve washed me kind of do it twice you can definitely replicate this on your own and it’s, it’s one of the most powerful ways to find a ton of products that are already basically proven by these other successful sellers, and then all you have to do is sift through their entire catalog, You know see if there’s an area that you can, potentially add value to, bundling through better images through whatever it is right, just get into the mentality of getting started right and this is how you do it guesses the one of the best ways that I found a ton, homerun products so, i know you guys can do the same thing, and if you guys have any questions definitely leave them in the comments I’m always so happy to hear from you guys and we will see you next time, i got I hope you enjoyed that video and if you did definitely make sure you subscribe to continue bring you the absolute, amazon FBA tips tricks and tactics and if you haven’t, deadly make sure you check on a Facebook group the most active Facebook group available I’m always in their constantly answering questions, providing value and so deadly make sure you join at guys and we will see you next time with the best Amazon FBA tactic.

from WordPress https://top1course.com/%f0%9f%92%b0-amazon-fba-product-research-for-beginners-25k-month-product-in-minutes/

#People & Blogs #alex becker's channel #amazon business #amazon fba #amazon FBA 101 #amazon fba 2018

0 notes

samuelpboswell · 5 years ago

Text

10 Crucial Steps for Launching Your B2B Podcast Into the Wild

Hey, friend, have you heard the good news about podcasts? Given the most recent stats, it’s highly likely you have. Over half of all Americans over 12 years of age have listened to at least one. Podcasts have well and truly hit the mainstream. In other words, the gold rush is on for brands looking to connect with a highly-engaged, long-attention-span audience. However, getting a podcast up and running isn’t as simple as publishing a blog. We recently published an entire B2B podcasting webinar to walk you through the entire process, from conception to publication. This post will zero in on the choices you need to make and the steps you need to take to release your podcast into the wild.

B2B Podcasting Launch Checklist: 10 Steps

Sure, you could just upload your audio to your web server, add an RSS feed, and call it good. But if you want people to actually find and listen to your podcast, there are a few extra steps you should take. This checklist will help your podcast find an audience and start building a subscriber base.

via GIPHY

#1: Choose Your Hosting Platform

A podcast syndication platform makes it easy to publish your podcast and get listed in directories. Think of it like WordPress is for your blog — it hosts the files, makes them look pretty, and makes it so people can find them. Most platforms will also give you embed codes for embedding episodes in blog posts or on a landing page. You’ll also get stats on how many people are downloading episodes, and on what program they’re listening. We prefer Libsyn as our hosting platform. Podbean, buzzsprout, and Blubrry are also solid options. They all have a free tier of hosting, but you’ll want to pay a few bucks a month for bandwidth and analytics.

#2: Upload Your First Three Episodes

Podcasting is all about establishing a regular cadence (more on that later). But for launch, you’ll want to have at least three episodes ready to go. There are a few reasons for publishing multiple episodes for your debut:

One episode may not be enough to convince people to subscribe.

Multiple episodes show you’re committed to keeping the content coming.

Most importantly, Apple podcasts requires at least three episodes to qualify for their “New and Noteworthy” section.

So before you publish, have at least three episodes completed, and be ready to follow up with more at your promised publishing cadence.

#3: Register with Podcast Directories

Podcasts are peculiar in terms of content delivery. Your hosting platform makes the files available, but most people will listen to your podcast on their chosen podcast app. Each app maintains its own directory — think of it as a search engine for podcasts. Your podcast needs to be listed in their directory, or people won’t be able to find you. I recommend registering with at least these six:

Apple Podcasts

Google Podcasts

Stitcher

Podbean

Spotify

TuneIn

Each of these sites will ask for the RSS feed of your podcast, which your hosting platform will generate for you. I created a podcast tracker to keep track of all these directories — sign up for the webinar and you can download it for free.

#4: Promote Internally

Gaining visibility on a podcast directory is tricky business. Apple and Google are where the majority of your listeners will be, and each employs an algorithm to promote podcasts in search results and feature pages. How do you get an algorithm’s attention? Engagement! Start by promoting your podcast to all of your employees. Encourage them to subscribe on Apple or Google, give a rating, and write a brief (and honest) review. What’s more, draft some social messages and encourage everyone to promote the podcast to their networks, too. That base level of initial engagement will help your podcast start finding its audience.

#5: Activate Your Influencers

Most podcasts are Q&A-style interviews with influential guests. If your podcast includes influencers in your industry, make sure they know as soon as their episode goes live. Give them the tools to promote the podcast easily:

Sample social messages

Social media images in the correct sizes

Embed codes

If your podcast doesn’t feature influencers, it’s worth re-evaluating your strategy for your next season. Influencer content not only is more valuable to your audience, it’s an indispensable channel for promotion.

#6: Publish Blog Posts

The one downside of audio content: It’s not super crawlable for SEO purposes. Granted, Google has started to auto-transcribe episodes and add them to search results, but the technology is still in the early stages. To truly get some SEO juice from your podcast, we recommend embedding each podcast in a blog post. This example from the Tech Unknown Podcast by SAP* shows how simple it can be. All you need is an introduction, a few pull quotes, some key takeaways, and a transcript.

#7: Add Paid Promotion

As with any content, you want to use every tactic available to make sure it gets seen by your target audience. That’s especially true with podcasts, since podcast search engines are incredibly competitive. Targeted, paid social promotion can help establish your subscriber base and get your new podcast some much-needed visibility. It’s also worth considering cross-promotion on other podcasts. Consider both paid advertising and trading guest spots with a podcast that shares your target audience.

#8: Solicit Listener Feedback

Ratings and reviews are essential to your podcast’s success. They’ll help provide social proof for new listeners and boost your search visibility in podcast directories. The best way to get ratings and reviews? Ask for them. Make it part of each episode’s sign-off. You can even encourage thoughtful reviews by reading the best ones on future episodes. You will engage your listeners and solicit more reviews at the same time.

#9: Keep Up Your Cadence

As with blog content, there’s no single “right” frequency to publish a podcast. Some of my favorite podcasts publish weekly, biweekly, or even monthly. The best cadence for your podcast is “However frequently you can reliably, regularly publish quality content.” Choose your cadence with an eye to long-term sustainability, and tell your listeners explicitly how frequently you’ll publish. Whether it’s “See you next week,” or “PodcastTitle is a monthly podcast that…” listeners will find it easier to make your podcast a habit if you stick to a schedule.

#10: Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose

In my last post on the content marketing benefits of B2B podcasting, I mentioned that podcasts are a content machine, and I’ll say it again. It’s easy to finish an episode, publish it, then forget it and move on to the next thing. But don’t do that! Pull snippets of audio content for social media. Turn them into short videos, too: Add a still image or a simple looping GIF for visual interest. Use your transcriptions as fodder for future blog posts, quotes for influencer marketing, or even a stand-alone asset. Any way you can reuse that content can help bring more listeners to your podcast. What’s more, putting the content in a different medium can reach an audience who might not be into podcasts (yet).

Check, Check, One Two

Launching a podcast is a little trickier than launching a new blog, especially if you’re new to the format. But if you follow this checklist, you can make sure your podcast is available on all the right channels and is ready to start attracting an audience. Need more podcasting help? Check out our B2B Podcasting Webinar. In addition to learning the Four P’s of podcasting success, you’ll see me make this face: *Disclosure: SAP is a TopRank Marketing client.

The post 10 Crucial Steps for Launching Your B2B Podcast Into the Wild appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OnlineMarketingSEOBlog/~3/8uKkNzV2duc/

0 notes

ralphlayton · 5 years ago

Text

10 Crucial Steps for Launching Your B2B Podcast Into the Wild

B2B Podcasting Launch Checklist: 10 Steps

via GIPHY

#1: Choose Your Hosting Platform

#2: Upload Your First Three Episodes

One episode may not be enough to convince people to subscribe.

Multiple episodes show you’re committed to keeping the content coming.

Most importantly, Apple podcasts requires at least three episodes to qualify for their “New and Noteworthy” section.

So before you publish, have at least three episodes completed, and be ready to follow up with more at your promised publishing cadence.

#3: Register with Podcast Directories

Apple Podcasts

Google Podcasts

Stitcher

Podbean

Spotify

TuneIn

#4: Promote Internally

#5: Activate Your Influencers

Sample social messages

Social media images in the correct sizes

Embed codes

#6: Publish Blog Posts

#7: Add Paid Promotion

#8: Solicit Listener Feedback

#9: Keep Up Your Cadence

#10: Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose

Check, Check, One Two

The post 10 Crucial Steps for Launching Your B2B Podcast Into the Wild appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

10 Crucial Steps for Launching Your B2B Podcast Into the Wild published first on yhttps://improfitninja.blogspot.com/

0 notes

buytabletsonline · 7 years ago

Link

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Enlarge / The components are (generally) good quality.

Owen Duffy

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

For millennia, humans have been captivated by Mars. To the ancient Romans, the “red planet” represented the god of war, presiding over conquest and glory. To the 19th-century astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, it was a world connected by vast canals, evidence of an advanced civilization. Today, our cosmic neighbor is a place to be explored, analyzed, and understood; the prospect of setting foot on Martian soil seems tantalizingly close.

But if the board game First Martians is anything to go by, we shouldn’t bother. Mars doesn’t want us.

A cooperative game with an integrated smartphone app, First Martians casts players as a team of astronauts—an elite group of engineers, medics, and scientists. The team is brave, smart, and capable, and it took me about 40 minutes to doom them all. Critical systems failed. Morale plummeted. Team members suffered debilitating injuries. Fist-fights broke out in the habitation hub. Eventually the carnage ended when our exhausted mechanic got sloppy on the job and accidentally electrocuted himself.

And so, with the tutorial mission out of the way, it was time for things to get really tough.

A world of hurt

First Martians is a long-awaited game based on its designer’s earlier release, Robinson Crusoe. That’s appropriate; as anyone who read the 2011 novel The Martian knows, themes of isolation and hardship apply just as well to distant worlds as they do to tropical islands.

Aside from the shift in theme, there’s another big difference between the two titles. Where Robinson Crusoe was a traditional analog game, relying on cards and dice to craft its story of tropical survival, First Martians is one of a growing number of games that integrate smartphones and tablets. As you play, you’ll interact with an app which throws a stream of new challenges in your path: malfunctioning equipment, dangerous seismological events, disturbing news from back home on Earth. The app tracks your responses. Failing to take care of issues as they arise means they’ll come back to bite you on later turns, developing from minor irritations into full-blown catastrophes.

What makes things complicated is that while you’re dealing with the app’s relentless parade of calamity, you’ll also have to take care of day-to-day mission business. The game comes with a collection of scenarios that see you building new structures, exploring the Martian surface, and conducting scientific research; the balance between meeting your objectives and “not dying” is tricky to find.

Like most cooperative games, First Martians presents you with more problems than you can handle at any given time and challenges you to identify those that most need your attention. Each of your astronauts takes two actions per turn. Spend them both on a single activity, like repairing damaged machinery or conducting lab research, and you’ll automatically succeed. Spend just one and you’ll have to roll dice to see whether you pull it off.

You can try to spread yourself thin, dealing with a multitude of little crises, but that means doing a half-assed job, leaving your team reliant on oxygen scrubbers held together by duct tape and misplaced hope.

Enlarge / The game in play.

Owen Duffy

We have a problem

This all makes for a punishing game, which is great for the gaming masochists among us. Unfortunately, First Martians also suffers from some glaring (and totally avoidable) weaknesses.

The biggest is the rulebook. It’s confusing and disjointed, burying bits of vital information in sidebars and omitting other bits completely. To play the game, I had to read the instructions, watch a one-hour tutorial video, trawl through forum posts from confused players, and then consult the publisher’s 66-page PDF full of corrections and clarifications. It’s a huge amount of effort just to get the basic information needed to play.

Then there’s the app itself, which is full of text that looks like it’s never been proofread. Given the effort and attention that’s clearly gone into the game’s aesthetic presentation, it’s jarring and disappointing to run into half-formed sentences and clunky, unnatural dialog.

How did this slip past QA?

Owen Duffy

The translations need work.

Owen Duffy

So many cubes…

Owen Duffy

More fundamentally, though, First Martians doesn’t seem sure how best to use its digital component.

The game comes with lots of fiddly stats to keep track of, requiring players to shove plastic cubes around its board constantly as part of some not-very-interesting bookkeeping. Some stats that the app does display, like the number of days elapsed during a mission, also come with physical trackers that only serve to add needless clutter and administrative hassle. There’s even a deck of cards whose sole purpose is to generate random numbers—just one of the responsibilities that could have been more elegantly handled by a nifty bit of software.

What makes this doubly disappointing was my hope that First Martians could draw a new audience into board games. Its sci-fi theme and flashy app integration seem like perfect bait to lure my videogame-obsessed friends over to the cardboard dark side. “Look!” I could say, “this is cool! It’s not all about pushing plastic cubes and poring over incomprehensible rules!” But that’s exactly the trap that the game falls into.

It’s a pity, because the overwhelming impression I get from First Martians is that there’s a good game inside, desperately trying to break out. The game relentlessly hammers players with tough decisions with no obvious best course of action. It engineers a delicate system where one failing element can quickly affect others, and it feels like trying to stop a row of dominoes collapsing after the first few have already fallen.

But as promising as some aspects are, they can’t overcome the game’s fatal flaws in execution. After sinking hours into learning First Martians and working my way through scenarios, constantly Googling uncertain points as I found them, I’m done.

If a second edition ever fundamentally rethinks the roles of the app and the human players, I’ll definitely be interested. But until that happens, I’m staying on Earth.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); http://ift.tt/2rrfy6W January 20, 2018 at 06:22PM

#buytabletsonline buytablets buytablet iphone5s technology iphonegraphic mobile electronics

0 notes