#AND DID I MENTION THAT I HAD A COUPON ON TOP OF THE SALE!!!
Text
Book Haul!: I Am Not Immune To Buy 3 Get 1 Free Sales.
These have all been on my list for a while--I knew the bookstore would have the Jemisin and Jackson books for sure (I'd seen them both there before), and I was hoping they'd have Chronister in paperback (because they had her in hardback). I was glad Turnbull was out in paperback, too! What a delightful evening of book shopping!
#books#book photography#book haul#my photography#nk jemisin#the world we make#the haunting of hill house#shirley jackson#desert creatures#kay chronister#no gods no monsters#cadwell turnbull#the jemisin and chronister are vaguely driscoll vibes#the jackson and turnbull are nano prep things!!#full disclosure i really was looking for HOUSE OF LEAVES and turnbull was a substitution because they didnt have HOL#but it's still on the list and therefore counts!!#AND DID I MENTION THAT I HAD A COUPON ON TOP OF THE SALE!!!#so desert creatures was Free from sale and then i had a BONUS $10 off!!!#WINNING AT BUDGETING I GUESS
58 notes
·
View notes
Text
Week # 10 Business Progress
What is working?
My first "sales transaction" went rather well.
Last week, on May 2, I had my first session with a student whom, for the sake of anonymity, I will call Johnny Appleseed. Little Johnny has an upcoming exam for grade 10 French and, while his class is working on an ISU currently, his mother is concerned that he's forgetting all of the tenses he has learned earlier this year. It turns out that Johnny does see the value in being bilingual (members of his extended family are bilingual, for one, but he also sees it as a marketable skill from a career perspective, which is a mature way of thinking for a boy of 15). His issue is more along the lines of spoken French vs. written French. Johnny feels that learning within the classroom is stunting his ability to speak French because he's "just more inclined to speak it than everyone else seems to be." I acknowledged the value of conversational French, but asked him to consider the importance of knowing how to read and write it clearly and for him to self-assess his capacity to do so.
I think that helped because, by asking him not to tell me but to evaluate himself and to be brutally honest in that regard, he felt more empowered than the top-down experience in which he's been enmeshed. I think the relationship has been quite tense between parent and child over this particular point, but Johnny does not outright hate French so much as having frustrations about the pedagogy surrounding it at his school.
I count this as a win, because the problem is not with learning French. The problem is more complex than that and involves appreciating the need to understand and communicate with the written word. We reviewed using the past and present tense, including using negatives, for reflexive reciprocal verbs, which he self-identified as an area of trouble. Again, allowing him to tell me his weaker areas seemed to have an empowering effect where he felt more in control of his educational pursuit.
Over the next few weeks, we will move through each part of the curriculum; I will be able to then evaluate areas of strength and weakness and provide added support where I can see it is most needed.
The client, Mrs. Appleseed, thanked me profusely when we chatted after the session. Her gratitude was very kind and I gave Mrs. Appleseed a few business cards to “refer me to your friends.” (You have to try, right?)
She also mentioned in a week or two ramping up the number of sessions as we enter into his final exam period. We scheduled again, this time for tomorrow, Wednesday, May 8, another hour-long session. She e-transferred the funds for the first session immediately as well.
In an Excel spreadsheet, I am keeping track of all of the financials of the business, including cash flow, to ensure I am meeting my intended objectives. Like I mentioned last week, I’m also trying to absorb as much intel as I can from the Appleseeds, so I can understand best about what works well and what doesn’t with my current business model, and whether there are adjustments I can make to improve the business viability.
What is not working?
More clients would be nice. Diversifying my clientele seems like a more sustainable way to move forward. I don’t want to put too many eggs in one basket.
youtube
If bad news is your thing, though, then marketing will interest you. I am still getting absolutely nowhere with Facebook. My frustration with social media is insane right now. (Not that I would feel much better by getting set up to properly engage with it. But I digress.)
I did spend some money on business cards (and less than I'd budgeted, thanks to a coupon code), so I am relying, unfortunately, a little too heavily on passing these cards around wherever I can. I know word-of-mouth is absolute gold, especially in the tutoring industry, for netting more clients, but I am feeling a little desperate to supplement it with some social media or other kinds of marketing. (More on canvassing with flyers below.)
I truly expected the marketing process to be more organic than it has been, so I am genuinely surprised at the number of speed bumps I’ve faced along the way here. My goal by next week is to have something more concrete figured out, even if it means switching gears entirely and seeking out another paid marketing campaign option outside of Facebook.
How do you feel the project is coming?
Can't complain.
Based on my metrics, I’ve met my goals so far. My natural personality doesn’t gel well with the “let it be” mantra I’m force-feeding myself, but I am trying to learn to let go a little and not try to jump the gun on my milestones.
There’s still much room for progress, but I also need to give it room to progress.
What are you learning about running a business?
It should come as no surprise that I have learned that I would really like to be able to afford the services of a marketing firm. The ability to know my weaknesses and pain points and being able to offload them to someone with the expertise and connections to get it done right the first time – what a blissful dream.
Honestly, I'm starting to understand why Don Draper was such a big deal.
youtube
In the world of regulations and bylaws, I also made some strides in learning where I can hand out flyers. A terrific municipal law enforcement officer got back to me on April 29 stating that, in Ajax, no municipal bylaw exists prohibiting me from handing out flyers in public. However, I cannot hand out flyers or any other promotional materials on Town of Ajax property, any property classified as a park, and any Town of Ajax recreational facilities. By virtue of that, I might consider handing out flyers later this week; the weather is pretty nice right now and the foot traffic is increasing, so it might be wise to do that for a few hours.
What are you learning about yourself?
I am learning a lot of four-letter words, but one of the most important ones has been “calm”... oh, here’s two more: “Slow down”.
Being as Type-A as I am, I have to learn to pace myself for a marathon, not a sprint. I have managed to seemingly get the most steps forward when I’ve stopped and smelled the roses. So, I am aiming to keep doing that, in spite of myself.
Quite honestly, rewiring that part of my brain would not necessarily be a bad thing. I understand there’s a difference between eustress (the good kind of stress that keeps us alert and alive) and distress (the debilitating kind that brings us to our knees and wreaks havoc on productivity and wellbeing), but I cannot always tell the difference between grit and grind.
youtube
In my experience, when you’re in it, you can’t see the forest for the trees. So, if nothing else, if this startup venture is an abject failure, I will walk away from it with a better sense of calmness. Nothing is ever a total loss, if we can learn or change for the better due to it.
#entrepreneur#startup#venture#entrepreneurship#marketing#customerpersona#sales#regulatorycompliance#regulations#bylaw#Youtube
0 notes
Text
How to Create Kick-Ass Local Landing Pages Whiteboard Friday
Learn all about how to create kick-ass local landing pages in this Whiteboard Friday with Amanda Jordan. Discover the most popular features and get to know the dos and don'ts when creating local landing pages.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, I'm Amanda Jordan at RicketyRoo, and today I'm going to be talking about how to create kickass local landing pages. I talked about this topic at MozCon in 2022. I did some research on the top 50 pages in the U.S. and home services businesses that ranked on the first page, and then I reviewed those pages and analyzed the features that they were using on those pages to determine what makes a winning location landing page.
Most popular features of local landing pages
So the most popular features are listed here. Sixty-one percent of the home services businesses that ranked on the first page had reviews on their location landing pages. I think that's pretty much a given now, even though only 61%, there is 39% who were not doing it. But that's pretty much a given in my opinion that you should have reviews on that page, if for any other sake other than being able to use the structured data for it, for the conversion rate optimization, just providing users with a reason to trust you and believe that you're good at your job.
So like just for any other reasons, that would be the basic reasons why you want to do that. Thirty-two percent had a unique value proposition, so something to set them apart from their competitors. I think that's actually very low, and that should be something that really all businesses should be striving for is setting themselves apart. You don't want to just be another site that's saying, "Hey, you can give me money for my services."
You would want them to know why they want to choose you, and that is something that you do in your unique value proposition. Only a quarter of them included any type of sale or a coupon, which is a huge missed opportunity. So if you're seeing that your competitors aren't offering a coupon or sale, that's an opportunity for you to snag business from them. If they're shopping around and going to multiple websites, if you're the only one that is offering a coupon, they don't know that you might be, I don't know, 10% more expensive from your competitor until they call and get a quote.
So if you're offering 15% off, you may actually snag a customer and only have to give them 5% off because they don't know what your prices are compared to your competitor. So that is a good way to get more clients in and get more conversions. Then only 18% had awards or recognitions mentioned on the page. I think that's a missed opportunity as well because those are trust signals. Those show people that they can trust your business, that you're recognized in your industry, that you do good work.
So these are the features that I found on those businesses in the top 50 most populated cities in the United States. Where they ranked on the first page, these are the features they were using the most. There were some standouts where they had almost everything you could think of as far as features, and then there were others where they were getting lucky, like low competition. Their business has been around for a really long time, so they didn't have to put in that much effort to rank well because everyone knew them and they're almost like a fixture in their community.
So if you look for plumbing in that city, that's just what's going to show up.
Answer these questions when thinking about your pages
So really, when you're thinking about your location pages, you should be trying to answer these questions. I put them here because I think like a detective a lot of times when I review sites, and I like "True Crime" a lot, so I think about it as kind of putting together what am I looking for, almost like Clue.
You want to know what's going on. Who did what, where, when, why, how? So when you look at your competitors, answer these questions, and when you're thinking about your own location landing pages, answer these questions too. Who are you trying to reach out to? Who are you? What's your business? What are you trying to offer them?
What are their concerns? Why should they choose you over competitors? When are you the best choice for them? Where can they contact you, and how can they contact you? All of these questions should be answered on every location landing page. If you're not answering all these questions, then people are going to have to search around on your website to find those answers, or they're just going to leave and go to a competitor who can more easily answer those questions.
If you think about it, this is a lot of what Google tries to answer in your Google Business profile as well. So you should be matching up not necessarily word for word what's on it, but think about the features that Google is trying to show in their own tool and make sure that those features also exist on your location landing page.
To answer those questions, look at the data
So you want to answer these questions, and how you want to answer them, you want to use these types of data.
You want to use first-party data. So you know your customers. You've worked with them. You likely have a CRM that you use. You want to use that CRM to accumulate valuable data and use it on your pages. If you know that at certain times of the year certain issues exist for a certain amount of houses and you're in home services, say the summer months, you already know in the summer months AC units are going to need maintenance and repair.
Put the percentage of homes that you serve with those issues during those months on that page in that area. That's automatically adding unique content that no one else has and that Google is going to see too as unique content, that's data-driven content, that's interesting content. So not only is it something that is unique to your page and not more generic than content that people are used to seeing, but it's also something that may be interesting enough that people will share with others, that may be used for other reasons as a source for other things as well.
Third-party data. So you want to use statistics, FAQs, things that you can find around the internet that you know is true, that is relevant to your business and is relevant to that specific location so that you can be as unique as possible within your content without being duplicative at all. Then user- generated content.
Your users should be leaving you reviews. If they're not leaving you reviews, you should be asking them to leave reviews. So that's one of the things that you can do. Comment sections on websites. There are lots of clients that I've had, especially in e-commerce, where they have e-commerce and local together, where they have a comment section where people can talk about their experiences, not like in a review place, would ask questions, give feedback on some things, things like that, communicate with each other, almost like a forum sometimes too.
That's a ton of user-generated content that's right there that you didn't have to write, that's about your products and services in your business. It will show up in Google as well. So it's more usable content that you could have someone else produce for you.
Dos and don’ts of creating local landing pages
Here are my do's and don'ts of creating a location landing page. I'm going to start with the don'ts because I see these issues frequently.
Even when businesses have the best intention, when they've hired an SEO, when they've hired a marketing director, I see that they run into these issues a lot, and they're hard to overcome. Not to belittle, they are difficult. Duplicate content is a huge issue for location landing pages. Thin and generic content are huge issues. But if you look at your data sources that you could actually pull from easily with scalability, so you don't have to worry about someone having to go through and write about unclogging a toilet 200 different ways.
You can pull your data about how many house calls you've gotten about unclogging toilets seasonally, by area, by ZIP code. Use that data on that page instead. That's so much more interesting than saying like, "Hey, if you have a clogged toilet, come call us." Everyone knows that you want them to do that. You can make that page more interesting.
You could have reviews about people who called you for specific types of issues on that page as well to facilitate that uniqueness and personalization for the user. So really the duplicate content and the thin and generic content issues are solved if you use first-party, third-party, and user-generated content. They will solve those issues for you, and it doesn't have to be something extremely labor intensive.
A lot of this data can be pulled from Google Sheets into your website. Don't treat it like a blog. That is another issue I see very commonly is that a business will say, "We need a ton of content to get people to come to our location landing page. We want this page to rank really well." But they forget that it's also about bringing someone in and making them want to make a decision to work with you on that one page.
It's the landing page, so they shouldn't have to go anywhere else to determine if they want to work with you or not. By answering these questions, you give them all the information they need to decide that they want to work with you, and you want to do it in a way that's engaging and interesting. So you don't want to have a huge block of text with nothing breaking it up. You want to include any sales or coupons, awards, reviews, and unique value propositions throughout that content to break it up and give them multiple opportunities to decide that they've read enough, they've heard enough, and they're ready to work with you.
So these are my steps and recommendations for creating a kickass local landing page. If you want to discuss more, you can find me on Twitter @amandatjordan.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
We hope you’re as excited as we are for August 7th and 8th to hurry up and get here. And again, if you haven’t grabbed your ticket yet and need help making a case we have a handy template to convince your boss!
Register for MozCon
0 notes
Text
To The Great Beyond
There’s a very important message emerging at this early juncture in the semester. We’ve already hammered the point that DTC and purely online retail companies need to at least consider having BAM locations. No matter how much love we throw at all things digital, we still live in a physical space, and stores will continue to dominate our purchases for a long time.
The opposite is also a true, though. A BAM store without an online presence is just as likely to fall upon hard times. The reality is that a multichannel (or as some call it, omnichannel) approach is the best, meaning that in order to be successful, you need to cover all bases.
But these should not be run in isolation from one another. No, they should be complementary, one aiding and abetting the other. The store becomes a portal to the online, and vice-versa. It can be a little confusing to grasp, not to mention deploy, but it must be done.
And there is perhaps no better (or sadder) example of a company that failed to do this than Bed, Bath & Beyond. In the span of a year, the chain will have shuttered nearly half of its stores. Yesterday they announced 150 more closings, on top of 87 announced just last week.
Founded in 1971, BB&B became the go-to place for home furnishings and kitchen gadgets. They had depth and they had breadth. And those 20% off coupons were great come-ons to get people through the doors.
Along the way, though, they forgot to note competitors making inroads in their category. Whereas big box category killer stores were all the rage in the 80s and 90s, mass merchandisers have figured out how to compete. Walmart and Target have quietly built up their housewares, and are serious rivals both in-store and online. Then there’s Amazon, which has an amazing selection of these items. Taken together, they have become a formidable threat, and BB&B is left wondering what the heck just happened.
Right. Because they pretty much stuck to their old-school guns and kept doing business the way they had always done it. Worse yet, during COVID they did not adapt, and instead kept their stores closed while others were open.
It’s always sad to see a chain with 950 stores at its peak die a slow, painful death. Clearly, they once had a formula for sales, or else all that expansion never would have happened. It’s just that they clung to that formula as if it were set for all time. Of course, we know better than to make such assumptions, because in the end, every business is vulnerable. And that includes, Walmart, Target, and Amazon. Or just ask Google.
Then there’s BB&B’s pricing strategy, which was typically full list price complemented by coupons. That is a method that drives some people to stores, but not me. I don’t want to wait for coupons. I do not thrive on the thrill of the hunt. I want value, which in my case is a bundle of price, quality, selection, and convenience. Sounds like Amazon to me.
It is only a matter of time until the Amarillo store turns off its lights. It escaped the cut last week, which was the second round of store closures. Yesterday’s bigger third round has not been released yet on a store-by-store basis. But based on my experience at my local store during the Christmas shopping season, I’d say it is going to come sooner than later. It was very clear to me they were not replenishing stocks, and just letting inventory sell down.
Even though BB&B managed to secure some short-term funding yesterday to try to avoid bankruptcy, I doubt it will be enough. They are essentially in corporate hospice, and if you have any affinity for them whatsoever, you better hurry by soon to pay your last respects before they are off to the great beyond.
Because this lesson is proving to be a painful one.
Dr “No Coupon Needed“ Gerlich
Audio Blog
0 notes
Note
Hi!! This is based on a reddit post I saw where a woman found her husband's "secret stash" of all the love letters/cards/post it notes she had written for him through all the years that he kept!! (🥺) and I would love to see it rewritten with Coops, if you want! Thanks for all the stories you write. I v much appreciate u
Okay so I looked up the story you’re talking about, and that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever read. My god. I’ve mentioned that Remus leaves notes in a couple of past fics, so this was just a perfect ask! Coops credit goes to @lumosinlove, but Hattie is mine!
For the anon who watched a sad video in their class: Have some coops fluff to dull the pain!
Remus sneezed as he shifted the nightstand a smidge to the left, exposing a dozen dust bunnies that were starting to look more like dust rhinos. He pulled and rocked and pushed, but the small table refused to move far enough for the vacuum cleaner head to fit through. “We need to clean this more often,” he muttered, opening the top drawer to unload some of the weight from inside.
Three books, a handful of pens, a spare toothbrush, a waterbottle…Remus shook his head at Sirius’ collection of oddities, smiling to himself. The nightstand moved a bit more when he wiggled it, but not quite to the point he needed it.
The lower drawer was bigger, and scattered with whatever Sirius had left in his pockets at the end of the day—Remus found three different packs of gum and laughed a little at the knickknacks they hadn’t been able to fit on their dresser. Part of him wanted to put everything back and ask Sirius to go through his own shit, but it was kind of neat finding souvenirs of their everyday lives.
Remus paused when his hand hit something solid and smooth before the back of the drawer. He felt around blindly, then carefully pulled it out. A box? His curiosity got the better of him before he could debate the nosiness of opening it; he lifted the shiny lid, tingling with anticipation, then frowned.
Paper. The box was full of slips of paper.
Lined, colorful, plain white, even some of his old PT stationary—everything Remus could think of, including a few cards at the bottom. He took a piece off the top and unfolded it, then nearly dropped the whole container when his own handwriting stared back at him.
Left @ 8 to see Leo. You were still out cold—sorry for wearing you out (not😊). Will be back around 4-ish. Love you! <3
Remus blinked at the note in shock for a moment. He remembered writing it on the old bookmark the morning after they went to the trampoline place and spent five hours jumping until they could hardly feel their legs. “But this was last summer,” he said aloud. “I—what?”
He poured a few more into his palm and set the box down gently, then sat back against the side of the bed and began to read.
Crock pot turned on. Pls remind me to take it off @ 5 pm. If I’m not home, pls unplug it @ 4:45 was written on a corner of printer paper.
Happy birthday baby! You are wonderful in every way and I love you so much <3 Here’s to hoping all your wishes come true! Love, Re, on a birthday card he had picked out because the dog on the front looked just like Hattie.
An entire conversation, complete with doodles and sarcastic comments from both of them, written on a piece of lined paper from one of the many conferences they had attended together.
- Eggs
- Chicken
- Bread
- Sweet tarts (for my sweetheart)
- Oreos (there’s a sale this week, coupon under note 😊)
- Pasta (twirly kind)
Love you <3
in his loopy half-cursive, with the shape of a fridge magnet still indented at the top near the crumpled edges from being shoved in Sirius’ back pocket.
“Well, shit,” Remus said, sniffling despite the fact that no tears dampened his eyes. “That’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Dozens, if not hundreds, of little papers stared up at him from the open box and he blew out a slow breath, pressing a kiss to the one in his hand. He hadn’t realized just how many notes he had written over the course of their time together, and he skimmed his fingers through the rest before carefully putting the ones he had taken back in and closing the lid. The box fit into the drawer with ease and he leaned his head on the wood for a second to slow his heartbeat.
The nightstand moved the last few inches once the rest of the clutter was strewn across the floor and Remus quickly vacuumed the dust elephants before dumping it all back in. As much as he itched to throw some of it out—the empty wrappers and pen caps didn’t seem to have a use—he was afraid he’d accidentally toss an important memento. Hell, the note box had looked like a pile of confetti at first.
The front door opened just as he began lugging the vacuum cleaner downstairs. “Re, I’m home!” Sirius called, then broke into a bright smile when Remus appeared in the stairwell. He was soaked in sweat and Hattie was breathing hard; she collapsed on her bed with a dramatic groan after drinking a few mouthfuls of water, too exhausted to do more than thump her tail on the floor.
“Heya, handsome.” Remus’ heart picked up its pace again. You kept all my notes, it shrieked happily, doing its best to break right out of his chest with affection.
Sirius tilted his head when he saw the vacuum and the dust on Remus’ pants. “Were you cleaning?”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to get under the bed for a while, and I didn’t have anything else to do.” He shrugged. “You’re welcome to do it next time, if you like.”
“I’ll do the dishes to make up for it,” Sirius said as he leaned in for a kiss.
“No, you won’t.”
“No, I won’t. But I will dust the bookshelves and wipe down the kitchen.” They both laughed and Remus stood on his tiptoes for a second kiss, sliding his teeth over Sirius’ lower lip and drawing a noise of surprise from his mouth. “Hi. What was that for?”
“Love you.”
Sirius glanced down at himself, then raised an eyebrow. “…because I walked the dog? Or is it the sweat?”
“It’s definitely not the sweat,” Remus snorted, smacking his rear as he passed. “You can take yourself right upstairs with that. Where did you even go?”
“Around the neighborhood, then to the park. She grabbed my hat and we played keepaway for a bit.”
Remus hummed as he bent down to plug the vacuum into the wall socket. “How the hell did she—oh, ew!”
“What?” Sirius asked with mock-innocence as he lifted Remus higher off the ground and tucked his gross, sweaty face into his neck. “You don’t want cuddles?”
“You are literally dripping! Get the fuck off,” Remus said around his laughter, swatting at his shoulder when Sirius started swinging him back and forth slightly. “Sweat monster.”
“C’est vrai.” Sirius kissed the hinge of his jaw and set him down, then headed toward the stairs with a final grin. “Thank you for cleaning, mon loup.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Remus said, rolling his eyes playfully. A soon as he heard the bathroom door close, he let go of the vacuum and did a happy dance in the kitchen, much to Hattie’s amusement. He would have to remember to leave notes more often.
251 notes
·
View notes
Text
Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 301
youtube
Click on the video above to watch Episode 301 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.
Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.
The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.
Announcement
We’re live. Ah, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to Episode 301 of Hump Day Hangouts, where we teach you some kung fu moves to get your rankings up there into other websites out there in the search engine. But that’s great. Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts. Today is the 19th of August and this is your weekly meeting for anything SEO and good stuff and marketing and everything that has to do with that related so welcome to that before we dive into some of the good stuff that we have for today, just gonna go through the list of the awesome people that we have here. Nicole, what’s up Marco? How are you doing, man?
You see it. Now let me tell you about it.
That’s how it makes Groundhog Day. This is my life. I can’t help it. And as I always say, don’t hate the player. Hate the game, as I like this place.
Again, that’s it. If you don’t play the game as you should, then maybe you should start looking in the right place. When you’re starting out in the right place Hump Day Hangout, so here we go. But you go get some.
Let’s go. What’s up, Chris? How are you doing, man? Yeah, like I’m looking jealous over the marketplace. I don’t know. Like we had rained the last day. So like, not too excited to your brother. Well, everything else is good. And actually, I’m a little bit excited, but I cannot talk too much about it. Because I’ve been working on something for POFU.
But I think you mentioned a couple of things about that later. Yeah, for sure. For sure. What’s up, Bradley? How are you doing, man? Good. I’m good. I’m just trying to do what Adam usually does and drop these links on to the chatbox, but other than I’m good, glad to be here. Yeah, by the way, we’re missing a core, a core member of
The team in fact we’re not able to function we’re just basically barely scraping by which is because he’s like out there running the woods doing his stuff. So what’s up, Adam? So what’s up everybody? Welcome to Episode 301.
And we’re going to be diving into question soon but before we go there a couple of things number one people live is coming in hot, he’s going to be awesome. I’m really excited about getting that well on our way is going to be our third installment or the third slot live event although this one’s not going to be in person now which guy that said this is not live so he’s supposed to live online but if you want to go and get your virtual ticket, your POFU Live ticket to be attending to POFU Live, go to pofulive.com. It’s an event that we put every single year for the past three years, and it’s been pretty awesome. People are getting a lot of stuff usually stuff that we don’t share anywhere else. Just info for live. So go there.
Go grab your ticket, we’re going to be doing some fun stuff for VIP ticket holders and all of that good stuff. So go to pofulive.com. And I also believe that we have some sell happening right now. And mgyb. And we guys, yeah, and it’s in celebration of national potato day. Hey, go there.
So I dropped the coupon code in the chatbox below. But it’s if you go to mgyb.co is 25% off of our ys drive stacks for the next I guess three days and the coupon code is potato, my rankings all one word, potato, my rankings, all one word as the coupon code gets you 25% off of our ys drive stacks. There you go. You’re gonna use me, excuse me the SEO shield, which includes a drive stack but it’s the SEO shield orders. That’s what it’s for. There you go. Awesome. And by the way, Michael does
People need to buy right away as they can buy right now. And they need to submit the order right now how How’s that? How’s that working? They have a window so that they can submit basically, you know if somebody is watching this tomorrow, and they want to take advantage of the offer, but they don’t probably didn’t have data of their clients right away, what do you suggest?
Well, we understand that we understand that people can sometimes get the information right away. We understand that people need time, right? For whatever reason it is, or maybe they just want to take advantage of the coupons. Well, that’s fine. They can go ahead, buy, and then submit the information later. Now the problem is if you wait too long if you wait past 30 days, what we’re going to do is we’re simply going to refund you because we can’t let it sit there 5678 months until whatever it is that you decide to do.
So get it, hold on to it go ahead and take advantage of the offer. So that the coupon doesn’t expire, right because once it does, we can’t give you the offer.
Then get gather the information. That’s fine. Don’t wait more than 30 days because then we will refund you no question. It gets done on our we know that if you don’t submit your information within 30 days, you’re likely not to do it. And we’ll have to refund you anyway. So we might as well get rid of the problem to start with. Gotcha. So people can buy today get get get an advantage, take advantage of the coupon. And then you said, you know, submit the details over the next 30 days, basically. That’s awesome. All right. Cool. So and by the way, if you have more SEO needs, if you have more delivery needs, you know, because you shouldn’t be doing the grunt work, let us do it for you go to mgyb.co we have that sale going on. But there’s a lot of good stuff there. A lot of stuff that allegedly doesn’t work. But you know, the proof is in the pudding. We have a bunch of case studies there and more coming. So that’s going to be pretty awesome as well.
Yep. Anything that you guys want to add on? Let’s do this. Let’s do it. Actually, we ran over last week by like, almost 10 minutes because I just lost track of time. So you guys are gonna crack the whip on me today. I tight I’ve got an appointment actually have to get to so. Alright, uh, let me grab the screen.
All right, sweet.
Do you guys see my screen? Okay. Yeah. All right, we’re gonna start with
Is It Safe To Convert Gsites To Its New Format?
Igor. Hey Brad. The NSM team just got an email about Google changing the old g sites. Is it safe to follow to convert them to the new g site? I have been? I’ve done about a dozen myself this week. Seriously, I haven’t even had VA is doing it. I’ve just because I’ve been tightening up projects and stuff. And so I’ve just gone in and click the button and made sure everything came out. Okay, Mark, I know you had some comments about that. We chatted about this yesterday. Yeah, Google has been really nice about it. They giving us everything we need. They’re just moving everything over for us all you have to just click yes it. I mean, how good is that doesn’t get any better than that. Now, you will
Hang on a second, well people do have to be careful about is that it doesn’t turn into a 302. So please monitor your URLs, right use a redirect checker every once in a while to see what it is that Google is doing it because they get sneaky. Remember what they did with geo GL? Yeah, it was a 301. Then without any warning, it turned into a 302. Then they offer Firebase, which was a three or two that you had to turn into a 301. gotta be really careful. Google is really sneaky, right? Do they change other URLs from 301 to three or two from
what do you call it? From a meta refresh, to attend meta refresh, where then it’s useless. So the only thing that I tell people is you got to be really careful. Keep track of your URLs, keep checking them from time to time. And of course, don’t you do it your time should be way more valuable than to be inserting the URLs into a checker to see if it’s a 301 or three or two, you should have a VA, doing all this menial work so you can concentrate on your business, growing your business, making more money.
That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Yeah, what I was gonna say was a couple of things, one you brought up. Gotta be careful with Google because they’re tricky about how they’ll change stuff and make them three Oh, twos without even knowing. Yep, for example, what the old g sites I don’t know, I haven’t even checked it on the new one yet. With you know, once it’s been converted to the new ones, but I can’t imagine it would have changed. But if you left the trailing slash off of the end of the URL, then if you checked it in a redirect checker, it would throw to you the final URL with the trailing slash at the end of it. So like, if you’re looking at a home page of the G site, and you were building links to the URL without the trailing slash, then you were actually getting a 302 redirect to the home page, which I thought was crazy.
But second of all, the new g sites are a lot like page builders are now so they’re like, you know, modular and like kind of like a block editor. And there it just is a lot more intuitive than the old funky g sites. And I don’t know why I’ve wanted them for so long because it’s actually a pretty good editor now and it’s a good interface. So,
How Many Videos Are Needed For A YouTube Silo To Be Effective?
okay, let’s see, I got lost my track where I was let me try this again must have been from last week. Okay, so the next question was from when building YouTube silos? How many videos should be in a silo to be impactful to move the needle? I know it depends on the competition. But what should you start with five 750? And should we focus on building more in the silo or more silos? And if more silos, how many in the silo?
I got a little bit of a headache from that question.
It just depends on it depends on you know, how competitive the keyword is that you’re trying to rank for. So whatever your top-level keyword is the top of silo keyword that you’re trying to rank for. That’s really going to be what determines how much depth you should add to it, like how many videos essentially how many other keywords, variations, longer tail versions, that sort of thing, are you going to actually target within that particular silo? It’s just like doing it on your website, right? It’s the same principle. It’s the
How much is it going to take? I can’t tell you that because I don’t know what keyword is that you’re targeting. I don’t know what the competition looks like. It’s going to take as many as it takes. So really just it’s going to it’s very much like doing a silo on your website. That’s why we talk about theme mirroring, and all that kind of stuff because it’s, it’s all the same. Creating a YouTube silo is the exact same structure. And the mat, whether or not it ranks is going to depend on you know, a lot of factors, not just the silo structure itself, but having additional keywords in there more depth to that silo adds builds more relevancy, more topical relevancy, and there are more linking opportunities from within that silo as well. So it kind of helps to power up the entire silo, the whole playlist, if you’re adding more videos that are relevant. Does that make sense?
Anybody want to comment on that before I go to the second part of that, yeah, what you start with is more than one right? Absolutely.
And then it’s just how far you need to go to get to where you want to be. Period.
Yep. So how many are going to take as many as it takes? I was like a lot. We used to get questions all the time about syndication networks, how many posts Do you think it’s going to take for me to rank for whatever keyword now, we could always have the same answer as many as it takes to take. Yeah. So the next one is it should be focused on building more in the silo or more silos and more silos. Now, remember, guys, keep it simple. You know, you can take a top-level silo keyword, and you can create a bunch of subcategories from closely very closely related keywords that are, you know, longer tailed versions are the next level down, so to speak of that main keyword, but is it necessary to do so? That’s the point-like, again, I use this example more recently, uh, you know, I’m pretty much all I’m doing now is Tree Service stuff for SEO and, and lead generation and that kind of stuff. And for the longest time, I’ve always built a simple silo structure at least for several years.
I used to do complex silos. But I just got over doing that because most local, most local type businesses don’t need that. But and I don’t know that you’re targeting local, but I’m just using this as an example.
I used to always silo with the simple site for the last few years with simple silo structure for Tree Service stuff, Tree Service being the primary keyword. So essentially the homepage, but then the silo structure would be tree trimming would be one silo. Another one that would be tree removal. And then usually a third one, which would be additional services or arborist tree services, if it was a certified arborist on the, for the contractor that the site was for. And I saw I’d have three silos on the site, basically. But what I found was Google actually really considers tree trimming, Tree Removal tree cutting Tree Service, they’re all synonyms. So I could probably and I haven’t tested it just yet. I’ve got a couple of projects and I’m waiting on some infrastructure to be built and then I’m going to be testing that. But I could probably go with just one silo essentially tree services. And you because all that content is the same, however, I could create like, essentially subcategories, which would have been the silos of what I’ve already been what I’ve been doing right. So tree removal, tree trimming, perhaps arborist services, but if why overcomplicate things, why make the build more complex? Why make the content, you know, the interlinking between pieces of content, everything more complex than it needs to be, if I could just have a flat site with one silo tree services, and just have all the content, you know, properly structured and get the same results? Why would I go through all of that and so that my answer to you about the YouTube stuff is the same thing? I would rather focus on one silo and add more depth to it and have that whole silo be a lot more powerful than have a whole bunch of different silos with the month that is very, very specific or it’s kind of hard to get, you know, additional supporting it Now if you’ve got the main category with a bunch of different subcategories and it’s logical to do so. Then I would add additional you know, add create additional playlist and don’t forget, you can have one video and more than one playlist, so I mean, it
If you have a kind of like a parent category silo, the video can be in that playlist. But then you could also have like subcategory silos or playlists that want. You know, the video can also be in one of those, if that makes sense. So, but just don’t overcomplicate things is my point, especially when it comes to YouTube? It’s really unnecessary. Does anybody want to comment on that?
I totally agree.
Okay. Very good. And I think a lot of a lot of times we try, we try to be smart as SEOs and try to you know, well, if I get really creative with my silo structures, I can get better results and it just ends up being a lot of unnecessary work. So just keep that in mind.
How Do You Set Up A Sales Tax In A WooCommerce Site?
Jason says, Hey, guys, I’m working on an e-commerce site and I hearing rumors that I need to set up sales tax for every state in the U.S. if we sell something. Do you guys know how this would work with WooCommerce? I do not because I don’t do anything eCommerce related. Perhaps Marco might.
Do you know anything about WooCommerce being in taxes and stuff?
I don’t know, like, I don’t know how you either,
like I do, I have worked on WooCommerce websites, but that’s not the part of my job that I do.
The part of what I do on that is I get traffic, the owner is kind of like the one in charge of all that guy charges, taxes and I know, on the land, like each state has separate rules, right? for buying and selling land and how much is is due at the closing. But that all gets done, it gets taken out of the total when you close the deal. It’s like you never see it because it’s taken out. So like how much or whether each state is responsible, whether you’re responsible for collecting taxes, what you need to do is go and contact the tax attorney and have them tell you what it is that you’re responsible for, whether it’s each state, your state, what the rules are in each state because only a tax attorney would be the one to answer that question properly. I’m not a tax attorney. I’m not a tax expert by any means.
So try that. I can’t really help with that. Yeah, neither can I just don’t do any sort of e-commerce stuff. So I couldn’t help with that either. Sorry. Jason. Looks like Jason says he just joined the mastermind. That’s awesome. So he says that, by the way, welcome, Jason. He says I have five websites that I need to do this syndication networks with, I need to do two of them as soon as possible. Well, I’ll tell you what, as a mastermind member, you do get benefits, you know, so contact support, make about mgyb.co. So go to [email protected] after you’ve placed your orders, and, you know, mentioned that your new mastermind members and see if you can get two of them expedited, I don’t know that we typically do that but I know mastermind members do get benefits. So Marco’s, that’s something that we can do is try to get it pushed a little bit.
Ah, we have other mastermind members. Also order. So how can we push everything? Um, yeah, that’s why I was asking. I said if we can do something we’ll try to but I don’t know that we can but what do you think? I mean if it’s just syndication if it’s just a brand that networks you know, they get pushed out and they’ll get delivered as soon as they’re done that’s how Jason yeah absolutely order right away. But we are improving the system. We’re making everything better we’re making things better right we’re training our team we’re trying to make things more fluid speedier so it’s not as if we’re just sitting there and not make trying to make things better we are
are you go and I know you guys have been working hard on streamlining stuff and all that so it will get better Pablo says Hey guys, I’m still confused with correct structure for city pages post question. One from for now top of silo on my money site is a broad category without local modifiers. If I need to cover two or more counties, I need to make each county like a separate silo or county can go after a broad topic and link back to the main silo topic example. This is one of those questions site slash Miami or slight slash appraiser Miami based on this question, how would posting look like okay?
Should You Make A Separate Silo For County And Connect It To The Main Silo?
Pavlo, I can tell you this you know I cover how I do how I reconcile those odd issues that I’ve talked about this many times and I cover this extensively in the mastermind I can’t do it here. I can give you a very high overview like a conceptual overview of it, but I can’t get into the nitty-gritty because it’s something that I only cover in our mastermind, but I use tags for creating location-based silos in a WordPress website. Okay, so I use the category structure for my topical silos. But then I use tags in a very specific way to create my location-based silos so that there are no conflicts with URLs are trying to share location-based stuff categories across topical silos or vice versa topical silos across location-based categories. Does that make sense? I don’t know if that makes sense or not. But I think you’re talking about the oddities that occur with the URL conflicts that occur when you try to use the same subcategory across multiple categories because it’s going to automatically append like a dash two dash three for each time you duplicate that subcategory into another category. WordPress is gonna automatically append to it like a dash two dash three because it has to have another permalink. And if that’s what you’re talking about, I learned to three years ago, probably three years ago now to build silo structure for location-based silos using tags and it’s a specific hierarchy, the way that I stack those tags and everything else. That’s as far as I can tell you right now.
The other way to do it was if you were going to if because remember if you’re talking about complex silo structure, which you are in this case, right? Because you’ve got, you know, topical silos and then you want to go sub silo from that, right? So subcategories that you want to add additional content pages to or even posts at that level. Right that that can create some issues. That’s why I recommend if you, if you can get away with just doing a simple silo, then and using just the post name, permalink structure, then you can stack you know, you can cross things, subcategories and other categories and things where the URL isn’t going to be displayed and it shows as just domain comm slash the post slug at that level, and that’s okay. But again, so So I mean, if you can get away with that, then that’s the way that I would do it. But again, I can’t talk specific can’t show you the structure, how to do tag-based location silos or location silos using tags here on Hump Day Hangouts. I couldn’t talk about it the mastermind though, but if you understand tags and how to use tag pages in WordPress, you ought to be able to figure it out as my point. So you want to comment on that at all, more.
The only comment that I’m going to make is that there are things that we reserved for our paid groups only. And it’s not fair for us to give it away here in a free group. If people are paying for it, people are paying for all this information. So you people who are here free, although we try to answer as much as possible, you do have to understand is that there are some things that we can’t answer, but we can answer them in the paid groups. That’s just the way it is. It’s the way we’ve always done it. We have given people what nearly six years of free information, actionable information, people have built businesses from the information we give away for free. So imagine what we give away in the free groups.
Yeah, the paid group you mean, um, but yeah. So probably just to get back to your URL question here. See, what I was talking about here is if you take a look at how you’ve got URL one versus URL to my point is if you’ve got like appraiser is your is like one of your services and if appraiser I don’t know what your Real Estate or what, but let’s just say it real estate. And so one of your categories is an appraiser and maybe one of them is home inspections, right?
Or Yeah, something like that, right, let’s just say appraiser and inspectors, let’s just use that just to show two different service categories. If you were to try to duplicate Miami, originally, if you set it up as a subcategory, as an appraiser, then if you tried to create Miami subcategory in the inspectors’ category, or home inspector category, or home inspections, category, whatever, however you name it, then you would end up having that weird URL structure. That said, it doesn’t really matter if you’re using the post name permalink structure because you don’t see it unless you’re looking at source code anyways. So it’s not a big deal. But again, it creates some conflicts that I just don’t like to try to live with when I’m building the site. It’s not really clear to me that way. That’s why I like to use tags. I don’t know if that was specifically a question, but that’s the way I interpreted it. So next is he says based on this, how should what should posting look like?
For each county, it should be the same topic or keyword, but content should be rewritten, including local modifiers. Yeah, I mean, that’s what I do. That’s why I have my blogger actually create. When we’re doing keyword plus location-specific content, my blogger just creates or curates a blog post that is targeting something very closely related to that topic. It doesn’t always necessarily have to be 100% then but she has my I have one blogger that handles all of this stuff for me now because she’s really good at it. She will curate top you know, stories that are topically relevant as well as something about the local area that you know, for the location modifier that we’re targeting. And then there will be a paragraph at the bottom that has a strong call to action and it has you know, a strong mention of the product or service or the services that would pertain to what the theme of the post was about. So my point is like, for example, in the tree clients I have don’t do landscaping work. However, landscaping is closely related to Tree Service stuff. Right. And so because of that, a lot of times there will be blog posts that are written about Lance a yard or keeping their somebody’s resident, you know, homes, the landscape beautiful or whatever. And then there will be a paragraph at the bottom about, you know, tree services, tree trimming, tree pruning, whatever that will kind of tie that concept to the landscaping, right? And then we just optimize the SEO title for it. And then use the tag-based silos and all of that, and it’s it works really, really well, especially when you use the SEO shield and the G site and you learn how to push keyword relevancy through backlink profile to your G site. So that’s what I do.
And so all of the content is unique because all of the blog posts each blog post is unique because there’s new newly curated content from my blogger, which is why I like it because it’s all it’s not. You know, one of the problems that I’m sure you are aware of this Pablo is is when you only have you know, a few seconds services? How do you keep rewriting about that same service over and over and over again, right, it gets to be very difficult to do so. And that’s why I kind of got away from trying to do it that way. And I just let my blogger kind of run away with it and it creates over time, it might take a little bit more time to get the traction that I like. But once you do, you have this kind of broad width of topical relevancy to that to what your primary services are, if that makes sense. So that’s what I do if you don’t have that ability yet for, you know, for curating posts and that kind of stuff, then you can just rewrite stuff I’ve talked about having like one article written about tree removal, in my case, right. And then having that rewritten by five different, you know, as a rewrite project, as opposed to a new writing project, it’s a lot less expensive, and now I’ve got six versions of the original article. And so that’s something you could use if you’re going to be reproducing keyword plus location across multiple locations. Does that make sense? I don’t know if that was clear or not. Do you have any other tricks for that?
No. Okay.
All right. And the second part of that I can’t answer because that question went way too long. Anyway, so we’re going to move on if we have time, we’ll come back to it.
How Do You Boost A Blog Subdomain?
Bobby, Ricky Bobby says, we have a client that uses a subdomain for their blog, their main site gets decent traffic 50,000 per month. But the blog that is blogged out example gets less than 1000 per month. Okay, they are not going to change it to a subfolder anytime soon. I’ve recommended it obviously, any advice on what to do to boost the blog subdomain. They have a few dozen articles on there. And we were starting to work on the content consistency going forward. Now that we have our keyword research and recommendations thanks to mgyb.
My suggestion would be just to start using the subdomain a lot more right. Your syndication network should be attached to it. You should be blogging consistently. And that’s essentially what I was just talking about in my previous reply or response to Pavlo’s question.
About overtime, just that the blog will start to gain more traction. And you’ll see in Search Console, especially as you publish more content, your total impression number will start to go way, way up. Because you’ll start being recognized by Google for a lot more keyword combinations. So different types of search queries will give your site impressions. And that’s actually a really good content strategy to go in the Search Console, and identify keywords that are relevant, like search queries that triggered an impression for your blog, find those queries that are relevant, that aren’t ranking well yet, but are that are close, like, for example, maybe their position is, you know, somewhere between 11 and 20? Well, those are good keywords than to start optimizing for producing more content for linking back to the original piece of content, that kind of stuff to help try to boost those to page one so that you start getting more traffic. My point is, you know, adding more content to the blog is would be my first step. And then you could always do things like, you know, paid traffic to some of the posts, and then do remarketing so that you can always be bringing people back, which will probably get more visits to the blog, even repeat visits, which is really, really good for SEO also. So those would be my two recommendations from you.
Yeah, that’s the SEO shield, SEO Power shield. It’s all part of the system. So it’s not just getting the syndication properties. It’s not just logging. It’s not just syndicating your content. It’s powering up your shield is powering up your right your @ID. It’s powering up everything that has to do with your entity. It has to do with getting your schema out there. It has to do with whatever you need to do to make the content right. So link building comes into play so embeds come into play. More link building more embeds. Press releases, link building to press release a stack the press releases if you’re local, posting, stalking your posts link building into your posts, local images, guys.
We’ve created a whole entire system for you to do this. We just can’t give you the pieces here for free.
I mean, we got to go back to that. People. Yeah, you want the system. It’s in the paid groups. It’s in Semantic Mastery and the heavy hitter, join Semantic Mastery. And you get a really good price for joining heavy hitter. But I like we can’t give you everything we’d love to. But then there would be no Semantic Mastery, if we gave everything away for free, right, the people who have to sit and think and do all of these things have to be able to make some kind of living, right, some kind of money, get rewarded for all the effort that we put into doing all of this.
So having said that, it’s the system ads, ads work perfectly well. If you do them the way that we say do. Don’t just go out and run any kind of ads that may or may not work. Use the system that we’ve set up to make the ads work. Use the system which we’ve created the
We make everything available in mgyb.co. But if you get it without really understanding what it is that you’re doing, then you’re actually doing yourself more harm than good, because you’re leaving so much power on the table, so much power that you could be using.
And that’s a good point, you know, press releases. I’ve shown this in our Facebook group, the SEO tutorials semantic mastery Facebook group. Somebody was asking a question about press releases. Well, it was more of a comment about how they read some article on some blog about our press releases doesn’t work. And so they were just relaying that information. And there was started to the discussion, a thread. And one of the arguments that the person that posted the question or the statement really was stating was, well, you guys are all saying they work, but I want to see proof. Right. And so I just took a screenshot of Google Analytics of just one project that I’m working on, that shows referral traffic. And it showed press advantage, right, which is the press release releases that we primarily use. And it showed for a 30 day period, I think was 287 or 267 visits directly from press advantage. So don’t discredit that either, like again. And that’s all part of what we teach is like the same content strategy. So in your blog, that’s one of the best things one of the strategies that I use, consistently, almost exclusively now is we publish blog posts for clients. And as soon as a blog post is published, not always a one to one ratio, depending on what their budget is, but we will publish a press release to promote the blog post. So every time a new blog post gets published, we have a press release that links back to the blog post. So we’re driving traffic from press advantage domain as well as a lot of you know, other news-type sites when it does get traffic press advantage tends to drive the domain itself tends to drive quite a bit of traffic, but that sends traffic to that newly public blog posts plus it builds a bunch of links to that newly built, newly published blog post. So it’s really, really good for building up the SEO value of your blog as well as driving traffic to it, which is what your original question was, is how to get more traffic to the blog. So that’s another great part of this strategy that we teach. Yep. So it was a great question.
Is It Harder To Rank Gdocs Than A Gsite?
Babies up with a list of questions just broken up this time a little bit. So maybe you’re getting better. Hey, guys, if I want to rank some Google property only, say a G doc and a G site? Is it harder to rank g docs than a G site? I have. I mean, for I guess I haven’t really set up any specific tests for that. But I tend to just focus on the G site because it has a lot more functionality than a G doc. I don’t know if one is harder to rank than the other what say you, Marco
would rank better.
So let me see that again. If I want to write some Google property on these, the G site because it is going to get all the power from the embeds the duck might rank faster originally. I like at first, but then the G site for sure will take over. Yeah, no, yeah. But that’ll convert better, won’t it? The G site will convert the dot some of the dots will rank right away. But the Gsite over time, it’s so powerful. And you still get leads from that Virginia. Right? Yeah, he’s still occasionally. Yeah. So I mean, the proof is in the pudding.
Is It Faster To Rank Google Properties Than Building A Shield To A Non-Google Property?
Is it faster to rank Google properties than building a shield on a non-Google property? Of course, it is. It is. I mean, it’s crazy. Because you get well you can just here’s the thing, even if you’re ranked trying to rank a non-Google property like so you got a self-hosted website is your main money site. You can still do all the same things to the SEO shield. That and that you would if you made the Google site, your primary money website.
It doesn’t really matter that because that’s the whole point of the SEO show, right? It’s to create a shield around your money site. So all the things that you’re going to do to that g site, if the G site was your primary money site, which will rank very quickly, you can still do all of that to the G site as part of your SEO shield when you have a self-hosted money site. So a non-Google property money site, because you’re not going to actually touch your non-Google property money site. with anything other than the SEO shield, you’re doing all your nastiness out to the actual SEO shield. So my point is, why not have both unless it’s just you don’t want to go through the trouble of setting up a self-hosted website and all that other kind of stuff, which I understand that so for example, for some lead gen assets, there’s no reason for to set up WordPress stuff if you’re just doing like a single location, lead gen assets and you’re going to do a bunch of them. You can get away with 100% with just GMB assets and the SEO shield assets and you can use the G site as your primary money site and the GMB website the two of those countries if combined, and you’ll do incredibly well that way. So again, but if you’re going to be building a brand, there’s in my opinion is no reason not to create a money site because you can still rank the G site before the money site ever ranks and still get the benefit of it. But you’re building that brand back to a domain that you have more control over. That’s, that’s my take on it. What do you think?
You know, it’s still effective, Google will say no.
But we see all these lawsuits as we see all of these things where Google prefer Google, over anything else. And we’ve proven it’s not something that we’re just saying. And it’s not just us giving you theory and concepts and all of these ideas that are nothing. We’re giving you facts. We’re giving you something that we actually showed on a webinar, how Google trusts itself above anything else, and because it trusts itself over anything else, it passes PageRank to itself, and it ranks its properties over anybody else’s. We see this time.
And again. So it stands to reason that if you build up your Google ecosystem, it’s why we’re in there in the first place. The whole idea to start with was Dr. Gary and I said, Google prefers itself over anything else. And we went from there, we set up, let that’s the scientific method. You start out you have a hypothesis, it’s a sentence, then you say that you ask a question. Does Google really prefer itself and why? And then you go out to prove it. And we did. And not only did we prove it, but we also showed it live. It’s not as if we just go we don’t we don’t hide that we showed it. How it is that Google prefers itself over anything else. So guys, understanding this, why are you not taking all of that power? and using it use Google was my original concept and idea, use Google to rank in Google?
But at least to be said,
How Do You Determine What Link Buiding Campaign To Use And Determine The Competition?
there you go. Next question. Say you are getting into a new niche. How do you determine the link building? We should use it? What is low, medium, hard competition? Which tool? Do you determine the competition?
Well, I mean, for me, I use a number of different tools. So it really doesn’t matter as I use for bigger projects. Now I’m using a digital marketer toolbox which is network empires towards a bit expensive, but you can also use stuff like sem rush and things. But honestly, what I do just to be what I do is I figure out what I how much relevancy I need to create with you on page right first, that’s, that’s always what I do like to do, am I going to need a lot of content Am I going to need to have proper, you know, how much content do I think I’m going to need so I always start with on-page but once I figure out what my plan is what I think is going to meet or exceed or meet and exceed whatever the competitors are in a particular space, then I set out to build that as far as the link building and everything. I just go by with it.
Exactly what you know we always talk about here, which is I do a ton of content marketing from the site through the blog to a syndication network, total SEO shield built around everything, I do a lot of press releases, which always link back through the blog posts mainly back to the back to the site. So that’s where I get most of my link building done and besides link building to the directly to the SEO shield through MGYB. Now, for most projects that I’ll start with a big link building package, so you know, the competitive What is it the Nitro I guess we call it the Nitro kit or the Nitro pack, link building just to kind of seed everything right off the bat, but then I just get into a regular schedule of doing either embed or link building or embeds plus link building. And now and I usually go with just depending on how competitive it is most of the local stuff, I mean, isn’t super competitive. So I’ll usually go with the starter kit, link building package or embed, you know, embeds plus link building to the embeds and I’ll just do that on you know, monthly or sometimes even by me
Monthly schedule depending on whether, you know if I’m ranking really well or where I want to be, then I really there’s no reason to just keep hammering away at it except for maintenance link building, which is, you know like I said, might be once every six weeks or every two months, or something like that, but I just how many links are going to take as many as it takes, right?
So it’s just it’s about the initial setup and everything and waiting for that Google dance to stop, which sometimes goes on a lot longer. And I think that’s the entity established. Go and Marco can talk on this speak to this, but I think it’s Google trying to establish or understand the entity itself when you first set it up because I got a treat care project that I’ve been working on and sharing in the mastermind. That’s just taken a long, long time for me to establish the brand name, like, you know, really solid but I think I’m finally there and with that particular thing, but what I’m saying is once you start getting past that, and it took shit like 10 weeks, it’s been dancing a lot, but I’ve also been noticing really aggressive with the content marketing and link building through press releases and everything. So I think that’s kind of along the Google dance. My point is, once you get past the initial Google dance, then it’s a matter of just monitoring Can I continually content market or do content marketing, excuse me, so publishing content, but then it’s just a matter of link building and embed, to try to get the desired result that you want. I can’t tell you which levels to use, because I just told you my plan, which is just I come out swinging hard, you know, come out with a lot right up front, just to initially seed the whole ecosystem that I’ve built. And then from there, it’s just more of an ongoing the tortoise, the tortoise wins the race type thing where I just constantly publishing new content and constantly powering up the SEO shield in strategic locations to get the desired result. What do you say, Marco?
Ah, man, and
yeah, it’s an excellent question. But that’s, that’s the
How It is, isn’t it?
I’m not sure how much to add to that. Okay. Good enough. So we got another Marco on he says, Hey, I’ll ask Will you guys be offering a coupon on national pasta day? Maybe lots of people will be looking forward to that, too. If we did it for potato day, we’ll probably do for pasta day as well.
That’s another reason another excuse to send an email right?
out of that gate. Can you hang on a second? Because just to go back to that, on how to define the competition, or how do you know, I use Jeffrey Smith’s method. I look at competing pages. And his it’s pretty accurate. When you look that up in Google, right? When you Google it and you look at the results, that’s usually a pretty good indication of what you’re up against. So I mean, if you don’t have it, I suggest that you go for the ultimate SEO Bootcamp, the best on-page training that there is I don’t care who says what, I agree, he rocks it. He kills it.
And I’m doing a lot of AdWords or Google Ad stuff now to a lot actually. And that’s something else that I determine what my SEO competition is not always the case. But in the local niches that I’m in, it’s, it’s pretty accurate. If my cost per click for a particular keyword is quite high, like and it changes by location to right, then I know that that keyword is probably going to be a lot more competitive SEO wise as well. And I think that’s only logical. You know, and I don’t know that that’s universal across the board for all keywords. Some see, maybe cost per click is very, very high. But the SEO isn’t so competitive, I don’t know. I’m just saying like for Tree Service stuff, which is, again, primarily almost all that I’m doing now. If I’m in an area, like for example, I’ve got some lead gen stuff going on and like Oklahoma City, for example, for Tree Service stuff and then others, and Fairfax, Virginia, Fairfax, Virginia, I might pay $35 per click for tree removal near me, but I might only pay $12 in Oklahoma City. So my point is like the keywords it doesn’t necessarily mean that the SEO is going to be you know, three times harder in Fairfax, Virginia as it would Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, it just typically means that the higher the cost per click, what I found is the more people that are bidding on those keywords are also paying for SEO. So it typically means you’re dealing with more competition and I and again, I don’t know that that’s universal across the board, but I found that to be the case for the niches that I’m in
MGYB Support Question
Okay, next is Nigel what’s up. Nigel he says hey gents, you were the best I wanted to give you money but now I’m about to be potato paid. That said I need help to get an order in so I can over-deliver for a new client just need some guidance on getting this order correct. Let me know your best route to do this. Right. Okay, so he must be this is it down here. I’ll come back to Ricky’s comment here in a moment is literally timing is perfect with a discount. Thanks, Bradley. I will also be taking you up on the calendly booking we discussed weeks back, as I have been getting real referral interest from SEO for luxury real estate niche and believe the SEO shows 100%. But I feel that I need to use this first experience to document the onboarding process and get the solid testimonials from my referral client and then have them as an ambassador, which is already working for other services. Yeah, that’s fine. I do I made that offer to you, it still stands. So whenever if you’ve got the link, if not just pm me on Facebook, and I’ll give it to you again. Whatever guidance you can give me or who to speak will help. I also will send you a quick video explaining if that’s better. And just so you know, I did contact support first to ask and they told me to reply before I asked but didn’t hit reply or hear back excuse me email could have gone to spam or deemed such please let me know. Thanks, guys. Yeah, as I said, I don’t think we’re connected on Facebook. Just reach out to my pm.
And I’ll get something scheduled with you because I know we made that offer to a few months ago. Okay. And you’ve been around for a long time. So no problem. Thanks.
Ricky says not a question. But when people ask my boss, how many does it take to do X, he would say 10 to the 12th. That basically means 10 to the 12th power, which is a trillion. He used to tell us, it doesn’t matter how many it takes, when it works, you’ll know but be prepared to do as much as it takes. The only time that question is relevant is if you don’t believe in the strategy. If you know the strategy works, it doesn’t matter how many it takes. We’ll keep doing it until it works. that’s a great way that’s a much more extended version of as many as it takes, but I like it.
It’s pretty good. We should copy that somewhere.
Alright, so Marco says like I understand a little No, none of what you’re all talking about. But I think your free content can help and that your team seems pretty cool. Okay. Thanks, Marco. Appreciate that. Next, Ricky says to be clear, we won’t mind paying for the services.
What was he asking about? The National potato day, but I don’t know what it was.
Do you want I mean, we have training on the SEO shield, the SEO, the SEO shoulder the SEO power shield. I can’t remember the name of the website, Rob put that up for free. It doesn’t get any better than that you can join heavy hitter the free section, tons of resources in there man, tons of free resources for you guys. The free SEO group this you have tons of stuff feedback.
So you can go to a heavy hitter club slash SEO shield or just go to because he set up a redirect the SEO shield calm. And I’ll just put both of these on a notepad file so you can see them on screen.
The other one would be HTTP books, that’s too many.
And it was the SEO shield.com.
Okay, so if you got either one of those specifically Marco on who was asking the question, then you can download them or opt-in or whatever for SEO shield training, which will explain to you what it is why it works and not and you know where to get it and all that kind of stuff. Okay?
So those are our methods Oh, by the way, you can also go here I still didn’t get the damn solid training done because I had another project pop up in the past week that I had to attend to. But if you go to semantic mastery comm slash process, you can learn much more about these are the training videos that I did, specifically for the semantic mastery process, which is what the SEO shield is built around, and all the different components and why we do what we do doesn’t give you the how it gives you the way if you want to how I point you in the where to find out the how you know where to purchase the training products or join our mastermind, that kind of stuff to where you can get the how, or you can just go or we point you just to go get it done. It’s mgyb so that you can spend your time building your business and generating more revenue instead of doing the execution of these processes. That makes sense
So either any of these right here will help you to get a much better understanding of what it is that we’re talking about. Okay.
All right, we’re gonna keep moving.
Unknown Speaker 48:12
The blog subdomain site, should we do the shield that the blog? Should we do the shield to that blog subdomain or to the main domain? Well, depends on both right and the Brian period, right, which when you build that you build out the brand, the subdomain is a part of the brand. That’s right. But it’s separate that you can’t separate that. You just have to do it. Right. You have to connect one to the other. It’s right to get disconnected. Does that a disconnect? Is that a separation? Yeah, the parent. It has a bit has a child, the child has a subdomain that the child has a parent is the main domain.
Right? So again, your primary URL, in this case, I would make the root domain, but you would include the blog URL and the building right
Just like you would your syndication network properties, so that that’s also being included with all of your drive stack files that are being created your G site, everything you see your blog is going to be constantly linked to and you remember from your primary route, you’re going to have a link to your blog. So you’re going to be transferring power through that anyways, to back to your blog. But just remember, you’re probably my opinion, your primary domain, your root domain should be your primary asset for the SEO shield. But you include the blog subdomain URL in the additional URLs that you’re going to submit with the order like your syndication network properties, for example. Okay. So there you go.
How Would You Deal With A Competitor That Is Using A Location He Does Not Occupy?
Aaron says arrived late and needs some advice. One of my main competitors is using a location that he does not occupy the property sold last week and he was never located there. Is there something I should or could do about this? Thanks. Yeah, just out SEO and that’s what I would say. I mean, I know there are people that will tell you that Yeah, you can report that and all that kind of stuff. I don’t do that. I just think it’s better Karma I understand even if they’re spamming and they got you to know they’re winning just outperform them and that’s just I don’t do negative SEO I don’t report shit like that I just don’t do it. It’s up to you whether you want to you certainly can go that route I just don’t like to do it because you know what goes around comes around and I would hate for somebody to do that and I’ve had it done and I don’t like it so I wouldn’t want to do it to somebody else and that’s just my opinion. And your comment no you know you know I agree I out power That’s it. That’s it. That’s what we did with this guy. The new client that I took on exactly what we did. We just blasted him out of the waterman. Now we’re after first place for the keywords. He had the knowledge panel. No longer got the knowledge panel. That’s the type of thing you do. You don’t go negative. Just hit it harder.
Yeah.
Yeah, Austin says I’m gonna have a header club. If I join the mastermind. Is there a discount for either one? Yes. As far as well. Yeah.
If you’re in both there’s a discount, right Marco.
If you join the mastermind we will give you a steep discount for as long as you’re a mastermind member if you leave the mastermind then heavy hitter goes to regular price you can only have the discounted price and heavy hitter if you’re still in the mastermind.
There you go.
Austin dawn I’ve been trying to talk you into joining the mastermind for some time because I know you’re in the real estate industry as well. So
Jason says again Hi guys, I look forward to working with you all in the mastermind group I need to order the keywords in the shielded package as soon as possible and do it Jason quarter the damn thing and yeah if you got any questions Jason the mastermind you know you get a hell of a lot more access to us there’s no doubt and as we talked about I think I talked to you on the phone last week actually. Remember to use the question form and the mastermind you’ll know where it is because it’s in the mastermind. If not just post a question, I’ll send the link to you in the mastermind. But yeah, make sure you use that too because we’ll dig, you know, do deep dives and webinars for whatever it is that you want to discuss, have us look at as you know, analyze whatever it is you want to talk about. We do that stuff in the mastermind. So look forward to working with you as well. We’re almost out of time. We got a couple more.
What Value Do You See In A Set Of Twitter/Facebook Accounts That Retweets/Share Items Via IFTTT?
Next is Hey, fellas, what sort of value do you see and I set of Twitter Facebook accounts in the geographic area of my client that are used to be IFTTT to retweet share items coming from that client and probably other area businesses, so as not to look suspicious? Yeah, I mean, it may help. I don’t know, I just don’t go through all that trouble. It may.
I mean, I think social signals from real accounts where there’s a real activity that generates traffic, so click-throughs. Back to the target URL, not just these I don’t think just the sharing. I don’t know I haven’t done any testing on this. Like specific testing, social signals in several years now, many years now, probably five years. But traffic, referral traffic from social networks is very powerful for SEO. So if you had real people engaging with those profiles or pages or whatever it is that you’re trying to set up on social accounts, where there are real people engaging with that, even if it was automated on your end, but other people were engaging with the automated content, which can happen. And then they were actually clicking through and some of the posts that were being shared to those, you know, the links that were being shared and that kind of stuff that can have an absolute effect. There’s no question. I don’t know. And I may be wrong, but I don’t know that just social signals in and of themselves produce any results anymore towards SEO at all. But real active engaged accounts that those share URLs on those accounts will get clicks from real people. And that does help because it’s referral traffic. So I don’t know Do you have any different data than that, Marco?
No, no, I don’t.
So, it depends on what you’re doing then really, I mean, if you like, here’s an example where we were talking about David Nelson’s RSS masher technology, which can build these beautiful automated auto blog type sites that will start to generate real traffic because a lot of them are like new sites and we’ve got something that you know, we’re working with some somebody that we’re going to be bringing, perhaps bringing to you guys’ attention in the coming weeks or months. We’re starting to test with it now actually, but it’s something very similar. We’re RSS mashers that could complement it. But my point is creating like these traffic-generating sites that have relative route relevant content, either by topic or by location, that can be used to drive real traffic back to, you know, our own properties or own assets that we’re trying to rank or clients or whatever. And, you know, if you have built these sites that start to generate traffic and they start pushing clicks the nose that’s very valuable. So it’s the same thing with social media accounts, if you even if you automate it in some way, shape or form, as long as people are engaging with the content that is being generated by that profile or that page or that account, whatever, then I think there’s value to it. But it’s, you know, how much trouble going through to set all that up. That’s why I typically just don’t do it. Okay, okay. All right. So here’s the thing, Google said that it doesn’t take a look at social signals. Okay.
And this is where we have to separate the bullshit from us fact.
What are they really saying?
What they’re, it could be true that they don’t pay attention to the social signal itself, or a social signal, as whatever that concept could possibly mean. What Google pays attention to is a link because guess what, everything in Google the foundational principles in Google are links. Everything is built around makes the button cannot get the variables that it needs for the algorithms unless it travels. And traveling quotes unless it goes through a link from one server to another. That’s what’s happening. So let’s look at this the way that you’re supposed to look at it. Let’s look at this, as I always tell people, scientists, and what’s actually happening. Google is sending a signal from its server to another server through a link a hyperlink into an HTML hyperlink. It’s going through an IP, whatever it’s going through, it’s going to that server, and it’s looking for something specific. It could be that it’s going to as a social media property, whatever the hell it is, that is going to, it’s been coded to pick up this I call it a signal. Let’s call it donuts. It’s been coded to pick up donuts through those links. And it’s been coded to look at Brown donuts, white donuts, jelly, doughnuts, whatever chocolate-covered doughnuts, whatever you want to call it. All right.
And if it finds those, it brings them back and tells Google Hey, I thought, it fills in on the variables, hey, I found these. Now, let’s go back instead of donuts, let’s just call it, they looked at the LinkedIn, they saw a person, click on the link, the person clicked on the link that and they went to your website went to what Google’s Following this, they went to your website, and they filled out a contact form, you think that isn’t gonna trigger any part of Google at all? Do you think that’s not gonna matter?
Call it whatever you want, call it. Fuck Google, like I always say metadata will say they call it what you want. But Google is seeing that whole client transaction from beginning to end. And you really think that doesn’t make a difference when Google sees that transaction goes take place from beginning to end.
Looking at everything looking, especially on YouTube, and in Google ads, because we know that Google pays special attention to the people that they send you. Do you really believe that these don’t matter, call it what you want this I call it a social signal. call it anything you want. We know from our testing from everything we do from everything that we’ve been covering from all of our client work from all of our businesses, guys, you got to understand that we’re not just Semantic Mastery. Marco isn’t just mathematically I have businesses, I’ve other businesses that I run. I have clients that I work with, I have so many things that I’m into, I don’t know how I have time in the day to do them all. But this is Semantic Mastery, just a small part of what I do. But everything that we show in Semantic Mastery everything that we give, you have to hang out, heavy hitter club, the free SEO group, and Facebook, every bit of information that we share has been tested because I’m not gonna risk my businesses. I am not going to risk my client’s businesses. On theory. We go we set up the theory we formally the hypothesis, we ask the question, we go out and use the scientific method. It’s very simple. And then we print back the information that we said, we know that Google is tracking that person. Why in the world would there be a pixel? Otherwise?
Sweet?
Alright, so last is not really well, I guess it is a question, Aaron’s comes back is replying to his previous comment about a competitor, not trying to be whiny. But when people are deceptive, it makes it bad for all of us if a business doesn’t have a real address, shouldn’t they be sad? Yeah, no, I agree, Aaron. And here’s the thing. If you’re talking about a storefront type of business that is using a fake address, then I would, I mean, maybe I’m wrong here. But I would think that it would get reported by a pissed off customer who went to Google Maps to try to go to the storefront business, and they go to a building that’s empty if that makes sense. So I’ve always talked about if you’re going to do spam Google Maps listings that you should only be doing surface area just type or excuse me, surface area business type of Google Maps listings, because, you know, like a contractor, plumber that goes to other people’s, you know, to people’s homes or buildings, or offices or whatever to do plumbing work, they can hide their address. So nobody’s gonna is clicking driving directions. So I don’t know, Aaron, if it’s if you’re talking about a service area type of business where customers should be going to the location, then I would expect it to be terminated rather quickly because people cussed pissed off, customers would report it, unless it’s one of those odd situations where it can be a service area business, and a local business or storefront business. And then if that’s the case, where primarily that’s a store, if it’s a service area business, then that you know, might be able to get away with it. So I don’t know again, I just still don’t do it. I still don’t report other listings. I don’t negative SEO. I just don’t do it. Again. It’s a karma thing and I just don’t want to invite that into my life even though I’ve had it happen to me in the past I’ve never felt vengeful enough to want to do it to others that’s just my opinion so again you’re entitled to yours and I’m not knocking you for saying that you want to report it fucking report it then you know that’s, that’s on you buddy. And I’m not knocking you for it. I’m just telling you I wouldn’t want to do it myself. That’s all I’m saying. any follow up comments to that Marco? Karma is a bitch call it what you will. Anything that you do can and will come back to me and look, go, and power up your shit.
That’s my recommendation you do whatever the fuck you want. I mean, you’re a grown person. I can’t tell you what to do.
But I definitely would not report shit I would just go get rid of it out the power that’s what you do. Not negative never ever. I’ve never ever done I’ve come really close.
Some piss me off that much where I was gonna blast him and make him appear for like some porn term. But then I
You take a breath and say, okay, it’s okay. It’s okay. Let’s just move on and make money. Yeah, I agree that energy can be spent making money.
So, again, they’re good questions. But yeah, no, you could encourage a pissed off customer to report them. I don’t know. All right. Thanks, guys. We’ll see you all next week.
We appreciate everybody being here. And don’t forget the potato. My rankings are your coupon code for SEO shields for 25% off. It’s only I think for the next two or three days. So take advantage of we can see you guys all right later.
Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 301 published first on your-t1-blog-url
1 note
·
View note
Text
Lenovo Yoga C640 Mini-Review
Disclosure: I attended Lenovo TechWorld 2019 in Beijing as Lenovo’s Guest. I sat in a super fan / brand advocate seat, and attended in that capacity. Lenovo asks that, as part of my participation, I follow all FTC disclosure laws relative to sponsored content. All opinions are my own.
Disclosure: Lenovo did not ask me to review the Lenovo Yoga C640. I asked them, specifically, for the access because I’d like to see more LTE-equipped 2-in-1 form factors (with a pen stylus) come to the US market. I’m writing this piece out of my own selfish desires to that end. ;-D
While I was in Beijing, attending Lenovo TechWorld 2019, I had the opportunity to borrow a Lenovo Yoga C640, WiFi version, for a couple of days. For the person that travels often, or works on the go a lot, I think this device is going to be ideal. Allow me to elucidate further on that notion. ;-D
Hardware Options
There are two versions of the Yoga C640, a WiFi Version, and an LTE Version. I mention this up front because configuration between them differs in ways beyond just WWAN connectivity. The WiFi version has an Intel i3, i5, and i7 10th Gen U series processor option, while the LTE has only i5 and i7 processor options.
If all you care about is battery life, get the i3 WiFi version, with a 300 nit screen display option might be the way to go. Lenovo claims up to 20 hours of battery life, depending on configuration and power management settings. Haven’t been able use a C640 long enough to test the claim, but I’d say something close may be possible.
For more details about specs:
Lenovo Yoga C640 WiFi
Lenovo Yoga C640 LTE
Overview
The Yoga C640 is small for a 13” 2-in-1 form factor device, when held in the hand, but has some rigidity and heft, weighing in at just under three pounds. The top cover is flat aluminum, while the bottom chassis is rubberized PC+30% Glass Fiber. The lid is perfect for accepting stickers, or just looking nice (or as nice as any laptop without stickers is able), while the textured surface of the deck won’t slip around in your lap, on when held in the hand. This, in both tablet and laptop modes.
There is a slight color disparity between the top and bottom chassis pieces, but you have to hold it in the right light to tell. Otherwise, the difference is tactile, and welcome. It makes for a nice bit of utility in a device that is clearly designed for travel, and on the go usage.
IO is really well thought out, as well as the placement of the power button. The way the vents look on the back make me think there is some sort of different cooling methodology with this machine. I didn’t have tools to open it up and peek, but it ran remarkably cool, even when I was copying a large file.
The capacitive touchscreen accepts input from a Wacom AES pen stylus. The latency and accuracy is great for handwritten notes, good for photo editing and similar, and decent for digital artwork. I wouldn’t recommend this as a digital artist’s primary rig. However, as a travel rig, for prototyping and brainstorming ideas, it would be perfect.
There is a reason I believe this is true.
Lenovo Support arranged for me to make use of an LTE-equipped Yoga Book C930 for a month, while I traveled, and it was very handy. No hunting for WiFi, or tethering my smart phone, just pop it open and go. The Yoga Book C930 is around 999 USD, is often sold out, and the LTE version is only available in Europe.
The C640’s price point makes this a relatively low stakes option. 999 USD buys a fully loaded WiFi version. Not sure what the LTE version price will look like when it hits the US. I think one could get the i5, 8 GB RAM, 256 SSD LTE version for under a thousand, particularly if one is patient for sales and coupons.
The current warranty options for the Yoga C640 are interesting. You get one year of Depot Warranty Service, standard, with a bump up to four years being the only other option (as of writing this), for Onsite, Premium Care, and Accidental Replacement services. Lenovo understands who they are making this device for, and why they would probably choose to buy it.
A short word about performance. I wasn’t able to push the machine as hard as I would have liked, opening a PSD with fifty layers or anything like that. However, I did all the other things; painted with large size brushes in high DPI canvases, applied filters to print resolution images, and similar. The Yoga C640 wasn’t snappy, but it was more than acceptable at handling those tasks.
If I was on the road, brought the C640 Yoga as my travel rig, and had to use it for more demanding work, I wouldn’t regret carrying a lighter rig.
Conclusion
This is for the college student that throws their laptop in a bag every day, and needs a digital notepad as well as a means to generate text. Or, it’s for the traveler that needs a 2-in-1 LTE equipped form factor. The C640 is low stakes, with a premium support coverage option.
I think my only complaint is that it charges with a 45w round tip AC adapter. I find them kind of tacky. However, they are still pretty ubiquitous. If you had yours confiscated from checked luggage crossing through International borders (which happened to a colleague recently), it would be cheap and easy to get another one. Depending on how you travel, and where, this might be a bonus.
Lenovo’s Yoga line continues to impress. The value of the features one gets for their money remains pretty high. If Lenovo can continue to bring the quality up, with warranty service to match, creatives, students, and travelers will have solid options besides just Thinkpad.
Everyone likes to have options.
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Why I hate "soccer moms"
Cant think of any triggers just dumb people! Smh. Sorry its long tldr at bottom. So I work in one of those order online pickup grocerys at the store places. I'll call it "Click it" because anyone over 50 seems to mix the name up to that- despite the actual one listed on EVERYTHING, uniform included. But I digress. Ive been assaint manager in the department for like 5months, actually working like one for like a year, in the department for 2. I know how shit works. The current (shitty) manager is out on vacation for 2 weeks...despite taking the job like 2 months ago and always having 3 day weekends on the busy days. So I clock in for a closing shift at like 11a. Head back and my opener instantly is asking for an override for this womans order. Obviously I ask why before giving it away. 1 policy. 2 if it breaks the rules and I ok it i could lose my job. She says how her coupon didn't work. Which okay we get that a lot. Sometimes people don't read the fine print on size or quantity or we had to subsitude it. So we're allowed to override them with another co worker (at least my department, manager if over $20). Generally if it makes sense and they're being nice we'll just give it to them. This woman was trying to use a "buy $50 worth through "click it" and save $20" which- great deal imo. Problem is she only ordered snack food and like 1 thing of cheese, pretty much everything she ordered was on a STORE sale for .99 cents. So her total is 27.62 or somthing. I explain to my opener why we can't take it. She wasn't spending $50 we'd lose too much money and have to explain it later. Not to mention we just had a store wide updated policy on coupons- I wasnt losing a job for this lady sorry. So my opener asks if I can go explain it to her. I agree no biggie thats my job. Me: "Hi ma'am my names ___ I'm the assistant manager, I just got her and [coworker] was explaining how this coupon wasn't worki-" Her: "WELL did you fix it??" Me: "...No ma'am see its buy $50 save $20 and your total here is $27 and some odd cents." Her: "But it was all WORTH $50!!" Me: "But it's all on sale see here? Your TOTAL needs to be $50 or more for it to work. You did not spend that much because of the sales. The coupon isnt valid I'm sorry." Shes now huffing and puffing doing the sighing and clutching her head like im so stupid and ruining her whole fucking day. "WELL my friend did this SAME order and it worked for her! So YOU tell ME why it wont work!" I take a min and blink it shouldnt have?? And I tell her as much and try to say maybe it was before the ad change or she got more ordered- Her "NO. IT WAS YESTERDAY. She told me she got this all cheap so I WANT THE SAME PRICE. Why wont your stupid coupons just work??" At this point shes angrly typing on her phone not even giving me eye contact. Most likely this "friend". So again saying how I cannot give it all for $7. So more huffing and reading something on her phone before she says "well then I DON'T WANT IT." Me: "okay well I'll void off your order the money will come back on your account in a few days (we pre get the estimate approved online as pending- not anything i control). And I'll come back with a cart for all the stuff. " Do so and notice shes got kids in the back looking nervous...great way to teach them kindness lady. Later on the assistant manager for the STORE calls me asking me why we denied someones coupons. Guess she left a rude comment or called. So i explained and at least my boss seemed satisfied that it was a reasonable response. and said she'd let the top manager know whats up so we don't get in trouble or anything. TLDR: lady expects me to give her "$50 worth" of food for $7. Because its not her fault it was all on sale and it turned into $27 and so the coupon for buy $50 save $20 didnt work.
349 notes
·
View notes
Text
My Money Snapshot
[Inspired by Corporette]
Location: Ohio, small college town
Age: 29
Occupation: PhD candidate (English)/half-time instructor
Income: $16,000 before deductions
Net worth: $588 (I’m crying)
Current Debt: $12,844
Living situation: Renting with a roommate
Money Philosophy:
I grew up in the “working poor” category. My parents are divorced and my father never contributed much financially. Mom made around $21,000 per year at work and she cleaned houses “under the table” to supplement that. Somehow, we never went hungry, what we ate was relatively fresh and healthy, and she managed to put two of us through Catholic schools for a total of 14 years. I know now that mom is still paying some of those loans and credit card debts and that part of her strategy included not contributing more than the 3% that her employer matched in her 401k. Every time I complain about the financial stress I feel at my salary level, I have to remind myself how comparatively unstressful my financial life is.
I’ve always been poor and I always knew that graduate school/academia is not a lucrative career. I tell myself that if I can make things work at this pay grade, then I’m ready for just about anything. My main strategy is to have a budget, stay in the budget, and save every bit that I can.
Monthly budget
$1000-1100 for the necessities each month. Monthly spending on eating out, entertainment, shopping and other categories varies widely. I also won’t lie... dating someone who makes 4x more money than me helps... I’m fairly frugal on all of these fronts: I buy most of my clothes second hand and I tend to shop seasonally. Spikes in spending occur around the winter holidays when I’m buying gifts and when I am doing traveling. And I also have totally weak, impulsive moments - like the $3 soap sales at Bath & Body works, or that time I spent $110 on bras and underwear on a whim. Anyway:
Rent: $272.50/month
Other living expenses: $130-170/month (electric, internet, phone, renter’s insurance - lower in summer, higher in winter)
Transportation: $332/month (gas, insurance, car payment)
Healthcare: $162/month (health+dental insurance, no vision coverage)
Groceries: $120-150/month ($30/week)
Debt Picture
Student loan: $2000
Car loan: $10,488
I’m a career student & my motto for all the years I’ve been in school has been “follow the money.” I went to college on very hefty scholarships and I only had to take out the $2000 loan to cover housing costs during my first year. For the subsequent three years, I was an RA, so I never had to take loans again. I applied to graduate programs based on the research fit, and when I got my offers, money weighed heavily in the decision. I would have loved to live in Boston as a wee 22-year old, but I wasn’t about to take out loans for a year’s worth of tuition and the living expenses. And to get a PhD while living in Minneapolis, my very favorite city in the US? It would have been such a dream, but for the quite steep difference in stipends and the significant disparity in cost of living compared with Ohio. My only regret on this front is that I haven’t started paying back my tiny student loan. I’ve been able to defer it since I’m in graduate school, which was a great idea when I was a master’s student who didn’t know the first thing about budgeting. But if I had just paid $25/month from the start of grad school the balance would be $0 about the same time I graduate from this PhD program this August. Instead, I’ll be scrambling to pay off the whole balance before my 6 month grace period ends.
The car loan is less than a year old. I finally broke down and bought a new (by which I mean used) car last summer after really pushing it with the car my parents had bought me in high school. Repairing that car put me into credit card debt more than once and I was getting so stressed about it. It was time. I have a very good credit score, so I qualified for a nice loan rate with my credit union, and to get a better rate I got my mom to co-sign my loan. It’s a popular rental fleet model so there were tons of them on the market, but average miles were high - so when I saw one that was two years old with only a years worth of miles on it at $1000 less than the average price for that make, model, and year, I jumped on it. My payments are $231/month on the 5-year plan. Currently, I’m paying that minimum, but I plan to escalate my payments as my income goes up (I’m on the academic job market now, pray for me). I folded this car payment into my existing budget by giving up solo-living and finding a roommate. When I had my own apartment, very spacious with a huge kitchen and tons of windows/natural light, I was paying about $585 for monthly rent. I hate living with people, but I hated the idea of being trapped in this college town without a car even more - one of my other mantras is “you can do anything for a year.”
A note on credit cards: I love them. I’m one of those responsible people that charges everything and pays the balance like clockwork every month. This is the only way to make sure you’re actually taking advantage of the cash back/reward perks! Currently, I’m using Capital One’s Venture card and stockpiling airline miles for travel (it has a 40,000 mile sign-on bonus). If you’re good for it, I also recommend one card with a great balance transfer program. For me, when I get into an emergency situation, it makes me feel like I have options. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve had to use my balance transfer card to cover costs ($1400 in car repairs, summer 2015), but at my level, I can’t afford to not have back up plans.
Savings and Investments
$5,517 Cash
$7,861 Roth IRA + employer mandated retirement account
Retirement: The biggest financial mistake I've made in grad school is that I did not opt into the retirement account offered by the university when I started my M.A. in 2012. When they ask me that “what I wish I had known before I went to grad school” question, this is near the top of the list. I did, eventually, open a Roth IRA and slowly I started to build something. This year, when my graduate funding dried up and they made me a “half-time instructor” the retirement account for public school teachers was mandatory and the contributions are high: 14% of every pay check (annoying, yes, but on the flipside, there is an equally high employer match). While I’m contributing to this, I’ve paused my contributions to the IRA. I’ll roll this money over, either into the IRA or into another state/employer retirement fund when I move on from here.
Personal savings: I strive for a minimum of $100 per month and frequently do a little more, but each month is different and I consider it a win if I break even. Through most of grad school, I’ve taken on “second jobs” to bolster what I can save (and boost my resume). Both jobs have been through the university, so they limit me to five hours a week. When I max them out, this can be an extra $200-250 each month.
I took up a new savings challenge this academic year to build on my “play money” savings account (a high yield savings account which my bank labels a “goal setter” account). The challenge involves tallying the “total savings” printed on my receipts each month (i.e. when the grocery store is like “you saved $6″ because of sales and coupons). So, At the end of the month, I put that running total into my goal setter account. Sometimes the total savings are like $26, but others its as much as $171. It’s an interesting challenge because it encourages me to do tedious things, like scroll through all the digital coupons on the grocery store app; but at the same time, I know that the higher that number is usually coincides with a lot of shopping which encourages some self-regulation.
I initially set my goal at $2500 when I opened the goal setter account in 2014. When I had to dip into the account in April 2018 to pay $930 in car repairs, I finally set plans in motion to buy my car. Since I bought used, I only put 10% down on the car (just over $1200). When I sold my old car for $1000, I put that money right back into the account to start saving for new things...
What I’m saving for now:
travel: to celebrate finally finishing this PhD, I’m hoping to pull off a trip to Europe. Later this year, I’m also turning 30 around the same time that one of my regular professional conferences is meeting in Hawaii. If I can do one or both in the next year, that’d be grand. (As I mentioned, I'm saving up airline miles with my credit card program, too!)
a multicooker: think InstantPot...but more expensive because my dreams all revolve around small appliances that match my stand mixer.
What I do to be frugal...
I’ve been frugal my whole life, but a couple of major habits I’ve formed include:
Meal planning and home cooking (read my guide to meal prep here). The money part of that means planning what I eat around maximizing the ingredients I have to buy. I plan meals that use the same ingredients so I’m not spending on an entire bunch of celery and then throwing out 75% of it. Routinization also helps, so my grocery lists stay about the same week to week and the bill relatively predictable - for example, I eat avocado egg salad almost every day for lunch. I know, avocados are not cheap, but I also believe in spending on the things that nourish you––literally and “spiritually.” Roxane Gay once said that she never bought avocados or blueberries when she was a “poor grad student.” Once she started making money, she realized she would buy them because she could afford them, but she also threw them out all the time because she didn’t plan her meals right to actually eat them. The point is, buy the foods that you like/feel good about and build habits around them. It’s not wasted money. That said, I won’t pay more than $1.25 for an avocado!
Second hand clothes shopping, especially for my business casual (it’s amazing what people donate to the Goodwill, barely worn!)
31 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Star
Summary:Window shopping leads to buying everything they said they liked, but that’s not the best present, it’s you. Or Minhyuk depending on which side you’re on.
Minhyuk X Reader
Not requested
Prompt: 36. Window shopping as a date
Minhyuk, probably the funniest guy on campus
Surprisingly he fell for me first, asked me out while we were in English and the teacher said, “Get into partners, quickly!” He first asked me to pair up with him, and then as we did the project he told me I had the prettiest set of eyes he’s ever seen in his life
Of course I thought he was gorgeous and funny so I complimented him back about his laugh being one of things i look forward to in this class
He blushed and said, “Would you want to go to a date later?” I was shocked, he’s popular on campus and he’s asking me on a date? Okay? You better believe I said yes
He’s hilarious and our dates are always something new, the first date we went on we went to a roller skating place
Most fun I’ve had since I’ve moved out of my parent’s house
I used to go roller skating with my parents all the time when I was little, and it was about his fourth time so when he fell, I was in fits of laughter but then he looked me dead in the eye and said, “I guess you can say I fell head over heels for you”
That shut me up real quick, and I helped him up and gave him a kiss on his cheek, which he placed his hand over, I winked at him and raced around the rink with him, before he had caught up to me and picked me up
We graduated that year to follow our professions, but that didn’t stop us from going on silly dates
It’s first Christmas together since we started dating in March last year, we went and saw all the Christmas lights
We went to the zoo, imitating what the animals did, like his seal impression made me cackle into fits
I bought him two presents so far, but I don’t know what else to get him. I know his personality, but at the same time I don’t know much about his interests, we haven’t gotten to the topic with our busy lives, esp when we were in college and finals coming up was the absolute worst, and we’d see each other and sometimes get coffee together and study
Other than we didn’t talk until they were over and we made it up by going to a cute little cafe, mile away from the campus, and fed each other cute little cupcakes, and shared a milkshake
We talk a lot but not about what we like, how we view the world like politics, religion, art, but not what makes us giddy like I’ve never mentioned that I collect cute little stuffed animals, because it makes me happy
It’s just something that’s never came up, after all our relationship is fairly new, so it’d be nice to get a feel of what he likes
I know how he hates showers, but when he gets in them he has a hard time getting out, which makes me laugh because I’m the same way, but I do take showers every night
I know how he can’t swim, I can only doggy paddle so you know oof
But I can’t tell you what his favorite animal is, what his favorite color is, mostly anything he favorites or I favorite hasn’t been a conversation topic yet
Usually for couples they go the opposite way talking about their favorites then their views, we went the opposite. Which is completely fine, because I could tell if I wanted to be with him because of his views
He enters my apartment with the spare key he has, I won’t be working for the next five days at the school because they’re on break so that means me too, I’m so glad I’m not a high school teacher or I’d be grading papers for way too long, all I have to do is give cute little stickers on their papers, on their little drawings, which honestly is so cute
I smile at him,”Hey!! I just got an idea” I tilt my head wondering what his idea is, and he says, “Well, I was thinking last night”
“That’s dangerous” He shakes his head, “I’m kidding, you always have cute little ideas, so??”
“You know how we know each other's views, and everything about each other basically?” I nod at him, “But we don’t know what each other like, our favorite color-” “(F/c)” He stares at me, before shaking his head, “Okay cool, but you know what I mean” “I do, so what’s your favorite color?” “Red” “Neat”
“So… What’s your big idea?”
“Well we go out and point out the things we like at stores, and then talk about what we like as we walk around?”
“Ahhh window shopping, I would love too” He grins, “Let’s go now” “Let me get dressed in normal human clothes”
“I think you look good in your pajamas”
“Thanks, sweetie, I’ll be back in five” I rush up my stairs and change quickly, go back down stairs after freshening up and put on my shoes and coat, “Let’s go, shall we?”
“We shall”
Which leads us walking through malls, store outlets, anywhere and everywhere we went. I learned what he liked in four hours and would point out stuff and he would go, “Yeah I would totally love that, if it was from you of course” He ruffle my head after that and we’d keep walking and I’d point out things and he points out a cute stuffed animal, “That’s what I would love!” He looks at me giddily, “It’s like you, cute and small” “Just because I’m short doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass”
“Man I love someone strong like you” I huff, and he came over and kissed the top of my head
When we made it back to his car, we’re exhausted, and he’s like “McDonald’s?” I agree
When he leaves, I head straight to bed, but get up at the crack of dawn and run to the stores that I made mental notes on and get all the things he pointed out, I’m so glad I paid all my bills already, and have coupons, because jeez Louise, he has good taste, and by good taste I mean expensive
Whatever I have left, I get little gifts for the rest of my family and friends, and ship them to their houses
Checking my mail and seeing ads, was a relief nothing else, although a Christmas card would be nice, mom and dad, I sent you two, two cards
I went to the dollar tree because I just wanted to grab some thin mints and go home, when I see this cute little pen that reminds me of him, squishy, funny, fluffy, of course if it matched him completely it’d be sexy too but, you can’t always get what you want (But if you try sometimes-I’ll stop there)
I wrap all the presents at home, in four days it’ll be Christmas and he can open the gifts I got him, I shove them under my little tree I bought a month prior, a fake blue one, but does the trick (Mostly because it was on sale)
Christmas comes and he asks me if I want to come over his or the other way around and I said up to him and he told me to come over, so I pack all the presents for him into my car and put them in a trash bag because it made it easier to carry
I arrive at his apartment, parking in the parking garage, that thankfully I didn’t have to pay for
I pull it out with the Christmas bow wrapped around so it didn’t look like a body bag
I open it with the spare key I have for his apartment and grin at him ,as he wraps his arms around me, I put the bag down and wrap my arms around him
He carries me over to the couch and I drag the bag along. We start unwrapping, and he did the same exact thing I did, he got me a turtle with big eyes and a snake with tiny little eyes, I held them both to me as I continued to unwrap and thank him for everything he got me as he did with me
“You know all these Christmas presents are nice,” He says to me softly as I lean into his chest, after unwrapping all my presents, “you’re the best present I could ask for”
“I’d have to say the same, except you’re more like the star on the top of the tree, shining brightly, making people grin up at you every time they look at you, and always watching over and being a protective hot mess”
He laughs, “You know that makes you a melted mess” “Yeah, I guess so, only for you baby” “I love you, (Y/n)” “Wait-What?” I say shocked, “You heard me right, you don’t have to say it back, I just wanted to let you know”
“Minhyuk, I think I love you too” He kisses my forehead and brings me closer into him, “I’m glad”
“That makes two of us”
#36th day of 37 days of Christmas#day 36 of 37 days of Christmas#37 days of christmas#christmas fanfiction#minhyuk#minhyuk monsta x#lee minhyuk#minhyuk x reader#reader x monsta x#reader#x reader#reader insert#kpop x reader#sorry this isn't really edited but#i think it's still cute so#suffer#with me#partly college au?#i guess#monsta x
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
On Second Thought – 4 / 2 / 19
It’s the second of the month, and as I vowed to do this year, on the second of each month, I am writing whatever has come to mind – no matter how odd, random, or off the wall that might be. It’s my way of advocating for normalcy around not needing to feel, say and act ‘normal’ all the time.
Ironically, I missed the last installment of this series on 3 / 2 / 19. I was traveling, and even though airports are a boon for random observations, I never found the time to catch up.
Never fear, sports fans, tonight’s installment is sure to make up for last month’s absence.
Today, we’ve got thoughts on ducks, geese, parking, traffic and an extended section on apple sauce.
Get comfy.
I need to start this post by pointing out that ducks are cool.
I do a lot of walking along a river that has a lot of ducks and a lot of geese, and ducks are way cooler. I think a lot of it has to do with them just being nicer.
But, also, the way they stick their heads in the water, and their butts go up in the air. Way cool.
Not to mention, they just look cooler than geese. And they have orange feet.
I was watching the college basketball tournament a little bit last week, and I could not get over how much I wanted Oregon to win just because their mascot is a duck, and I love ducks so much.
And then I got to wondering why more sports team mascots aren’t ducks.
There are scores of wildcats, tigers and eagles, but very few ducks.
Normally, I’m all for the weirder the better when it comes to mascots. Banana Slugs, Anteaters, Fighting Blue Hens (Go Delaware), and it does make you wonder why there are so few ducks as compared to wildcats, tigers and eagles?
Did schools really only name their sports teams after animals that were thought to be fierce because they thought it would intimidate their opponents more if they were playing a wildcat or a tiger?
And by contrast, a duck would be easily defeated?
Perhaps.
Either way, thank you to the good folks in Eugene for going with the Ducks. Ducks are awesome.
And, Geese are not awesome. I suppose I can understand why no one would want to play for the Galesburg Geese… Pff.
I walk by geese as often as I walk by ducks, and the geese just hiss at you, they open their beaks and look all mean at you – it’s just like, c’mon man, you’re not exactly winning friends and influencing people here…
The only good thing that has come out of the last 25 years of goose cognizance, is but a relative positive. After avoiding minefields full of goose droppings for years, I recently realized I’d never actually seen a goose defecate.
Well, check that one off the bucket list.
The other day, while crossing a sidewalk in front of me, one of my hissing nemesis plopped out a steaming pile of green feces. Gross, of course, but after years of never actually catching one in the act, it was sheepishly exhilarating, I have to admit.
--
In the outline I wrote for this post, I briefly considered talking about apple sauce next, but then reconsidered, figuring that apple sauce right after goose droppings may not be a good idea…
So, let’s talk about traffic, why don’t we?
I live along a section of street that is relatively short between two stoplights. In the middle, is a crosswalk with a pedestrian yield sign where cars often stop. When I get home from work in the evening, there is usually a good amount of traffic backed up on the street. It makes for a joyous few minutes of watching society be weird.
When I look out my window to the north, I often see traffic turning off of a busy street heading eastward past my place. Traffic backs up turning off the street, and cars jam to within inches of each other to be able to turn and be out of the way of the main thoroughfare. It’s quite common to see three extra cars trying to jam really close to each other so they can turn.
Yet, a half a block ahead, near the pedestrian crossing, cars – the same ones that were just jamming in to turn onto the very street – space out to the point where there is usually 3-5 feet between vehicles.
Every. Single. Time.
It’s like, what happened people? A half a block ago you were all bunched up, and now you’re just asleep or something?
Anyway, traffic is fun. Take the train if you can, it’s much less stress.
My vantage point looking down on a city street also allows me to watch parallel parking, parking space dispersion, and many other really exciting things. I may have to save this one for another month in order to be able to rant on it fully, but it certainly makes for good viewing when I’m just getting home from work and looking out the window as I eat my evening pre-dinner snack…
Which brings me to apple sauce.
Man, apple sauce is so good.
It’s so versatile.
Great for lunch with a sandwich.
Great for dinner as a sweet little garnish or meat topper.
And, surprisingly refreshing for breakfast.
I feel like apple sauce for breakfast is underrated, but I’m a big advocate. It’s just the right amount of sweet, but if you get the unsweetened kind – as if there was any other real choice – it’s not overly sweet. It’s light on the stomach. It’s got a pudding-like ratio of flavor to chewing effort, where you don’t have to chew nearly at all, and you still get a bevy of flavor. (Pudding may still be at the top of this list, but again, another post for another month…)
I also realized this week while at the grocery store that there are like 200 different varieties of apple sauce. To some, this may seem overwhelming, but to me, this was like a new frontier to discover.
Sweet.
Unsweet.
Chunky.
Cinnamon….
Now they have so many new flavors – and even colors – I apparently have not been keeping up with the apple sauce innovation curve the last few years. I saw bright green apple sauce, orange, reddish…
While doing research for this post, I even ate one of these newfangled concoctions. I ate organic strawberry apple sauce out of a pouch that has a built-in straw. 3.2 ounces of interesting, let me tell ya.
Obviously, I don’t have kids. I see toddlers eating out of such contraptions all the time, but this was a first for me.
I immediately became obsessed with trying to extract every possible morsel out of the pouch – which was kind of fun. So, that was nice…
Have you ever made apple sauce?
When I was little, my family used to go apple picking all the time, and then my mom and my aunt would spend a long time peeling, coring and slicing apples to make into the sweet nectar. The apple peeler / corer / slicer is easily one of my favorite inventions…
I love how certain apples are better for apple sauce, and some are better for eating, and some are better for baking. It’s pretty cool when you learn that one apple is mealier, and thus is better for baking, and some are crunchier and better for snacking.
I only have one disappointment with apple sauce, and this comes from the fact that my favorite apple – the Granny Smith – is not a good apple sauce apple, in my opinion.
I recently spotted Granny Smith apple sauce at the store. I was immediately delighted. I had a coupon that gave me 50 cents off any variety of Mott’s apple sauce (thank you grocery story Monopoly) and as my luck would have it, Mott’s is one of the brands that makes its sauce in Granny’s variety. This was shaping up to be a dream combo. Unsweetened. Granny Smith. And a coupon!
Sheesh.
Except, after racing home and opening up the conventional container of the sauce, I was crestfallen to find out that Granny Smith apple sauce is not good. How could this be?
It smelled amazing, but the flavor was so underwhelming… It was just kind of bland. Completely lacking the tartness that a good Granny Smith packs into each bite…
Uggles, man. Uggles.
Alas, some things just don’t live up to the hype you
--
Last little bit tonight is on favorite colors.
I am on an all-time high enjoying my favorite color, thanks to my friends at Apple.
I never used to understand people’s obsession for buying things in their favorite color. I mean, it makes sense, but I was always kind of the ilk that favorite colors were for six year olds, and after that, it kind of didn’t really matter much.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my favorite color is yellow, and lots of things that come in yellow colors don’t look great.
Tape measures can be yellow, but they aren’t really noted for being super stylish…
Bananas are yellow – and while the yellow ones are far better than the green or brown varieties – it’s not like people eat more bananas because they are yellow…
I’m not much of an accessorizer, so yellow purses, umbrellas, coffee mugs or ornamental belts aren’t really my thing either.
I’ve never had the urge to get a yellow computer case, or even a yellow shower curtain…
Yellow has always been my favorite color, but it’s always been under-represented in my repertoire of assorted belongings.
However, all of that recently changed.
I got a new phone, and for the first time ever, Apple was offering this really cool yellow color.
Without giving it much thought, when the sales person at the store asked what color I wanted, I almost just defaulted to grey. I saw a red and a blue and a white. But they didn’t do much for me.
And then, I saw this rich mustardy yellow colored one.
Whoa. A yellow phone!
I decided to go with that one, figuring, I like yellow, let’s do this.
I can’t tell you how much joy I have gotten out of having a yellow phone these last few weeks. I keep looking at it and thinking how much I love it. It’s hard to describe, but man, it’s so fun.
--
On that note, thanks for reading.
Have a good month.
Eat plenty of apple sauce.
Smile at the ducks.
Avoid the geese.
And enjoy your favorite color.
1 note
·
View note
Text
Aug 15
The sock yarn accumulated not because I make socks, I hardly even wear them, but because it’s perfect for doll sweaters. Then I never made that many doll sweaters. Not that I might not in the future. It’s just the sitting down and stringing as I have a book that taught me how to design knitting patterns. Just haven’t designed that many.
I don’t wear sweaters either, mostly because bare yarn against my skin would make me feel like I want to claw my skin off from the itchies :/ But I wear shalws and shoulder capes and things that remind me there’s no insulation in this place.
I’ll sleep under yarn blankets too, pretty warms are pretty warms.
I have used this, in regular light the colors are stunning mint green and candy pink. The stitches are multiples of 6 in single, double, and treble crochet. It’s 1-2-3-3-2-1 OR 3-2-1-1-2-3 as long as the row you’re working on and the one below it add up to 4. You easily get in to a rhythm on it and it comes out soft and drapes nicely.
In reality there’s 5 tubs of yarn waiting to become something. Sweaters in Hella re made from Red Heart but as I said I don’t wear sweaters. That’s a mix of ideas for projects, left overs, that’s pretty, that’s on sale, a Dr Who scarf, some useful colors from bags at the thrift store, and where the hell did that come from? Looking at you some of the what was I thinking self striping shit.
I might have to break out the double tipped and make some gloves or at least arm protectors to keep the sun off of me. On top is the skein I hope I used a coupon or sale to get, in the mystery bag is a close enough to be a mate (unless anal grandma is still alive) and 5 muted friends. Really want to say this is Kroy Socks. Wanna be doll sweaters behind.
The ha;f moon hanging out with some other shawls/wraps/scarves to be. The three pinkish and stripy in the bottom right corner are going to be another project. The rest should be single skein things.
Have not figured out what I’ll do exactly with the half moon nor could I find a sparkle black in the right weight. Something will be done with it.
Not pictured is the ball winder I used to make most of that in to those compact little cakes/center pull balls. You know what’s nice about having one? It allows me to buy the messed up skeins with missing or hand written bands at the store and leave the nice ones for those it matters more to. And cakes let you see the colors better.
As for other stuff I can’t say yet. Went out yesterday, didn’t find anything I set out to look for, but had my feet and arms covered up so it waits to be seen if I get any more PMLE spots.
The one on my leg has its own congress person. I was going to say it hasn’t seen daylight all century because all my outside pants are full length but I’ve worn pajamas out to check the mail. It hits right at the hem of most of my crop pajama pants.
It’s lovely to think that my skin now knows it can freak out at the mere mention of sunlight. What happens is it makes too much histamine and it comes out through the skin. It doesn’t get scaly like psoriasis and it’s not contagious.
There’s foods that are “high in histamines” etc but I’d rather stay out of the sun than give those up. A good amount are the things I need to combat the anemia or control the symptoms of my brain injury. I’m not officially doing the higher fat epilepsy diet but I’m not one of those low fat people. Hamburgers are an important part of my diet.
If you’re iron deficient and need a bit of sweet or crunch look in to graham crackers. Regular kind, not flavored ones aimed at kids, old fashioned bland diet keep the urges down ones :p. They’re higher in iron than some other snacks.
Immediate task, separate one last skein from a mystery bag of sock yarn. Three of them were sock and brown floof. The floof goes in the bin with other floofs as I have those knit your own cat and dog books. And a crochet your own dog book. And a crochet kittens pattern. And a box of plastic animal noses and eyes. And the knit a fantasy story book with animals. And the knit a farm book with animals. Then there’s the knit and crochet food books....
1 note
·
View note
Text
How much did it cost me to self-publish my book on KDP?
So, you thought self-publishing on Amazon was free?
You’d technically be correct actually.
At least if you have a vast array of talents.
But, that wasn’t my case and statistically speaking, it probably isn’t yours. So let’s get into it.
There are six parts of your book that could cost you money: writing, editing, formatting, cover design, publishing costs and advertising.
I wrote the book myself, so that part was completely free (other than years of time, obliviously).
I was very lucky to have people close to me for beta reading so I didn’t have to pay anybody, I gave PDF copies to the younger readers and printed some copies on standard A4 paper for my family, this would have cost perhaps 1 euro between paper and ink. Add an extra 1 euro to this budget on post-its over a series of drafts.
So far so good, formatting, again, I did this myself. You could pay somebody to do this and if you have money to spare, well, it’s tedious work, but it’s pretty easy. Amazon has several pages dedicated to explaining how to do this with several programs and other than being a bit fiddly it’s easy enough.
Cover design. Okay, this is where the money goes. At least for me. I considered designing my own cover as I’ve said before, but a cover really is going to be a big selling point so unless you’re really confident in your abilities I have to recommend you commission a profesional. In my case, I went to fiver which is a site I’ve spent a lot of time on as a seller but never bought anything on. I commissioned Banana Art Studios and it cost me a total of 104,95 euros (applying a coupon). I think this is super cheap for the amazing cover I got! But it is the most expensive step, so be prepared for that!
Publishing costs, well, like I said at the beginning, technically free... but, if like me as well as an ebook you are offering a paperback, I have to recommend buy at least one proof copy! A proof copy is basically just a printed copy that says no resale and allows you to check everything looks good. I had to buy two, the first copy my name was out of frame and the margins were too big, the second looked a lot more like I wanted it to, I also took the opportunity to order a different type of cover (glossy instead of mate) and different page colours (cream instead of white). Just to see which I preferred. Good thing I did because I ultimately went with glossy and cream coloured paper! They only charge you printing cost plus delivery (yes, even if you have prime), which came to about 13 euros each proof, so 26 euros for the two.
Once you’ve pressed publish, you can order author copies at the same price, I ordered ten of these to give to me beta readers so this can be considered extra editing costs, 60 euros in total.
Advertising, this again is another costly part of self-publishing, nobody else is going to sell your book! And platforms are hard to build, I still don’t know how to do that. But I do know a thing or two about marketing, right now I’m still adding up data and testing different sites, I’ll get back to you with more information later. But for now the most cost-effective site for me has been Pinterest, I’ve started of with a 10 euro budget and plan to increase once I’ve sold a couple more copies. I also used some ad credit Facebook gave me for free, but in twelve hours it pulled of less than Pinterest did in it’s first five minutes. So take that as you will.
Let’s add this up (rounded up for simplicity sake):
Writing....................0€
Editing....................62€
Formating..............0€
Cover Design..........105€
Publishing Costs.....26€
Advertising.............10€ (so far)
Total.......................203€
Is that a lot? Is that a little? Well, probably depends on who you are and your financial capacity. But to put that number into perspective let’s see how many copies I have to sell to make that money back!
I sell my copies at about 5,99$ for Ebook and 14,99$ for Paperback. This results in royalties approximately 3€ per copy.
So to make my money back I have to sell approximately 70 copies.
And I’m not going to lie, that’s a pretty scary number. As of this moment I’ve sold three copies, which is amazing, I’m super happy to have sold any, because I’m not going to lie even thought I’m proud of my book, the scariest thing is will I sell even one?
From what I’ve found online, and let’s be honest, this isn’t really trustworthy information, most KDP authors won’t sell much. Most will sell next to nothing.
Do I expect to make this money back?
Maybe, over the entire life-span of the book. But then you have to keep in mind taxes and other stuff.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is, if you wrote a book, and querying isn’t going anywhere because the marketplace is over-saturated and you perhaps don’t fit the molde, and you really want to publish it, go ahead! It’s not that expensive and you can cut down on some of the costs I previously mentioned. But you should be prepared to lose money.
I’m three days into this experience, I may make my money back, I may even make money, I’ll keep you all updated for sure! But I’m being realistic and not holding high expectations.
I think the best way to help someone understand the difficulty of self-publishing and amazon specifically, is how little sales it takes to be a top seller. I’ve seen many authors proudly announce being best-sellers when only selling a couple of copies a day, what does this mean? It means most aren’t selling any.
And that’s a reality you just need to be prepared for!
Remember your first social media post? Bet nobody saw it! The same might happen to your book, it hurts more because it can take years to write, but that’s the reality of it. So, if you’re going in for money, maybe don’t.
If you love writing with a passion and it’s not about the money but the book, then do! Self-publish! Whether I make my money back or not, just holding this book that I worked for years on in my hands is an experience I wouldn’t swap for the world.
#book#fantasy book#young adult book#self publishing#selfpublished#amazon kdp#financial talk#writers on tumblr#writing#writer#author#the procces of self publishing#transparency#dragon#dragons#ya#young adult#fantasy genre#fantasy novel#behind the scenes
0 notes
Text
The customer isn't always right, but they're not always wrong either
To preface, I fully recognize that part of why this particular incident made me so frustrated and pissed off was because I had already been stuck in traffic for a full hour on a trip that was supposed to take half that in its entirety. I also recognize that my depression may be projecting on the attitudes of other parties.
So basically I went to the store on my way home from watching a musical. I get to the store after midnight becaude of the previously-mentioned traffic delay. It's fine since the store closes at 1 or 2 am. I'm there because I need a few basics like margerine but I also decide to get Bagel Bites. Now, I was planning on getting the 18 count, but saw that the 40 count had a $2 off coupon hanging beside it. I take a box and a coupon because of the sale. I get to the register and I place this and then a coupon for the margerine on top of it. I'm a little tired so I don't pay 100% attention. After the transaction is done, he said "You saved $0.75 today!"
But wait, that was the coupon for the margerine. I ask him about the Bagel Bites coupon and he said he didn't see one. I then tell him that was prolly because I stacked them on top of each other and that that was my fault. He looms in his coupon bag. These bags have all the coupons the cashier collects in their shift. As it was pretty late in his shift, the bag was pretty full.
But here's where it gets frustrating. He finds the one he did scan, pull it out, then showed it to me saying "This is what you gave me." Now, in his defense, for all the evidence on HIS side of things, he feels he's just as right as I felt that I was right. I fully understand that. But at the same time, saying it like THAT makes me feel like he's calling me either an idiot or a liar trying to get a couple bucks off like some sort of scam artist. And to pull out the one that we BOTH know you scanned doesn't mean anything. The coupons for this store are ALL the SAME COLOR, SIZE, AND SHAPE. They differ on the writinf and barcodes. That's it. OF COURSE he isn't going to find the 1 coupon that he didn't think existed in the first place! Especially if he immediately shoved both in the same full bag.
So my options were 1. Continue to argue my case. Or 2. Go to where those coupons were and grab another one in which case he might think I was an idiot who only SAW a coupon but didn't actually take one. This option also would mean he'd have to void the transaction and rescan everything again which would prolly also require a manager. Both of these would cause a public spectacle over $2 and my social anxiety would absolutely NOT allow me to stay. Honestly, even saying something in the first place was more than I would usually do.
So I took the third option and left without saying a word like a goddamn coward becaide I just needed to get out pf there so I could cry undisturbed in my car. That's not to say I had a full-on-sob-fest, but there was enough for some tears shed and there's no way in hell I'm letting anyone see that over fucking $2.
Here's the thing. I've been in customer service. I GET IT. I've had plenty of customers try anything they can for a discount. I completely understand why he wasn't inclined to believe me. But at the same time, there should have been some sort of effort like trying to see if the system has a record of that couppn existing at all, or maybe offer to have someone look in the aisle for another copy of the coupon. SOMETHING to bridge that gap. Because while plenty of people may be trying to get away with something, honestly, most people aren't assholes like that. And I'm not saying that this guy wouldn't have done that at a different point in his shift, or if it wasn't nearing 1am by this point or any number of factors I'm not privy to.
But at the end of the day, I have the right to not be automatically assumed to be a scammy liar or a cheap idiot.
#that bitch#may delete later#I needed to vent#Im just so pissed off rn#i wont name the store#because it isnt their fault#or necessarily the fault of ghe cashier#i know EXACTLY what customer service is like#i may have stood pretty firm whe. working#but honestly as a customer#i usually never stand up for myself#because i second guess myself#and id hate to be someones nightmare customer over something trivial#it would break my heart to be in someones story#is that selfish of me?#im pretty sure it is#*sigh*#i just cant win
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Why SMS Marketing Should Be in Your Mix Right Now
Marketing is always changing and the changes in 2020 have been profound, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve all had to adjust our work and home lives as a result.
With more consumers working from home and budgetary concerns at the forefront for most people, you might be thinking that mobile marketing isn’t as important as it used to be. After all, people aren’t spending as much time out and a lot of the advantages of mobile marketing don’t apply in the same way.
But guess what? I’m here to tell you that mobile marketing is more important than it ever has been – and you need to make room for SMS marketing in your budget right now. Here’s why.
SMS Marketing Statistics
You might not be convinced that SMS marketing is worthwhile, so let’s look at some statistics to give you an idea of just how popular, effective, and expected it is for companies to reach out to their customers via text.
n 75% of all consumers say they are comfortable receiving SMS messages from companies (with permission, of course).
n 75% of consumers also say that they like to receive special offers via text.
n 67% of consumers would rather text to schedule or confirm appointments than do it via the telephone.
n Text messages have a 98% open rate (compared to about 20% for emails.)
n 83% of millennials open SMS messages within 90 seconds of getting them.
n SMS messages have an average click-through rate of 36% compared to only 2% for emails.
n 50% of consumers make a purchase after receiving a text message with a coupon or discount code.
These numbers speak for themselves. Text messages are popular and effective. They also happen to be an affordable way to connect directly with your customers wherever they are.
How to Get Customers to Opt in for SMS Messages
While SMS messages are popular, you still need to get your customers’ permission to send promotional information via text message. There are two easy ways to do that.
1. Send a text to the people whose mobile numbers you have and ask them to opt in. You can easily set up a text with a Y for Yes, N for No response. People who respond with a Yes can be added to a regular SMS list.
2. If you haven’t already done so, start requesting mobile numbers from new leads and customers. You can then set up an automated SMS asking them to opt in for promotional offers.
Once customers have opted in, you can connect with them wherever they are.
How Expensive is SMS Marketing?
One of the biggest benefits of SMS marketing is that it is very affordable when you consider the high open and click through rates. The ROI on SMS marketing is extremely high when compared to email and other forms of marketing.
Business News Daily did an evaluation of the top SMS messaging services. SimpleTexting was their top pick. Their least expensive plan costs $25 per month and allows businesses to send 500 SMS messages. That comes out to a cost of $.05 per text.
By asking customers to opt in for text messaging, you can be certain that you are only paying to send text messages to people who want them. Given the high ROI of SMS marketing, it’s likely that you will recoup the money you spend quickly.
Tips for Using SMS Marketing
Now, let’s talk about some creative ways you can incorporate SMS messages into your marketing mix.
1. Put your call to action up front. While most text messages are only 160 characters or so, only the first 30 or 40 characters will appear in the preview screen on a subscriber’s phone. Since that preview may be the first impression they have of your message, it’s a good idea to put your call to action at the top of your message. A customer who sees “Redeem your 50% coupon” in a preview window is more likely to open your message than one who sees “Hi, it’s Joe from Company Name.”
2. Send coupons and discount codes. As I noted above, 75% of consumers want to receive special deals via text. You’ll increase your sales and built brand loyalty by giving people what they want. You can offer a straight discount, run a buy one, get one promotion, or advertise special sale prices in a text message.
Sample Text Message:
3. Use triggers to send texts. A lot of companies use text messages based on triggers. For example, you can send a text message to notify a customer that an online order has shipped, that they’ve abandoned an item in their shopping cart, or that you have released a new product. These are all triggers that you can use to justify connecting with your customers via text.
4. Personalize your texts. The more data you collect from your customers, the better able you will be to personalize the texts you send them. I’ve talked a lot about segmenting your email list, but I’d argue that segmentation is a must for text messaging. It’s a great way to make your customers feel seen and appreciated.
5. Learn about your customers. Sending a short survey in an SMS message is an affordable way to conduct audience research that you can then use to improve your marketing. Just make sure that the survey works on mobile!
6. Identify your influencers. How do you know which customers will recommend you to their friends and family? You ask them! Sending your subscribers a text message with a survey or even a simple yes or no question can help you identify potential influencers and brand ambassadors. When a customer tells you that they would recommend your company, you can follow up and offer a discount code if they’ll mention you on social media.
What I hope you can see is that SMS marketing is here to stay – and even with people staying close to home, it’s a good investment for your business.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
masculinitylost
MasculinityLost
veworbroker
Untitled
veksblog00
😋veksblog00🇬🇧🇦🇺
yiteli
Yi-Te Li
kibry-245
Untitled