What is the difference between a daily budget and a lifetime budget in a Facebook campaign?

The difference between a daily budget and a lifetime budget in a Facebook campaign lies in how the budget is spent over time.

Daily Budget:

With a daily budget, you set the maximum amount you're willing to spend on the campaign per day. Facebook will aim to evenly distribute this budget across each day of the campaign.

Lifetime Budget:

A lifetime budget, on the other hand, allows you to set the maximum amount you want to spend over the entire duration of the campaign.

Facebook then optimizes the spending based on when it's likely to be most effective, which can result in uneven daily spending.

Expert’s Tip:

“If you have the chance and the budget to conduct small pilot strategy tests, then do it. I suggest investing 20% of your budget on new and optimal opportunistic actions to explore and 80% on tried and true” - By Kristin Gallucci Consultant & Fractional CMO, Modern Marketer, Semrush Social Media 2024 Trends Report

In essence, a daily budget controls spending daily, while a lifetime budget controls spending over the entire duration of the campaign.

Ultimately, the better option depends on your campaign's specific needs and objectives.

Here's related information that you may also find helpful – Marketing Spend Statistics [Time to make informed decisions].

There are a lot of boxes that you will have to tick when setting up a paid Facebook ad for your business. There are around more than 1.7 billion users on Facebook. Read more https://thebigunit.com.au/blog/easy-steps-to-run-facebook-ads-for-your-business/

When you’re looking for furniture/decor on Facebook Marketplace (or where ever) are there any specific keywords you search? Or do you just slog through all the posts of boring things until you find something cool?

Generally no, I don't use specific terms. I actually usually go as broad in terminology as possible, and trawl through.

The goal for me is to find a cool thing that someone either doesn't know enough about to know how valuable or rare it is, or someone who wants it gone more than they want to make money on it. For either of those sellers, specific terminology is not something they're likely to use. The one-photo no-description $40 add is the target and has won me some really cool stuff.

I do make a point to open and browse ads for stuff I think is cool that I know I won't buy, just because I know the Facebook datatracking is relentless, and I might as well use it to my advantage.

If you've got budget to burn then yeah, go for the technical terminology for stuff. I just find that usually gets me experienced antiquers who know what they have. And that is, fellow shoppers, the enemy.

It might be the week-long migraine talking, but I’m actually quite pissed at the idea that indie authors are wealthy, and that’s why we can afford to do what we do.

Yeah, sure, some indie authors are independently wealthy and can funnel unlimited money into making their writing successful. You’ll find them on Twitter and Facebook groups making pretentious and mind-boggling claims like if you aren’t spending $20,000 a year on ad revenue, you’re ‘not taking your writing career seriously.’*

The rest of us, however, fucking hate those people.

Most indie authors are working on a budget the length of a shoestring. We’re doing most things ourselves or trading skills back and forth in a never-ending cycle of “I’ll edit yours if you edit mine.”

I’m lucky; I have a moderate following on Tumblr that supports my work. My Patreon allows me to set money aside each month for editing and professional cover illustrations that give my work a professional edge. And even then, I’m paying significantly reduced rates because most of the people I am working with are friends in the same boat as me, and we’re all just passing the same $200 back and forth between creative projects.

That I could fund an audiobook (something which typically costs anywhere between $2-7000) on the back of my eBook sales is miraculous, but it also took two years’ worth of sales to do.

And let’s be clear here, I have an advantage over many other indie authors because of Tumblr. Y’all are feral (affectionate) and treated the Amazon sales algorithm like a challenge. You looked at how the system was rigged, sucked air through your teeth, and went, “I can break that,” and then you did.

Most indie authors don’t have that.

Yes, it costs money to produce fiction as an indie author. Yes, some people pay a lot to get ahead of the game and claim success. Most of us, however, are scraping by on favors and the luck of knowing how and where to upload our work for maximum exposure.

This is something, incidentally, the rich fucks who hoard the top spots most likely to earn the most money will never tell you.

They’ll tell you to keep writing, follow your dreams and invest, invest, invest. Which is solid advice if you can because that’s how publishing works. The rich get richer and the poor, well, you know the rest.

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*To this day, it gives me no small amount of petty glee to know that for a while, Phangs was so popular on Amazon it broke the top 100 bestsellers in paranormal romance without paying a single dime in ad revenue. People were pissed. That’s like paying for one of the best seats in the house only to have some gremlin saw the floor out from under you Bugs Bunny style.

NOBODY needs to be defending these people. Major publishers, studios, streaming services, Tesla, Apple, Adobe, Amazon, social media companies- there isnt a single altruistic bone caught in their teeth. Profit from the output of exploited and captive labor IS their product now. When their contacts look like the one in question, the company is clearly stating that shareholders are the customers, not us!

Why else would it be anything but a stupid idea for Amazon to just nuke the majority of Comixology's self-published titles when they consolidated their services? If our experience was really foremost in their minds, why would they repeatedly purge, censor, demonitize, bury, and delete popular accounts with robust followings if not to allay the moral brainworms of shareholders and investors?

Forfeiting rights to our IP is not a "shitty deal," it's surrendering any potential ability to make money off of your own creative work. It's selling your property to a board of accountants to pitch into a portfolio. It's theirs to trot out as long as it's profitable and bury the instant its projected profit dips too close to the cost of maintenance. Hell, we've seen services drop popular series just because their projected profits started to flatten out! Mothballing it also has the added bonus of removing it from the market to further minimize potential competition. Like how there just weren't spider man movies for ages because the owner of the property didn't think it was worth developing but worth too much to sell.

They will make more money from suing you for trying to reclaim IP they mothballed than you did selling it to them in the first place. I guaranteee their budget for lawsuits is a lot deeper than the one they pay their "original" artists from.

By virtue of being a big, profitable, corporation, "their" IP is going to have an astronomically higher value in a court of law than any individual creator. The financial "damage" will be higher for infringing on their copyrights than any amount you can claim on your own. When it becomes theirs, their connections, their infrastructure, their reputation makes it an asset with much more value than you or I can possibly claim. So if you try to steal a bite back from them it's a bite of a *potentially* multimillion-dollar series. In their eyes, they bought the totality of your work, which you agreed was worth the price they gave you. It's value becomes more dependent on who owns it than whether it's even good.

You may not have the same potential to become flash-in-the-pan, short-term succesful without their resources, but you will still own your rights to distribute, alter, preserve, promote, and negotiate your share if you still own your work. That is worth everything as a creator who is passionate about what you've made and committed to protecting it.

The most effective power we can exercise as artists is our ability to say, "no" when someone else wants to pay us a disadvantageous fraction of our worth. You may lose potentially lucrative opportunities but "opportunities" presented by companies like Facebook or Twitter, whose real product is a platform for ads and data collection, with content as bait, are not opportunities to thrive on as independent artists. This specifically is an opportunity for the company to acquire property.

The myth that the publisher's strength is something for us to exploit, without them getting the lion's share is a trap that they feed from at will.

People like the poster up top are opportunists who see the process as a pipeline towards trading low-investment content for financial treats and maybe a share of ad revive. They're stalking horses for companies to exploit more talented but less experienced artists who are facing a daunting and overwhelming market where their work becomes harder and harder to show, let alone sell. A quick deal may feel like a win but it's selling the cow to save money on bottling the milk. Artists like this serve the publisher by making it seem like signing away your rights are just a necessary part of the game. However it's a game they are playing with exceedingly cheap stakes that weren't going to succeed on their own merit. So what if Mr. Business Perspective loses rights to his sexy Mario Bros. parody to a huge company? The point was always to unload it because it's a product, a bartering chip, a trinket. He's a Business Man, so he sees tactics that maximize profits to the business as maximizing their ability to buy whatever shiny tripe he cranks out. The business is his customer, not the reader. The business is his ally, not the creative community. Fuck him and fuck anyone who tells you the exposure is worth a damn if you don't retain rights to your work.

Recently, I was sent a job listing. It called for a graphic designer "to produce direct response static & video ads for various social media channels, such as Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube." So, even though it was asking for a graphic designer, it wasn't a graphic design job—it was an advertising/social media/videography job. The career I've dedicated eight years of my life to is the bit the ad referred to as 'static'.

Ever since, I've been thinking about this idea that video is the future, and also I have been (not coincidentally) extremely depressed. Not to be all "you kids and your phones," but...

In advertising, your consumer's attention is money. Video is THE most attention-demanding form of advertising and therefore the most bang for your buck. It's why Facebook fudged their own stats for the effectiveness of pivoting to video so aggressively in the first place. If your consumer is reading something—a magazine, a poster, a book, something on their phone—then they're still listening, and if something else demands their attention, they'll just look up. If they're listening—to somebody talking, to music, to a podcast—then their eyes and hands are free to do whatever they like. They can look at the world around them, which involves many forms of competing visual advertising.

Video is a media form that doesn't stop. It keeps talking when your consumer looks up, and then keeps moving to grab their visual attention again. The best method for advertising is one that a consumer has to exert energy to not pay attention to.

(—This is why I hate video so much as somebody with ADHD. When my dopamine and blood sugar are low, focusing past someone playing TikTok audio is hard enough for me that it hurts. I've never had the same problem with radio or with like... idk, billboards. And TV is kind of bad, but at least it makes predictable sounds, whereas every person who films a TikTok with sudden screams or yelling in it is, in my opinion, going to hell.)

This is why the UI for platforms like TikTok and Instagram have autoplay, algorithms that disappear things you've seen so quickly, no scrub bars, and don't have skip or pause buttons. Your consumer has to keep their phone in hand to keep swiping or scrolling to properly engage. If that consumer can't stop a video or go back, then the platform can train them not to look up until the video is over. Anxiety that a user will lose their place or not be able to keep up with what is happening is part of what keeps them from looking away.

This is also a reason to be suspicious of why so many tech companies are obsessed with VR in general. A phone that people have to hold and look at and listen to is pretty good, right? But they can ultimately still put it down when an ad plays. It would be way better if we could put the advertising somewhere that tracks and follows their eye movements so that they literally can't look away.

We all know that text is still a better, faster, and more information-dense delivery system. Sometimes I see people mourning the pivot to video because it's a worse way to consume information. They're right! It is! But social media platforms have NO INTEREST in providing their users with like, actual reliable information. If they did, then social media companies would have no interest in AI.

(—This is also why they have no interest in fighting misinformation on their services. People who get radicalised are very engaged platform users. And the people who radicalise them come with massive budgets for ad spend.)

All social media platforms want is to get consumers hooked on their content so that they'll continue to deliver ad revenue. Video is the best way of achieving that. That's why we're all pivoting to algorithms and video. That's why Tumblr Live exists and Snapchat miraculously has not died.

Anyway. I chose to become a graphic designer.

September 3, 2023 Update from the Battleship Texas Foundation

"DRY DOCK TOURS

On the Deck of Battleship Texas

Dry Dock Tours are BACK! Discount available for those who return. For more information please visit: battleshiptexas.org/drydock

Dry Dock staff hang reproductions of the historic "Come on Texas!" banners across the gangway.

SHIP REPAIRS

TORPEDO BLISTERS - The new torpedo blisters are a slightly different design and square off at the bottom below the waterline. This design change will make the new blisters easier to maintain increasing their longevity.

The last of the torpedo blister plates are being added. (Starboard)

COATING - The inside of the blisters, and the ship's hull will be coated to protect against possible corrosion.

The bottom of the torpedo blisters that will now be exposed to the water have been cleaned and prepped. Doubler plates will go over these areas.

This docking keel has been cleaned and primed.

Doubler plates have already been added in some areas where the torpedo blisters once were.

Primer added to the end of one docking keel.

Repairs made to the ship's stern near the keel.

LEAK TESTING - All welds continue to be tested for leaks. They are done via vacuum box, dye penetrant or magnaflux depending on the area.

DECK REPAIRS - Gulf Copper's yard workers have concluded repairing the deck on the ship's Signal Bridge and have begun working on the deck above, the Navigation Bridge. A part of the deck repairs includes sand blasting the underside of the underside and painting on a coat of primer.

Scaffolding used to repair the superstructure of Battleship Texas.

Scaffolding used to repair the superstructure of Battleship Texas. Repairs have been made to the deck, bracing, and supports.

Dock Tour staff man the 40mm Bofors!

AFT FIRE CONTROL TOWER - Work continues in the AFCT as the old grating that was installed in 1988 has been completely removed and replaced with a steel deck. Small repairs to the bulkhead are currently ongoing as the plan is to have it look as it did in 1945.

Work continues on the ship's aft fire control. (New decking, doors replaced, etc)

Work on the ship's aft fire control. The doors will be added back, and if the budget allows, the windows too.

The door that is supposed to be on each side of tower has been opened.

The door that is supposed to be on each side of the Mower has been opened up again.

Live, Laugh, And Flood your Torpedo Blisters

Visit our website at: battleshiptexas.org"

Posted by Hunter Miertschin on the Battleship Texas Foundation Group Facebook page: link

AI and the Bursting of the Social Media Bubble: How to Survive as a Creative

I've been wanting to put my thoughts on AI and Social Media into a more collected format, so I've written up a longer post on it on my blog on my website, and I'm sharing it here as well.

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Let’s face it, being a creative is becoming a rougher and rougher ride lately, especially if you’re a creative who grew up on the internet. A lot has changed in just the last year. The downfall of Twitter, the rise of AI. For awhile there we had a golden age of social media platforms that could really help us build our audience and careers, only for that all to start evaporating seemingly overnight, leaving a lot of creators stranded and disoriented. Look on any site right now and you’ll find creators terrified of losing everything to AI, creators terrified of losing their audience if their main social media presence gets shut down or banned, creators completely unsure of how to navigate the industry with half their tools taken away.

It sucks.

But, at the same time, as quick as it feels, this has been a long time coming. The social media bubble has been primed to burst for awhile now. What made social media a great tool for creators in the beginning was its authenticity. Social media was social. You found people you liked, you followed them, and you saw what they posted in the order they posted it. There were no games. No tricks. Ads that were present were less intrusive, less targeted, and less frequent. People weren’t as determined to play numbers games with who could get the most followers, the most likes, the most most most. An independent creator or small studio might sell to you, but you knew there were people behind those products. You knew there was a person who cared, who just wanted to show you the neat thing they made, not drive up their metrics or try out all those Cool Tricks they learned in a business psychology class.

Then big companies said “hey, we want a piece of that pie too,” so they started hopping on to social media as well. But it didn’t work for them, not the way it did for independent creators, because it wasn’t authentic. It was marketing. There wasn’t a person who cared behind the screen, it was some kid hired fresh out of school and handed a brand standards packet and told to make it work. They didn’t care about really connecting with people, they cared about sales and sales alone.

The big companies didn’t like that it wasn’t working for them, oh no. People should be giving them attention too!!!1! So the shift began. Ads got more targeted and more frequent. Algorithms grew in size and scope, driving people towards content they never asked for or showed any real interest in, barely showing things that people had actually followed at all. Social media stopped being social. It became marketing media and, as a consequence, small creators got buried in the deluge. Some gave up, some did their best to trundle along doing what they could, and some tried to play the game under its new rules only to have their audience still evaporate because, without a huge marketing budget, the corporate method doesn’t work at all. A few got lucky and went viral, rising to the top without having to play by the rules, but many of those struggled to maintain it and crashed back down soon after.

Then there’s the homogenization. Facebook bought Instagram. TikTok exploded in popularity, so Youtube added Shorts and Instagram added Reels. Twitter added longer and longer content options, despite being a micro blogging site. Patreon took off, so everyone started adding paid content options. Social media sites were so terrified of someone doing better than them that they all became exactly the same. Before, you had an account on every site because they each did something different. They each had their own value. But now they’re all the same, so why bother having multiple accounts if you can accomplish the same thing on each one? These companies have shot themselves in the foot by no longer offering anything unique, then got mad that they were bleeding and blamed their users even though they were the ones holding the gun.

And, of course, Twitter is over there bleeding out on the floor. Plenty of social media sites have risen and fallen over the years—Myspace, DeviantART, to name a couple—but Twitter is the first one to be so maliciously and quickly taken out with a shot to the head. Almost overnight creators have lost a major source of connection to literary agents, art directors, job boards, and just a generally vibrant network of other creators and supporters. A few contenders tried to step into the ring to replace Twitter, but all seem to have fizzled out within a few months.

Amidst the social media meltdown, a new player stomped onto the scene: Artificial Intelligence. It swept in just as quickly as the demise of Twitter and at about the same time. Within just months it went from generating strange blobby horses with too many legs to almost perfectly replicating the styles of well known artists. Which, understandably, made everyone panic. As soon as it was on the scene we saw major publishers using it to create book covers (rather than hire an artist), news sites using it to create graphics (rather than hire an artist), people using it to pump out low quality books to put on Amazon (rather than learning to write themselves), and plenty more. We learned that the data sets these AI were trained on were all stolen art and writing. We watched everyone wave off our concerns and tell us we were overreacting, that this was just the “democratization of art.” Nevermind that a computer doesn’t need to pay rent, or fill the fridge, or pay medical bills.

The AI saga is still ongoing, and likely will be for a long time yet. But this article isn’t about AI in and of itself, so we’ll leave it there.

In the latest development of the social media bubble burst, the RESTRICT act got thrown into the pile. Falsely dubbed the “TikTok Ban,” the RESTRICT act is a vastly overreaching bill that would decimate the internet as we know it. It actually doesn’t mention TikTok at all within the text of the bill, TikTok is just the Trojan horse being used to try and push the bill through. It has, however, garnered vehement disagreement from both sides of the aisle so who knows what will happen there.

That’s where we stand right now. Many social media sites are dying, AI is stealing work, and the government is trying to destroy the internet as we know it. Good times. Good times. So what the hell are us creators supposed to do? Well, there’s a few ways to go about it and a few good ways to protect yourself.

Firstly: remember that you are unique. AI is not actually intelligent, it cannot actually learn, it can just cobble together data with zero actual understanding of what that data means. Only you can come up with your characters, your stories, your designs. Even an AI trained exclusively on your work cannot create the things you will create in the future. An AI can’t know why it’s important to draw seams on clothing to give the shapes more form, it can’t know why it’s important to show not tell in a story, it can’t understand the importance of proper kerning in a logo. Do you think Good Omens (both the book and the show) would have the nuanced characterization it does if there weren’t real people with real experiences behind its creation? Your creations are yours, you learned the things you needed to to bring them to life, you cobbled together dozens of tiny, seemingly inconsequential experiences from your own life to create them, and that is why they will always have value.

Secondly: be authentic. Be excited about your own work. Be a person. Don’t just push your content and shop and sales all the time. Relax. Geek out about a fandom. Share a meme. Get in a lengthy friendly debate about ancient copper merchants. You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, overshare your personal life, but you can and should still be a person. You are not a corporation and trying to act like one, trying to keep pace with what they do, will just hinder you. Being authentic will build trust between you and your audience, and that is key to creating a stable environment. An extension of this: don’t beg. Your audience does not owe you attention. Give them a reason to care and they will, even if it takes awhile.

Thirdly: own your audience. Have your own website, even if it is a simple single page business card website to point people to other places. Make it your hub so that people—fans, art directors, agents, etc.—will be able to find you and reach out to you even if your social media sites go down. Have a newsletter that people can sign up for, and back that data up frequently. Don’t rely on any social media website to hold your following for you, because it can vanish overnight and suddenly you’ll be back at square one. But a CSV of emails backed up onto a couple of hard drives? That’s YOURS. Substack died? Oh well, you backed up the CSV a couple days ago and now you can just upload it to a different newsletter platform and pick up right where you left off.

Fourthly: figure out what kind of creative you want to be. Yeah, some work is going to be lost to AI. Yeah, you’re going to miss out on some jobs because you can’t chat with art directors on Twitter anymore. But there will always be work out there for creatives, even if it is different than you used to imagine. Maybe you won’t be able to get into concept art with a huge gaming company the way you dreamed, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a great indie studio to work with. Maybe you won’t be able to get a traditional publishing deal because you don’t like their values anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can’t run a great self-publishing campaign on Kickstarter.

Fifthly: support other creators. Share their work. Point art directors their way if you don’t have time for a particular job. Introduce them to your own audience. Boost their commission info posts. Build your network.

Lastly, ask yourself this: are you going to stop consuming content from your favorite creators just because AI exists? Just because Twitter died? Are you going to shelve all your favorite books because AI is out there? Stop looking at art that isn’t made by an AI? No. You’re not. You’re going to keep consuming the things you love, and so will everyone else. Maybe not in the same ways, maybe not in the same amounts, but they will.

One final note: do you know what happened when photography started to become widely available and affordable? Illustrators panicked. If newspapers could just snap a quick photo of the latest news, they wouldn’t need to hire illustrators. If catalogues could photograph their products, they wouldn’t need to hire illustrators. It was a huge shift in the entire industry, and illustrators did lose work. But you know what? A century later, we’re still here. We still have value. We still get work. We still create amazing things that can’t be done any other way. Our ancestors have weathered this storm before, and we will weather it this time, even if we get a little banged up in the process.

If you enjoyed this content, tips are very much appreciated! (But 100% not required!)

hey, i saw in your bio that you work on tall ships and i was wondering if u had any advice.

i’ve been on 2 tall ship sailing trips before (+some dinghy sailing) and got my competent crew recently so i’m pretty inexperienced. on those sailing trips i’ve met young adults who were working on the boats as volunteers. i’d like to be able to volunteer on tall ships one day.

do you have any advice for the best way to gain experience and learn stuff? (if possible on a budget). i’m taking a gap year next year and i’d really like to take the chance to go sailing and get better at it. (i’m in the uk if that’s relevant.)

absolutely no pressure to answer and i’m sorry this is so vague and clueless! anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this. your blog is cool :))

Heya! Thank you, and I'd be happy to give you my two cents! All of my boat experience has been in the US so take my advice with a transatlantic grain of salt, but here goes!

Firstly, two trips and some dinghy sailing and a competent crew cert is actually quite a bit in comparison to your average person starting out in the world of boats, so don't worry about feeling too inexperienced! You're already on a good track. I've been working on tall ships in some capacity for over 10 years and I still don't have any specific certifications (I've got a lot of experience and sea time, I just haven't had time to take any of my courses and exams for actual licensing).

Facebook is (unfortunately) still the best place to network, especially for international opportunities. There are a variety of groups that you can join. I'm personally in Schooner Bums, Tall Ship Opportunities, Women Who Sail, Crew Finder, and a few other private groups specific to the organizations I've worked for. A lot of organizations will post to these groups with job opportunities with specific requirements, so it's fairly easy to get the info you need. I'm sure there are a few groups specific to sailing in the UK. In the US, we have Tall Ships America, which is an organization that provides networking, training, and job opportunities for mostly US based sailors and boats. I'm not sure if the UK has an equivalent organization, but I do recommend even though you are UK based you should peruse their website, especially the Billet Bank, which is where job links are posted:

You're in the UK, so there are a shit ton of boats there but as far as I know most of them are museum boats that don't do a lot of sailing. I will say from personal experience that museum boats with a good volunteer maintenance program are great places to start for establishing a strong set of foundational skills (knots, understanding and maintenance of the rig, carpentry, etc.). You might not get much actual sea time with a museum boat, but you will learn the things that will make you a better sailor. I got into tall ships by working as a historical interpreter and then as part of the sailing/maintenance crew here:

https://www.jyfmuseums.org/visit/jamestown-settlement/living-history/ships#ad-image-0

Most tall ship organizations are based around education, both for the public and for the crew, so it's easy to find a boat with some sort of introductory training program relatively near wherever you live. These range from expensive pay-to-play working vacation type experiences, to paying a fee to participate in a structured comprehensive training curriculum after which you can become long-term crew, to volunteering weekends sanding and oiling blocks in exchange for the opportunity to sail.

Since you said you are taking a gap year, my advice is look for a short-term comprehensive live-aboard program that gets your foot in the door for staying on as regular crew, potentially even paid crew. Idk any specific ones in the UK, but here's the one that the last boat I worked on offers as an example of what i mean:

If you've got time before your gap year starts, try to find something local, like volunteering for a mueseum like I mentioned earlier, so that you get used to the vocabulary and foundational knowledge of boats. That way you can really get the most out of a more immersive program later on and you won't feel too much like an oversaturated sponge trying desperately to sop up more information even though your brain is leaking out of your ears.

I'm not sure if you're wanting to do tall ships longer term or just something one-off for the gap year, but if you're in it for the long haul just be prepared that it's a lot of hard work for not much financial return. I don't mean to discourage you, it's just good to know that upfront. On Lady Washington we have a saying that "we work on an 18th century boat for 18th century wages."

Unfortunately the tall ship industry is kind of hard budget wise. Most training programs cost quite a bit of money, most jobs are either volunteer or don't pay very well (industry standard deckhand pay in the US is about $1000/month), and most higher level positions require various levels of certifications (for which course and exam fees can run pretty high). You can do it on a budget, especially since most long term positions are live aboard so you don't have to pay for rent or groceries, but if you want to make a career out or it, it takes a lot of years of working for less money than you're worth before you start earning real money back.

Despite all that, working on tall ships is still an incredible and fulfilling experience that I recommend to anyone with a love of the sea and learning practical skills!

Sorry I couldn't give you more specific information, as I have yet to work on any UK boats. Good luck, and please tell me when you find a program that works for you!

Ngl I'm kind of scared of the idea of DINOK actually being made into a show. Do you think it would be profitable or even break even? I can't see it attracting a lot of mainstream attention and Dan's/DnP's core audience is not as big as it once was

i'll repeat myself here and say that it all depends on a platform and marketing. marketing can save dinok. but it can also kill it. like, single-handedly. mainstream attention depends on marketing on different platforms (huge budget). audience's attention depends on Dan talking to us on his platforms, consistently (no budget, just time). i'm sure with dinok Dan would be shooting for people outside the phandom, and that makes sense. it just needs to be done correctly, and not at the cost of his main audience.

my selfish ass wants Dan to make something out of it, just to see what he wants to tell us. the AU he created in his head. but, i don't need a show for that, i'd be happy to just read the script. if making a show costs too much money and is too risky, just sell the script. i don't want it to go to waste. it's a huge amount of work, and it would be sad if it never sees the light of day.

wad marketing in relation to dinok under the cut (too much yapping for free)

look at wad as an example. now, it's so clear that their initial strategy was experimental and didn't work, so they changed it halfway through. they also kinda dropped the promo by the European leg and just stopped updating banners in time, and overall started panicking. Dan's attitude and the main message in promo materials were all over the place, with him trying to target the general audience and the locals, meanwhile sometimes talking in riddles, and talking to us (phannies) only in liveshows at the start of each leg. and then the European leg didn't even have that. (i'm simplifying here a lot, i'm just trying to show a general picture). dd, despite having a good concept, failed to gain an audience and make people buy tickets to the show. there was a connection between dd and wad but it wasn't strong enough, and the vibes were a bit different, so it was also confusing people. dd t-shirt had a better promo in that one dd episode than the majority of wad promo clips. you know why? because it was genuine. he was whining about money and it was clear that he hated doing that bit but ffs, it was entertaining. Dan is not bad at promotion, he just needs someone to navigate his negative energy in the right direction. 90% of wad marketing was BORING as fuck. and there was not enough of it in general. wrong platforms, no consistency, boring recycled ideas (remember his clip with the US states? they did the same for ii but in a youtube video. which worked so much better not only because it was "Dan and Phil" but also because it was filmed better, the platform was bigger, and they didn't take it seriously. promoting on your main platform always wins over facebook/instagram/tiktok ads. also, we could engage with a youtube video. that's like a free promo within the phandom. geography can be FUN. wad geography wasn't). promotion doesn't have to be boring. Barbenheimer and Miley and Selena's cross-promotions showed it so clearly. fandoms love this shit, and Dan knows enough youtubers to pull this off. even if not cross-promotion tactics, there are ways to present something in a fun way. make something memeable (he tried in the beginning, but a white board wasn't the most fun tbh), make a promo we could engage with.

thank fuck they bought youtube ads for wad premiere. still fucking up with banners and editing though. and Dan still doesn't talk to his audience to make them buy tickets. like, he is trying, they have bullet points (half of them are coming out from Phil's mouth btw). but Dan making "crying" faces and pleading could be turned into "reasons why i want you to see this show". he wants to cry about how hard it was to make this show happen? about these 2 years of ups and downs? FINE. do it, talk to us, don't brush over the logistics, tell us how proud you are of finally filming the show. tell us why it's so important to you and why you want more people to see it. (Anthony's interview as an example, but make it deeper and without Anthony)

don't make me write a marketing strategy for wad premiere, no one wants that. but omg, it's his child and he doesn't know how to present it to the world. he presented dinok better by making "why i quit youtube". what i'm trying to say is that complaining works. sharing your struggles works. if he is so proud of this show he needs to tell his audience, that didn't see the show, what is it so amazing, brilliant, unique, important and wonderful about it. showing Dan on stage with a microphone isn't enough. it's pretty, but it's boring (i'm still waiting for a full promo clip to drop before Feb 25th). preshow and after-party are good selling points, but it shouldn't be the main thing. Dan is using Phil to sell wad, finally. don't get me wrong, i'm obsessed with it. he should use Phil, and only because of Phil more people are gonna see the show. but now it looks like Dan and Phil brand took the lead and wad is just a passenger. and as someone who witnessed all the stages wad went through to get to February 25th, i want the show itself to shine. it should be the main character, not the after-show or the carpet. how? Dan should talk more about things related to the show. he can go around NDAs, it's his show, his company. just don't drop names and certain numbers.

i need to stop. enough of free promo.

There are a lot of boxes that you will have to tick when setting up a paid Facebook ad for your business. There are around more than 1.7 billion users on Facebook.

Back again with another She-Ra, He-Man and MOTU meet at MCM London on the 26th May (Sunday). The planned time is 1pm - this may change depending on the final MCM events/talks schedule. Please keep a check the event page is over on the Facebook for more details, any updates and changes.

If peeps have downloaded the MCM app from their App Store this meet can be added to your personal schedule and the app will set helpful reminders.

Anyway as usual everyone is welcome, cosplay, nerd gear, He-Man or She-Ra fan - doesn’t matter, just come along, be cool to each other, take photos with consent and have some fun.

Anyway I’ve lost track of how many of these I’ve done…I think this is the 5th or 6th SPOP Meetup over the MCMs here in the UK…it’s super chill. We meet, chat, take some photos, all while having fun and making new fandom friends. For anyone budgeting their social energy levels and time typically between 5-15 people show up and it takes roughly 30-60 minutes (more people usually want more photos taken which is the time)

A village councillor in western Ukraine has thrown grenades on to the floor of a council meeting, wounding 26 people, police say.

The attack took place on Friday morning at the village council headquarters in Keretsky in the western Transcarpathian region.

Police have not yet commented on a possible motive for the attack, which has left six seriously wounded.

The meeting was being livestreamed on Facebook when the incident took place.

Councillors had been holding a heated discussion about their budget for 2024 as well as this year's financial results and holding a vote on awarding the council chief a bonus.

Almost 90 minutes into the meeting, the footage shows one of the village councillors shouting, objecting to the budget. The man, wearing a dark jacket, then leaves the room, taking another man with him.

A few minutes later he returns and stands in front of the door. Shortly afterwards he takes several grenades out of his jacket pockets.

He briefly tries to attract people's attention, saying "May I, may I?", before tossing the grenades into the middle of the room. Moments later they explode.

"As a result, 26 people were wounded, six of whom are in a grave condition," the police statement said, adding that medics were trying to resuscitate the man who threw the grenades. There have been no further updates on his condition since then.

Many Ukrainians have access to weaponry due to the war with Russia, but there is no evidence yet that the attack was related to the conflict.

Keretsky is a village of some 4,000 people not far from the Hungarian border.

Ukrainian police say the SBU security service will investigate the incident as a "terrorist attack".

Hi Taffybuns! Thank you for being you and artist that has passion to make. My brother told me that he bought two shirts out of it and he loved it, i was surprised you were the artist drew design! (the pokemon ones!)

Though I am curious and i hope you'll able to respond, do you have advice to make my art for merchandise in the future? I don't mind if you want to simplified explaination, a tumblr posts, or dropping a youtube link video; since you're busy with conventions.

I'm picky when it comes youtube art videos that are always give me the vibes of elitism, clickbait videos or others. You're the first artist I wanted to ask, so i hope it's fine if you can reply or not.

Sending my best regards to you. Take care and love your art as always. (I hope i can buy your pokemon hawaiin shirt!)

hello! thanks so much for the sweet message!!

apologies for the confusion, though! the pokemon shirts arent mine! i share a joint storefront with my friend and tablemate, you can view all his designs here! we have our store bio set to say we are two artists, but it's hard to see on the shopee site format, haha. i'll pass this message along to him, and i hope you can buy his shirts in the future too, they're very well made! i'm glad your brother enjoys them!

(if anyone is reading this, he also has them listed internationally on Etsy! my items aren't here though, sorry!!)

i assume you're PH based aswell if your brother got our shirts, so i'm gonna link some resources and basic advice under the cut-

i'd be glad to help where i can, though my basic advice is to just start.. i began selling merch with dann (friend who made the pokemon shirts) when we were just classmates in college, and we started at small anime events selling small prints with our table falling apart hahajkfghjk.. but even back then everyone was so friendly, so it was very encouraging !! the art community is very sweet and there is a lot of support for you !!

first, you'll want to find your market! this will determine what conventions you want to apply to and what kind of merch you want to make. do you want to make fanart, or original art? are you doing mostly stickers, tote bags, or anime merch? or do you just want to sell online?

second, what is your budget for merch production? starting out is expensive, personally my funds always circulate between profit and spending on restocks again. this will determine what kind of merch you can make, and then you expand later! i started out with only stickers and art prints, then keychains, and then bags and t-shirts later on!

if you're into original art, some events i recommend for beginners are Patrons of the Arts, Buzzart, Komiket. they have regular events throughout the year. if you're into stickers, there's Stickercon and Sticky Expo!

if you're into fan art, you can try ozinefest (sales are slower but table cost is cheaper), or if you have enough money, split for cosplay ph events

of course these aren't the only events, though they're the ones i regularly attend! if you have a more specialized market, there are dedicated cons like philifur, the grand lason, pokecon, etc. for all of these events you'll either have to keep your eyes peeled for table openings on their pages (rare), or email them to be added to their mailing list so you'll be told when they're open

if you don't have any suppliers yet, you can apply to join Artist Alley Group Order on facebook ! people regularly post about suppliers for all kinds of merchandise that you can look up. if you want any recommendations you can message me off-anon!

as for the merchandise itself, this varies person to person. my market is more obscure fanart that other people don't sell, and cutesy original art! i sell big illustrations as prints, though other people report on having a hard time selling prints. it depends on the content and art style. you'll have to experiment and see, or look around other shops to see what sells! visiting art markets yourself is also a huge help, to see the market, make friends in the artph community, and support artists!

i'd recommend starting out with stickers and prints- they're the cheapest to produce, and people often buy stickers because of their low price at cons. when you get more familiar with the market you can try going onto more expensive things to reproduce!

again if you want details, let me know! this is very vague and general advice, if u have any specific questions i'll do my best if i'm not busy! don't be afraid to surf thru some videos too, a lot are very helpful n not too elitist!

gl and take care aswell anon!

self-publishing stuff,

I'm not sure if any other self-published authors read my blog, or if there are any aspiring self-published authors reading. Just in case, I thought I would write a little bit about what I've been trying with regard to marketing/promotion.

I don't have Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or Twitter. Tumblr is the only social media I'm active on. I've been able to write and share posts about my novel, and I've been fortunate to have people like and reblog those posts.

Over the past month, I've been reaching out to book blogs that accept review requests. There are a couple of different challenges here. Not all book blogs accept review requests, and many book blogs are only open to review requests from traditionally published authors. Additionally, even among book blogs that accept review requests from self-published authors, some bloggers only read books in specific genres that may not overlap with the genre you wrote.

It takes a good amount of time to search online for book blogs and select those that accept review requests for self-published novels in your genre.

After that, it seems to be a numbers game. In my first round of requests to book bloggers, I reached out to 12 bloggers and heard back from one.

A marketing/advertising budget comes into play as well. Some self-published authors use Facebook/Instagram ads. I haven't tried that yet, because I don't want to engage with FB/IG. I'm open to setting aside a small amount of money every month for other forms of marketing/advertising, like sponsored posts on Tumblr or with book bloggers.

It has been an interesting and eye-opening process. Writing, completing, editing, and self-publishing the novel is just half the battle. The work definitely isn't done at that point. Getting the word out, getting the story into people's hands, is the other half. I've learned a lot and I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes.