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writefinch · 4 years

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Family-Owned Small Business

(CN: incest, sex work, mentions of sexual assault & suicidal ideation)

The worst part of my job is administration. Last-minute rescheduling when a client flakes on us. Chasing up payments. Booking accommodation at short notice. Answering messages! Jesus, every time in the last year when I've slumped, sighed, and thought to myself "fuck working, I need a break from all this" it's been when I've opened my messages and seen thirty different texts that need a reply. Some people are fine with it I guess, but for me it's boring, time consuming, and stressful.

Big deal though, right, I mean nobody loves doing admin, why even bring it up? Well, if I tell someone that for work last night I ate a client's cum out of my mom's pussy, I'd expect that they'd get fixated on the sex work and the incest. I'd expect them to freak out and not pay attention to the specifics of what I'm saying. So, first, I'd like that person to know that the thing I hate about my job is probably the same thing that *they* hate about *their* job. I would rather lick my mom's asshole for five minutes than answer emails for five minutes, and I answer a lot of emails.

Do we have to worry about violence, danger, cops, and legal trouble? Yeah, we do. Am I scared of these things? Yeah, sometimes, but I had to worry about all of those things before I started doing sex work. At least now we've got the money to buy our way out of the worst of it.

I'm not saying that what I do with mom is an objectively healthy relationship, let alone a perfect one. If you took me back in time and told me I could pick a completely different life for me and my mom, I'm sure there's a bunch of choices I'd pick over this one. But I never had that choice. I got hurt a lot growing up. I feel like I've finally escaped the things that hurt me, but I know that I've barely started to recover from them.

That's why I'm writing this. We've saved enough money to afford some therapy and my first session is next week. I want help with the fear, the nightmares, the mood swings and insomnia, I want to stop the rush of rage and terror that flows through me every time I see the word 'dad,' I want help untangling the stuff that came out of being told I was a pansy when I was growing up, then figuring out I'm gay, then figuring out I'm a girl, then figuring out I'm all three of those things while I was living in a place that kept trying to kill me for it. What I don't want is for the psych to pin it all on the two least harmful and least fucked-up things about my life, and worse, I don't want them to make me believe it. This journal is a prophylactic, an assessment of my job, my relationships and my life that I can refer back to if and when someone sticks their fingers in my brain and swirls them around.

I'll start with a problem statement: my dad. The memories that hurt the most are the ones where he almost appeared human, the flickers of joy, curiosity and humor that stood out from the bland cruelty that made up the rest of his personality. I'll remember him buying me ice cream or talking about a book or a movie with me, I'll doubt myself and wonder if I just went crazy and cut him out of my life for no reason, and then my brain will hook onto a random act of sadism he inflicted on me.

The physical abuse was bad all on its own, real psycho shit like driving me out into the woods and making me pick through the brush for a switch he could hit me with and a whole lot more I won't go into, but the emotional abuse was worse. When I was eleven, I forgot to feed my cat one day. He gave her away to my uncle, but told me that she'd developed malnutrition and had to be put down. I didn't find out the truth for another two years, when he just let it slip at Easter. He bragged about it, even, like he'd invented a really smart child-rearing technique. I don't want to write too much down here because I don't need to, if anything I want therapy to *stop* everything he did from running through my head. He's a punishment-obsessed sadist, a Baptist, and he works as a judge. Did he ever sexually abuse me? No. Parent of the year, right? He kicked me out for being a fag the day I turned eighteen, so it's ironic that my biggest fear is that he comes looking for me. He doesn't even know I'm a girl.

On the other hand, my mom has had an interesting life. She's kind of a fuck up. When I was one year old, mom and dad split and dad got full custody--being a judge helped with that--while mom left the state. She spent a decade trying to kick a heroin habit and a year and a half in prison for related stuff, got banned from even entering the state I lived in on account of her parole--again, dad being a judge helped with that--illegally emigrated to Canada for a while, and went to Oregon by mistake, doing a mixture of bartending, delivery driving, MDMA dealing and whoring to stay afloat.

The only reason we met again is that I was in the same city staying with friends, also whoring. I don't remember the first time I saw her, but the first time we talked was in a mutual friend's tiny studio apartment with a few other hooker friends. We ended up comparing our Pest Lists, shared a few drinks, and swapped numbers. A week later we fucked, and a month after *that* we realized that we'd Oedipus'd ourselves. It seems funnier now than it did at the time.

That was an emotional time. We cried with joy that we'd found each other, we started tip-toeing around the ideas of rebuilding our lives together, and we agreed to pretend that the sex had never happened. Of course, we got drunk together a week later and fucked again. She's hot! I have a thing for older women, I have a thing for breaking taboos, and I have a thing for being mommied in bed. Blame dad for raising me like this, I dunno.

We started doing sex work as a team after she got a dental abscess. The bill for the hospital stay and the tooth removal was insane, and the dentist straight-up told her that she'd end up with another in a different tooth within a year if she didn't get two root canals. Even when she was recovering, we could only afford fish antibiotics off of Amazon. We crunched some numbers and made some inquiries, and figured out that we could pull in two week's worth of our combined income with one night of mother-daughter stuff.

Our first joint session was with a real estate pervert I'll call Stan, a chubby balding powerlifter in his fifties who we'd both had as a client before. Mom took me over her knees and switched between spanking me and fingering me while he watched. I sucked him off while mom made out with him, made out with my mom with his cock between our lips, licked his balls as mom licked my ass, then let him fuck my ass while mom sat on my face. That was the first half hour. He came six more times before we passed out in the early hours of the morning, and I drifted off nursing his finally-limp cock in my mouth. He paid us the price of a used Volkswagen for our trouble, and I blew him one last time before we left as a thank-you.

Six months later, mom's teeth were fixed, I was on spiro, and we had just under a dozen clients for our "doubles sessions." Only a few of our appointments are ones with me and mom together, three or four a month, we mostly work alone. That's not out of a deliberate choice, it's just that we've got a strict criteria for who we'll double up on.

Trust is one thing: depending on the lawyers we can afford, what we're doing is either kinda illegal or extremely illegal. Since my dad is presumably still a judge, I don't want him to ever find out about this. He'd put us in a prison or a mental institution. We won't do a double session with a client unless we've both had individual sessions with them.

Money is the other thing. Getting your dick sucked by a hot mom while her daughter sucks your balls costs a week's wages for the average person. Hiring us for the night is more like a month's wages. Even in a city like this, there's only a few thousand people that can drop that kind of money on hookers. Then, they've got to *want* to fuck a trans girl and her mom together. Don't get me wrong, more people are into mother-daughter incest than you'd expect, but it's not a universal thing.

Clients are, on average, annoying. It's a fact of life. The thing that all clients have in common is a ton of disposable income and a fondness for fucking hookers. They're not necessarily bad people, but there’s a heavy ‘What can a banana cost, ten dollars?’ vibe to them. It’s not that they’re adrenochrome-drinkers who don’t see regular people as human, it’s more that they don’t have an intuitive awareness that other people don’t have savings accounts, health insurance, an investment property, and four figures of walking-around money at any given time. I guess I'd feel differently if I was like, a concierge or a PA, but there's a lot more pillow talk in my job.

I've had bad and dangerous clients before, there's been at least two occasions where I was pretty sure I was going to die--one where the hospital afterwards stay wiped out four months of income, not counting the month where I couldn’t work--but they were all before I met mom, when I couldn't be so careful about screening prospective clients and dropping them if they threw up red flags. I'm sure we'll get bad clients in the future, but we're in a better place to deal with them safely.

I also wanna write down what a "normal day" is like. Friday was a good example. I woke up early at 9am and cooked breakfast for mom. She was up already doing the laundry. We entertain some clients in our apartment, so we go through a lot of clothes and a lot of sheets. You can't fuck a guy on top of another guy's cum stains, that's rude. Some of the job is Housework But More. We don't really use the main bedroom or the sitting room because we treat them like bed and breakfast guest rooms. It's annoying but every time we have a session without getting an actual hotel or motel room we save like $50 minimum.

After breakfast I epilated, showered, and went for a run. Personal grooming isn't that big a deal in terms of time, I'm not saying I don't spend a lot of time on it, I do, but I'd be spending that time even if I worked in a bar or an office or something. Look: I'm hot. I might have been a weird-looking spotty nerd when I thought I was a boy, but as a girl I'm a fucking dime. I could get like, 25% uglier before it had any impact on my earnings. The only part of personal grooming that's necessary for sex work and I wouldn't do all the time anyway is power-washing my guts an hour before every session.

After lunch, mom went to see some friends and I played Magic for a few hours. At two pm, the actual work started. I picked up the work phone for the first time that day and began answering texts. An hour later I'd cancelled the 6pm appointment, blocked out all of Sunday evening, checked in with a few regulars, and provisionally moved three guys to the 'Time Wasters' list.

I spent a while sexting with a good prospect. He was a good prospect because he paid up-front for the sexting instead of treating it like a free samples platter at Costco. We scheduled a tentative appointment for next Tuesday, when his wife would be out of town on a business trip. Most of the guys I fuck have kinks, and I swear that 'cheating on your wife with a sex worker' is the most common one there is. Do I feel bad about it? At my hourly rate, absolutely not.

Mom got back at half four, so I took a break. We made tacos for lunch together and ate while watching Billions. She nudged me and told me that I need to do my injection, and, well, we have a little ritual for that. I'm scatterbrained and I'm not great with needles, but mom has been incredibly supportive with my HRT, and when I told her I was having problems taking them on time, she came up with a way to make me as comfortable as possible. As soon as the needle is ready, I laid down in her lap and she cradled my head in her arms, pressing her bare chest against my face. I took a nipple into my mouth and nursed it softly while she stroked my hair. She called me a good girl, telling me how proud she is of her daughter, how much she loves me, and asked if I was going to take my medicine like a big girl. On good days I inject myself while she pets me and coos over me, and on bad days she takes the needle and does it for me. As soon as I dropped the needle in the sharps container, mom pressed a Hitachi against my cock and took one of my nipples into her mouth, called me her big brave girl, and asked if I was gonna cum for mommy.

As usual, the answer was yes.

Late afternoon and early evening is when the messages start flowing in, especially on Fridays, when the kinds of people with hooker money have either left work early and thinking about getting laid, or are still held up at work and are desperately thinking about getting laid. This kind of messaging gets trickier, because it comes down to what I'm providing. Like, setting up a session is the kind of normal administrative stuff that's baked into the price of a session. It's also partly a sales job, so I'm naturally flirty and solicitous, and because I do sex work I talk openly about sex.

However, *sexting* is not normal administrative stuff. If I'm sending you messages for jerking-off purposes, I can charge by the hour or by the text but I will insist on charging for it. Also, it's not just sex that me and mom provide. There's a reason that 'companionship' is an old euphemism for whoring, it's because whores are good company. I'm a good listener and I don't judge, which means I'm like the fun parts of a therapist but without all the homework and self-improvement. I'm (unsurprisingly) friendly with all of my clients, and I have more than a few clients and former clients who I'd consider good friends and vice versa. I talk to a bunch of them outside of a business context, especially the ones I met outside of my job, and that's a normal part of maintaining a pool of clients for any sales job, but on the other hand... it's a demand on my time and it's a part of my services. I can and have bluntly told guys that they're wasting my time when it comes to uncompensated sexting, but the platonic stuff requires a lighter touch.

One of my regulars, Fintech Pete, sent me a message. Two messages later, he sent me $100, and we're off. Describing in gratuitous detail exactly how I'm going to suck his cock, begging him to fuck me until my clit is drooling all over the sheets, sending him feet pics, things of that nature. Pete is great for sexting because he barely jerks off while he's doing it, he saves all the messages and pictures and jerks off to them later, because he's got some biohacking routine where he only cums once a week. He said once that part of the reason he hires sex workers is that he takes each nut a lot more seriously if he's paying three digits minimum for the privilege. He does this teleconferencing report with the board of directors at his company four times a year, and every time he hires me to kneel under the desk in his home office and suck him off while he makes his presentation.

Anyway, while we were going back and forth like that, he mentioned that I'd made a joke one time about doing a joint session with my mom. I told him it wasn't a joke, and to cut a long story short, half an hour later I was asking mom if she was up for an overnight session starting at 9pm. She agreed, Pete confirmed, so we both got ready--think getting dolled up for a night out but with a more thorough enema--and drove to his place. He lived outside of town in a two-bedroom suburban home, alone with his two dogs.

As soon as we were parked in his garage I did the safety call in front of him: I rang a friend of mine, told her we were visiting a friend, told her it was at the address I sent her earlier, and told her we'd call her again tomorrow morning. Was it really necessary to do that with someone like Fintech Pete? No, but practice makes permanent. If you let these things slip when there's no danger, eventually they'll slip when there is danger.

Now, I don't want to imply that I'm in a lot of danger! There's a reason that most of the faces you'll see on the Trans Day of Remembrance are of poor black and brown women, because real danger comes when you can't turn skeevy jobs, when you can't afford to take precautions, when you have to make the choice over and over between maybe starving and maybe getting murdered. I'm white, I've got a good support network, and I've been relatively lucky in that I can do all these things to minimize my risks. I've still got to do them, though! Things like safety calls are a good habit to get into and it helps all sex workers if there's an expectation that they've all got someone looking out for them.

...I get that there is some bravado creeping into this journal. I start off saying that admin is the worst part of the job and a page later I flippantly mention that the job has put me in the hospital. On a day to day basis yeah, the admin is the bit that sucks the most, but if you offered me a deal where the admin is twice as bad but I never took that session, I’d take it in a heartbeat. This job has left me with some scars. Any time something cold touches my wrist I get a vivid flash of the first time I had my hands zip-tied behind my back in a cop car. I've had nightmares all my life, and more than a few of my nightmares are about stuff that's happened since I got into sex work.

If it seems like I’m downplaying it, it’s because the harrowing stuff is where the job has gone wrong, it’s not baked into the everyday stuff, and most importantly it has nothing to do with my mom. The work I've done with her is some of the least stressful and dangerous I've had since I started this job, and whatever wounds I have, she's not the one who caused them.

On a more positive note, a cool thing about doing sessions with my mom is that we can dress pretty conservatively and still have it come off as insanely lewd. Mom wore a black cocktail dress with an imitation pearl necklace and her hair up in a bun, I was in a white blouse under a lambswool sweater, a pleated short skirt, cheap dark tights--Pete has a thing for tearing them--and patent leather shoes. When you're going to suck a guy's world entirely off alongside your mom, the more modestly you're dressed, the more perverted it looks. Out in the suburbs it also means you get to avoid the microskirts and fishnets look which screams to the neighbors 'I've just hired a pair of hookers' or the mid-range raincoat over microskirts and fishnets look which screams 'I've just hired a pair of pricey hookers."

Pete's living room looks like the back room of a Radio Shack, computer guts everywhere, every surface turned into a makeshift workbench. It's not a suitable place for lovemaking; I don't want to have to pull shards of a soundcard out of my perineum. His bedroom is a lot neater, with a king-sized bed to sit on, a ton of pillows to lounge up against, and a TV mounted on the wall. Mom poured out some wine, a mid-range red zinfandel that we'd picked up on the way, Pete brought out some imported dark chocolate that costs like $40/kg, and I swung my legs over his lap and turned on the Food Network. I took a bite of chocolate, mom took a sip of wine, and before either of us swallowed she pulled me into a deep kiss, mixing the wine and the chocolate. It's a good combination, and Pete enjoyed the show.

The night started off with chatting. None of us were in any rush, not with an overnight session, and since Pete has been a client for each of us for a while it was a pretty relaxed atmosphere. Pete's fingers danced over my thighs, absent-mindedly plucking ladders into the fabric as we talked baseball, business, sex work, the difference between the gentrified fag bar downtown and the really gentrified fag bar downtown, programming and other nerd shit, local politics, the contestants on Cutthroat Kitchen, just normal stuff. Mom and Pete started talking about fancy cooking stuff so I started annoying them both by claiming that sardines are just fully-grown anchovies, that DOP labels are all fake, and that instant grits are better than the regular ones until mom jabbed me with a finger and told me that my mouth should be put to better use elsewhere.

You know how some people say "Cilantro tastes like soap, that's why it's good?" Same thing for how weird it feels to go down on my mom. The first time I ever jerked off, watching a 144p clip of Rocco Sifreddi fucking a girl in the ass while flushing her head down a toilet bowl, knowing that this meant I was going to go to Hell unless I begged God for forgiveness and never did it again, I came so hard I passed out. It feels good, it feels wrong that it feels so good, and it feels even better because it feels so wrong.

She was already wet when I got between her legs. I kissed her clit and started licking, her bush tickling my nose and her thighs squeezing my ears. Fabric rasped over my head as she hiked her dress up to run her hand through my hair. Everything was muffled but I could hear kissing and clinking, and I knew that mom was undoing Pete's belt and jeans to give him a Catholic-quality handjob.

I got mom worked up, bucking her hips and getting all breathy, until she asked me to get up here and give her some help. I crawled up to his groin and winked up at him. He blushed and grinned back. Pete's not a bad-looking guy. I mean, I don't care about looks in general, I guess I can look at someone and say that objectively they're ugly, and if someone is beautiful it adds something to the experience, but like... it doesn't really figure into it. Obviously most johns don't look like supermodels but they're not uniformly ugly, as I said before the thing that johns have in common is being horny guys with a lot of disposable income. Still, Pete is towards the better-looking side of that scale.

...Okay there is one thing about him that's weirdly common for my clients, I call it 'John Balding:' where a guy is losing his hair but in a slow, uneven, and kinda weird pattern, so that even when they cross into being more bald than not, they never bite the bullet and shave it all off. Pete is only like 30% of the way through that process so it doesn't look terrible yet, but he's on that track.

Anyway, back to the sex. A fun thing about double blowjobs is that you can take them a whole lot slower than solo blowjobs. Me and mom have had a lot of practice so we go at about 1/4th speed and it feels twice as good. She started off by wrapping her hand around the shaft, slowly stroking it while she softly kissed the tip, and I licked his balls, gently lapping at one, then the other, cleaning away the day's sweat and musk, carefully taking both of them into my mouth at once. Mom swallowed half his length, and I started kissing my way up his shaft as she pulled back up, my lips touching the head as hers reached the very tip. She grabbed me by my hair and pulled me into a deep French kiss with his cock in the middle, precum mixing with spit, moaning as we felt him twitch and grunt, mom's hand on his balls and my hand on his shaft. We broke the kiss and repeated it in reverse, taking his cock in my throat as mom kissed her way down to his balls. He came after five minutes of gentle little schoolgirl kisses on each side of his cock from the pair of us. The first rope caught mom on her cheek, the second hit her hair, but I wrapped my lips tight around the head and sucked him dry before he could spill another drop.

You can't give a client a mother-daughter blowjob and not snowball the cum back and forth in front of him. We've done it enough times to get the timing down: wait until he sits up straight, because if you don't he'll be too dazed from nutting in your mouth to really appreciate it. Make sure he's looking at you, move your hair out of the way so it doesn't obstruct his view, open your lips so that a trickle of jizz almost sloshes out, move in close to your mom so that your noses are touching and it's clear that you're about to kiss, sink a palm into her tits as she grabs your ass, and then you gotta really go for it: wide-mouthed, feral, energetic, like you're trying to reach each other's sinuses. If a little bit of cum spills out because you're being so sloppy, that's a sign that you're doing it right. You're going to lick it up afterwards anyway.

We broke the kiss, I licked mom's face clean, and we took a break. We drank some more wine, he offered us cigarettes--the coolest clients are the ones that let you smoke indoors--and we cuddled and relaxed for a while with Guy's Grocery Games playing on the TV. Pete went to get some water, and returned with three bottles and a strip of Cialis. He downed two pills, we both stripped off--it was sweltering by that point--and got ready for the next round.

Mom played with his nipples and I got between his legs again, this time going lower than his balls to eat his ass out. Rimming is a trusted client privilege like the mom-daughter stuff is, except it's less about trusting them in the legal sense and more about trusting that it won't be grainy down there. I like it when a client is clean enough to rim, because I'm extremely good at it. Mom says she's better, she claims she once made a guy no-touch cum with a rimjob, but I don't fucking believe her.

He got hard after a minute of digging my tongue into his ass, but his cock was still super-sensitive so we figured we'd tease him for a while longer. We swapped places, mom ate his ass while he made out with me, squeezing my tits and playing with my cock. I like it when guys touch my tits, my cock is... fine, I guess? I don't viscerally dislike people touching it but it doesn't do much for me. After a minute of that he reaches around and works a finger into my asshole, which is much more my speed.

By the time he was two knuckles deep I looked down and saw his cock twitching, leaking precum onto his stomach. He seemed pretty worked up. I kissed his neck, nipped at his ear, and whispered, "Do you wanna breed me, Mister?"

He sure did.

I use condoms unless I've got an extremely compelling reason not to, and mom has a cool trick for getting them on. She grasped Pete's cock around the base, placed her lips around the tip, deepthroated the entire thing in a single stroke, and as she slowly lifted her head back up, his cock was neatly fitted with a condom.

As soon as I lubed up he put me on my back, pushed my ankles up to my ears, pressed his cock against my hole and sunk into me inch by inch. He muffled my moans with a kiss and rutted me into the bed. I gotta give it to him, all that biohacking and cardio is doing something right because he railed me at a fast, steady pace until my dick was leaking all over my tummy and I couldn't form sentences in my head any more. Mom made out with him as he finished, and at that point I was just babbling nonsense. He was gentle and cautious as he pulled out of me, stroking my hair as I reached down to take off his condom. I poured the contents out over my tits, slumping back against the headboard as mom licked them clean.

It wasn't yet midnight by then, and we went on like that through the night. Licking his feet, mom-daughter 69, him sucking my cock while mom rode his dick like a Sorority cowgirl champion, more wine, more double-blowjobs, tacking an extra $200 onto the fee for the privilege of pissing in my mouth instead of having to get up to go to the bathroom, a whole buffet of fun whore stuff.

We woke up at around ten in the morning, stayed for breakfast, then said our goodbyes. Me and mom thanked him for his custom, and he thanked us for a good time. By midday we were at home, we both showered, checked our calendars, messaged our evening clients to confirm that they were still on, and then... well, the rest of the day kinda evaporated. I played Demons' Souls until I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, passed out in bed, and woke up when my alarm went off in the evening.

That's one of the things I don't like about overnight sessions: you're technically only spending like, ten to twelve hours with a client, and for some of that time you're either not fucking or actively asleep, but it kinda feels like it destroys two days. By the time it's scheduled, everything in the rest of the day is either preparing for it or doing it, and when you get back it takes the rest of the day just to recover. I don't like that part of my job, and if I sit down I can probably go through a whole bunch of things I don't like about my job. I still know that my job isn't a *bad* job, because the last time I had a bad job it was at a chicken processing plant. Know how I know that the chicken job was bad? Because I excused myself for a bathroom break four hours into the shift, walked off site, and never came back.

You know what, there's another reason I know that this isn't a bad job and that mom isn't a bad mom, and I guess it's part of the reason I've written all this down in the first place. I was seven years old when I first wanted to die. By the time I got to high school, suicidal thoughts were just the radio static in my brain. I can't remember any point after like, grade school where I didn't daydream about suicide every single day.

Now? I sometimes go for weeks without thinking about killing myself. It hasn't gone away completely, it still pops up when I'm upset or stressed out or tired or really hungry, but what I do is I talk to mom about it, and she talks me out of it. I feel guilty sometimes about putting that pressure on her, and taking that pressure off is part of the reason I'm going to therapy I guess.

I hope it works out.

I really think it will.

#story #stories

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chasseurdeloup-retired · 4 years

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Winding Path Ahead || Bea and Kaden

TIMING: Sometime before Nell’s party LOCATION: Kaden’s car en route out of town PARTIES: @beatrice-blaze and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Bea invites Kaden on a road trip and in the car, things get a little heavier than anticipated for a distracting day out. CONTENT WARNINGS: Ableism (specifically in relation to therapy and mental health), suicidal ideation If you are at all sensitive to these topics, please skip and message for a TLDR;

How long had it been since Bea saw Kaden? The last time they had really been around each other she had cried because of a gun and then he brought her a milkshake. It had been a random invitation, one she didn’t think he would take, but he surprised her and now they were going to be in a car together for at least six hours today. They were far from White Crest when she finally broke the small talk. “I killed the Hunter.” Maybe not the best thing to say when he was driving, but the words had been bubbling her throat for too long now. “I’m making his femur a knife.”

Kaden was desperate for just about any distraction as of late. Spending that time with a friend? He practically jumped at the chance. Six hours in the car seemed like nothing. Sitting around and thinking about his crap, Regan’s training, Nadia’s situation, a minute thinking about it could feel like an hour. So he’d go help Bea with whatever she needed if it got him out of the house and out of his head. It had been too long since he spent time with her anyway. Surly she’d have plenty to say about the thoughts rolling around his mind recently. If he decided to share them. For now it had been easy conversation sprinkled with moments of peaceful silence, easy company. Until she dropped a bomb out of nowhere. “You what?” he said, startled out of his thoughts. It took him a second to process. The hunter? What hunter? He looked at her, saw the scar on her neck. Right. That hunter. His stomach churned remembering. It was easy to forget sometimes. Other times, the image of her head, severed and floating flashed in front of his eyes. It just happened. “That-- I’m sorry what?” His femur. A knife. His femur into a knife. “You kept his--” The fact that he’d nearly killed Bea unsettled him a lot more just then. That could have been him. In a way. Not that he’d-- He pinched his eyes shut just for a flash, trying to push the thought away, keep his focus on the road ahead. “Right. Good for you.” He didn’t really approve but he couldn’t really argue against the pain she’d faced, the pain Montgomery had caused. Didn’t seem like it was worth a fight or worth his disapproval. And didn’t he plan to take a fang from the werewolf who killed his parents whenever that day came? Who the fuck was he to criticize. “So it’s done, then.”

That nervous laugh that Bea thought she had kicked flooded out of her. Maybe that was too much of an overshare, but she had barely been social in the last few months and at this point, she couldn’t remember how to do it. “I want to keep a piece of him as a trophy. Like he did to me.” The words tasted stale. She had been saying that for months now but wasn’t the truth of it that she just wanted to have proof it happened. She wanted to hold onto that knife and remember that it was real, that she did it. She wasn’t sure any monster she faced in the future would be so great, but if any came close, she could wield that knife and remember the strength she could produce. She could remember reclaiming herself, she could remember who she had been in the shade of that shed. “It’s done. He’s gone and no one will ever miss him.” It’s done. She knew it, felt it in her chest where it warmed her like her fire once had, but it didn’t always feel real. Just like she didn’t always feel real. She toed at her shoe, felt the rubber tip bounce back at her, wondering if Kaden would care if she kicked them off to tuck her feet under her butt. “Felix left for New York. I don’t know when he’ll be back…” Trailing off, she looked out the window, fingers pressed to the window watching her warmth bring fog to the edges. “So, how are you?”

You could be better than him, is what Kaden wanted to say. Instead he nodded and kept his eyes on the road, let her have her moment, as much as it made him want to squirm a little in his seat. She’d killed a hunter. Kept his bones as a trophy. Her words sounded hollow. Not with the same emptiness that Regan’s had sometimes, not with hopelessness. It was something else he heard there. Doubt? Maybe? It was hard to say for sure when he had to place some of his concentration on driving. He had to remind himself that if she were talking about a wolf, undead, or fae, he would hardly blink. And he’d seen that room. He knew how disgusting Montgomery was. It didn’t make him any less human, any less like him. Bile crept up his throat as he compared his own powers to his. As much as he wanted to deny it, it was there. They shared something. Hell, they’d worked together. He hated that, too. He gripped the wheel a little tighter, letting his knuckles turn white before letting up. He’d done it for Bea. And when all was said and done, the pricolici that they took down was a job well done. It wasn’t a hunt he regretted participating in for a second, company aside. “Good.” He didn’t love what it meant for her. But he did like knowing it was done. It was. It had to be. Maybe this could let her move forward. After everything, she deserved that.

Then his heart sank for her. “He left?” Kaden asked. Dumb question. He didn’t need her to repeat it but it was hard to process. Just left? Just like that? She deserved more than that, too. “I’m sorry. He--” The words hung in the air a while. As did her next question. How was he? Laughter crept up and started to spill out of him before he could even get the answer out. “Shit,” he said eventually through the stupid, depressing laughter. “I feel like shit.” The laughter kept coming. It wasn’t funny. But it was better to laugh than cry. Not to mention he didn’t even know where to start explaining. Or if he even wanted to.

As bloody the job had been, Bea hadn’t regretted it. It wasn’t something she had ever imagined herself doing, but it was deserved. It had softened something in her, her jaw didn’t always hurt from clenching her teeth, her shoulders weren’t constantly tensed. Perhaps it would never fully go away, but she would savor this for now. “His family needed him in New York,” She told him, playing with her hair as she contemplated their empty apartment. Moving back into the house had been odd, it had been a haven for her sisters after her death. It felt wrong originally to tell them she was coming back. She had to remind herself it was her house. “We’re still together, just long distance. We’re open and everything so it’s not like we’re depriving ourselves of anything.” Still, she missed him already. There was too much space in her bed now, but she knew he was only a train ride away. She watched her friend closely as he laughed, it was bad if he was laughing. “What’s been going on?” Sometimes all someone needed was to be listened to. She was sure that Kaden would need something more than that, but it couldn’t hurt to get it off his chest.

“Alright. But I’m still-- It sucks. To be... So I’m sorry.” Kaden’s thumbs brushed against the steering wheel as the silence settled in again, the echoes of his stupid laughter died down again. God, he wasn’t sure if he could explain all of this while driving. He had to hold himself together. He couldn’t fall apart. He couldn’t afford to. Not that he could afford to before. “I don’t even know where to start, Bea,” he said, voice small. “I-- Alain lost a leg. To a bugbear. And it was my fault. And I nearly got Abel killed. Fucking would have if I didn’t--” Once he began, the words kept falling out of his mouth. He couldn’t stop them, there was no control left, no holding back the floodgates now. “And Regan, she’s--” Fuck, where did he even begin there. “She’s doing intensive banshee training. Torture. She’s torturing herself trying to cut out her emo-- She quit her fucking job. Her. Regan. Quit her fucking job. Regan. The woman who-- I’ve seen her twice in the past month and a half. Just twice. And--” His chest grew tighter, clutching his words in its grips. “She’s not-- I think I’m losing her. Fuck, she’s losing hers--” The road ahead of him started to blur and he held tighter onto the wheel, willing the tears away, pushing his own emotions away. “Sorry. I-- I can’t. I--” He swallowed back the tightness with a deep inhale, centered himself. Focused on the lines on the road in front of him. “Guess it’s clear why I wanted the distraction now, huh? Not that I don’t enjoy your company.” The smile he offered her was half hearted but it was the best he could manage.

The silence that stretched between them after Kaden finished was going to suffocate Bea. That was a lot and she didn’t know how to lightly tell him that he was taking on way too many people’s trauma. He needed to take a vacation and leave this town and all its craziness behind for a minute. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked him how he was when he was driving, this seemed unsafe. She tapped on her knee, struggling to find what he needed to hear. She decided to not tell him something that would make him feel better. “I think you need to see a therapist, Kaden,” She grimaced as she realized how harsh it sounded once it was out. “You’re holding all of that in and I don’t think just talking about it with a friend will help. You need real coping mechanisms that are cleared by a doctor.” God, she didn’t even really trust doctors, but he needed a professional and she certainly wasn’t one. She pressed her lips, “And before you say you can’t because you can’t explain the whole supernatural thing, just make something up that’s human enough to work. We’re in a weird town, they’re heard a lot of shit I’m sure.” Flexing and relaxing her fists a few times, she shrugged. “I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but I think you should consider it.”

Her words felt like a slap in the face. “You’re right. It’s not,” he told her. Kaden had considered keeping his thoughts to himself earlier and now he wished he had. “I don’t need a fucking therapist,” he spat back, eyes facing straight ahead at the road in front of them. Sure, he felt like he could fall apart at any moment but he wasn’t broken, some crazy person who needed help. Even if he did “need” to see a therapist, which he was fucking sure wasn’t true, he wasn’t going to go see one. “No shrink is going to tell me what to do or how to fucking cope.” Like they could even begin to understand. All his issues were with the supernatural, all because it fucking existed. And he was supposed to talk to someone but not about that? Bullshit. “Make up something human? Like fucking what? I’m pretty sure I’m not getting around the fact my girlfriend is torturing herself and that I’m sitting the fuck back and letting it happen. And that’s the easy one to explain. What the fuck would be the point if I have to censor myself? How is that going to help?” Silence hung in the air once more and his grip on the wheel tightened again. “I’m not going to put myself in a situation where I could risk my job or worse by seeming fucking mentally unfit, Bea. I’m not losing that, too.” And just like that the list of people he could open up to shrunk down once more. He’d have to hold everything a little closer to his chest, pull it all in tighter that’s all. Not like he wasn’t used to it. He did that for years. It was stupid to think things might have changed. “Sorry. I’ll just, I’ll keep my shit to myself from now on. What else did you want to talk about?”

This certainly wasn’t the first time Kaden had yelled at her or reacted negatively to something Bea had said, but it stung no less. Her lips pressed together and for a moment she wanted to snap back at him, wanted to make him hurt like he had just hurt her. She shook her head, looking ahead of them, breathing slowly through her nose as she focused on the horizon. “Quite frankly, if you don’t want to go that’s fine, but you don’t have to get angry at me for trying to help you. I’m trying to be a good friend and you are not reacting like a good one right now. Does yelling at me make you feel better?” She didn’t say it maliciously, but she certainly didn’t want him to think she was going to tolerate the behavior anymore. She huffed out of her nose, “That’s unfair and you know it.” She turned to look at him, “Why do you like talking to me about this? I'm really asking, that’s not a trick question.” Maybe she could make him see that he could talk to people about this who were qualified to help. She couldn’t give him advice right now, not when she was finding her own footing with coping. “Also, I’m pretty sure unless your therapist is hired by the department they can’t say anything.”

“I’m not yelling at you,” Kaden retorted, his voice still sharp, though not raised. “But fine, maybe I’m a shitty friend then. You asked me what was going on and I told you.” And then she called him crazy. He knew it was a lot. It was why he tried not to let on half the time. And here he was, kicking himself for letting any of it slip out. “So there it fucking is. That’s what’s going on.” Some of it at least. There was more he hadn’t even said. Lucky her. Not shocked that she couldn’t handle it. “I don’t like talking about any of it with anyone.” Not like he really got the option to either way. He ground his teeth back and forth against one another. He had a feeling he was a fucking burden to deal with, someone that people just put up with and dealt with, but it didn’t make the confirmation sting any less. “Well great. Doesn’t matter because I don’t have a therapist and I’m not getting one,” he reiterated. Maybe it was sheer stubbornness at this point but he fucking hated the implications either way. That he was damaged or crazy or some shit like that. He was fine. He could handle this. And he planned to continue doing so, even if that was by him-fucking-self.

He was talking like her mom. Bea knew that sharp tone from the way her mother reacted when things didn’t go her way. For a moment she felt small, chastised, but she was not going to shrink back like she once would have. She wasn’t that girl anymore and her mother’s tone, Kaden’s tone wasn’t going to make her back down. Could she be friends with him right now? When she needed to heal so badly herself? He wasn’t a bad person, or even a bad friend most of the time, but she wasn’t sure they were healthy for one another anymore. Maybe one day they could be again, but this wasn’t healthy, this wasn’t fair to either one of them. All they seemed to do was break down in front of each other. When was the last time they had enjoyed each other’s presence, not because they needed emotional support but just to hang out? She couldn’t remember and she knew she was part of that problem. “I don’t appreciate the cussing, Kaden,” She told him, firmly. “You can say you aren’t angry, but you certainly aren’t happy with me and your tone is hurtful. I standby what I said, even though you seem to think the idea is so offensive.” She pulled out her phone, ready to use it to shut down the conversation, “I won’t bring it up again.” She set off to text Felix and ignore Kaden.

“Well of course not, you just called me crazy.” Kaden’s words left his mouth before he had a chance to think about them. But he wasn’t wrong, was he? That’s who got sent to therapy. People who talked about werewolves and vampires openly, who got caught and couldn’t write it off or explain what they saw. That’s what his parents always warned him about. She had to know that, right? Was White Crest really that different from everywhere else? He stole a glance over at her and noticed she was just on her phone, not engaging. Great. So he fucked something else up, too. Add it to the list. “I can just turn around if you want,” he said, his voice much smaller now. He kept his jaw clenched tight after, to hold any stupid emotions back that were threatening to escape. He just wanted a distraction, a decently normal day with his friend. Fuck, was she even his friend? He swallowed back the lump growing in his throat. Didn’t matter. He came to this town alone. He should have known that he was going to leave it like that, too. “And since when do you hate cursing again?”

Bea’s mouth dried, the anger she had held slipped away, replaced with the never ending, bone numbing exhaustion that she had thought she had left behind. This happened often when she tried to help people, didn’t it? Her words were taken the wrong way and she ruined relationships. It had happened with her sisters. “I didn’t say you were crazy,” She whispered back. Her fingers were cold and she nearly shivered, she was still not used to being cold. She didn’t think she ever would be. Looking out the window, she wondered if the mood of this trip would be so great to affect the weather. It certainly felt strong enough to conjure a storm. “I’m so scared for you, Kaden.” The words slipped from her, brittle and unrefined. “You’re like Nell, where you take all of this trauma from other people and you store it in your chest. And you never, never talk about it until it’s like it’s cracking your ribs apart and forcing itself out.” Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. “One day, I feel like it’ll be too much for you and when it comes to fighting whatever is after you, you’ll be too tired to. You’ll close your eyes and tell yourself that this is better, this is easier. And it will feel easier, because life is so much harder than death.” She stared at the ceiling of the car, remembering the numbness she felt when she came back. She knew she hoped that no one would ever feel that way. “And I am still too broken to help you. I can’t help you pick up your pieces, not when I’m still so shattered that I’m cutting myself on the ragged edges of who I was. I know what it feels like to drown in the problems surrounding you. I know that every decision you face right now feels like it could ruin everything around you. And I don’t want you to feel the way I feel, Kaden. I want you to get help. I want some smarter and stronger than me to be able to help you. That’s why I said you should go to therapy. Not because you’re crazy, but because I think you can still heal from this.”

Kaden braced himself for more anger or indifference. He was ready for either. He wasn’t sure if he deserved either but some part of him knew it was warranted either way. What he got from her instead was… different. He didn’t know if it was worse, better, he couldn’t decide because it caught him off guard. Her voice was soft, but he heard every syllable. And he listened, rapt attention, finding it harder and harder to stay focused on the road. The words took a while to settle in, to mean something. She was scared for him. Scared that he’d… He couldn’t quite like that process, too afraid to acknowledge what she really meant in his own mind, like it might give the thoughts some traction to hold onto. His family always implied therapy was dangerous, something to avoid, something that would destroy you. It was hard to think of it as anything else. But he couldn’t deny what she was saying, the sentiment behind her words. Agree or disagree on what therapy was or what it meant, she cared. And wanted to help him. And he wasn’t quite sure how much of what she said was about him and not her. The road felt never ending ahead of him, like it could swallow him whole. He couldn’t think and drive right now, not about this. He felt like he’d sink. Or drive them off the road. He put on the turn signal and pulled over onto the shoulder. For a while he sat in silence, staring ahead as cars rushed past them, shaking the car as they did. “Okay,” he finally said after a long while. “I don’t know if-- I’m not sure if I want to go to-- I...” He could hardly get out the words. He felt broken. Not just for him, for her, too. “I’m sorry that I-- I’m sorry.” He finally turned to meet her eyes. “I didn’t mean to drop all of this and I don’t need you to solve anything I just…” He ground his teeth against themselves, forcing his lip to keep from quavering at all. “I’ll consider it. But only if--” He paused, almost afraid to suggest it. “Only if, uh, if you do, too.” Please. His eyes practically begged her to consider it, too. If she felt the same and she thought he needed this, why the hell should he be the only one going? And he couldn’t lose her. Not again.

As he pulled off to the side, Bea felt the walls of the car get smaller and smaller. These conversations had only been something she had started to have in the past year. Mental health and her mother didn’t mix well, not when Nisa thought that everything could be cure with some magic and determination. She picked at the hem of her shirt sleeve, there was a few pieces of lint that could keep her hands busy. She didn’t want to go to therapy, she had tried it a few times and it had made her uncomfortable. Pouring her problems on to a stranger made her antsy and she had hated the way she was looked at, with practiced empathy and understanding. Still, she nodded. If it could get Kaden into therapy, she’d do it. She didn’t have to dive too deeply into these therapy sessions, she could just talk about surface-level issues. “I’m open to going again,” She said softly. “It’s important to go, I think.” And she thought it was, at least for Kaden, but she had tried it. She would do it again, for him and maybe to ease some anxiety her sisters had, but she wasn’t sure it would work for her. Not when therapists always looked at her like they understood everything when they couldn’t even begin to understand what had happened to her. She knew that Kaden might think the same, but she didn’t dare tell him why she had stopped, not when it could influence how he felt about it all in the end. “Hopefully, it helps.”

Every time he asked something from someone, Kaden was reminded why he had kept his life so closed up in the past, why he didn’t open the door to these sorts of moments. That uncertain feeling where rejection was just a breath away was something he fucking hated. Choosing to be alone and discarded hurt a hell of a lot less than even the possibility of someone else choosing it for him. Half of him was damn near convinced she’d still ask him to turn the car around and head home. “Again?” he asked quietly. Oh. So she had… Huh. It never occurred to him that she had-- He bit the inside of his mouth. Great. No wonder she was treating him like a fucking asshole. He was. Fucking great. “Okay. Hopefully it helps,” he repeated. He took a deep inhale in before he even thought about starting up the car again. “Ready for that nice, easy, distracting day we had planned to start now?”

“I went for a bit at the beginning of the year. I was trying to figure out how to deal with being controlling with my sisters,” Bea admitted. Not that it had helped with that, other things forced her to stop being controlling. Her dying was probably the reason that she had a good relationship with the girls again. She smiled a bit, “Yeah, today starts now. This all was yesterday. We should get coffee to start the day off.”

#writing #wickedswriting #chatzy #bea #beatriceblaze #abelism tw #suicide ideation tw #suicidal ideation tw #winding path ahead

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aceyanaheim · 5 years

Text

Okay let’s try this one more time.

Questions from this thingy that I saw a friendo do last year.

Introduction: Acey. That’s it that’s the introduction.

Diagnosis: I’m working on getting a Diagnosis but Autism and some form of attachment disorder.

As of 2019:

Neurocognitive and Cognitive Disorder due to Seizures

Major Depressive Disorder

General Anxiety Disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder

Personality Change Due to Seizure Disorder ( later confirmed by a second psychiatrist to be Borderline Personality Disorder)

C-PTSD symptoms ( still waiting on final diagnosis but symptons have been confirmed and disorder is very likely.)

Autism more or less confirmed by multiple professionals but still waiting to be able to afford testing.

Symptoms:

Autism/ASD : Can’t read tone. Hard time with social interaction. Sensory issues. Adherence to routine. Stimming. Scripting. Childish behaviour. Meltdowns. Hyperfixation.

Attachment Issues: I tend to attach/get attached to people really fast. At the same time I push them away or tell myself I don’t matter to them. I also have a hard time getting attached to people. It’s either super quick or like pulling teeth. I want to be with people all the time. Codependence I guess is the word I’m looking for.

Social Anxiety: I’m...basically always scared when I’m talking to people? I’m scared I’ll say the wrong thing. I have my answers and messages rehearsed and proofread and sometimes vetted by someone else ( unless it’s sensitive info) and I still feel like something comes across in a negative way. ( like This is too cheerful, That’s too morbid, does that sound dismissive? If I say This I fuck up in this way but if I say THAT I fuck up in another) It couples with my autism since that...actually makes me say awkward/wrong shit all the time.

Has come down since starting Lexapro but still present.

Emotional Flashbacks: Feelings that were there while you were experiencing the traumatic event. Happen at random triggers. Incredibly strong. To the point that they don’t correspond to the stimuli and feel freshly felt. ( tied to C-PTSD)

Hyper-vigilance ( tied to C-PTSD)

Anxiety attacks

Panic Attacks

Don’t act as mature as other people my age/more at home with younger people.

Hypersensitive to any perceived rejection.

Brain fixates on bad memories and repeats them : C-PTSD

Constant fear of it happening again: C-PTSD

Black or White thinking: I’ll think someone’s sick of me or can’t stand me at stuff like being left on read while also deciding I love them and they’re the best person ever when they do something nice to me. Intense but have some modicum of self awareness. ( i know on some level people dont dislike or hate me, i still spiral though)

“Duckling Syndrome” ( is what i call it) : I’ll see someone be nice to me and all I can think of is how much I want them to adopt me, to take me home, to make me part of their family. It’s too strong to be anything but disordered. It hurts. ( possibly part of bpd)

Has in the past put self in bad situations to not be alone ( connected to bpd/attachment disorder)

Other Stuff I either need to mention to my shrink and/or hasn’t been tied down to any of my dx disorders:

I want things to be Just So. Like I want a certain kinda paper for certain kinds of mediums in art. I want my food in a certain order. I eat it in A Certain Order I get really uncomfortable otherwise.

I think I’ve depersonalized or dissociated at least five times..but..only when things get REALLY bad...like when I spiral. I still get those two confused even after reading the definitions but it’s like….I don’t feel anything? But I’m weirdly aware that I’m supposed to? Like I flipped a switch. Also mixed with this weird its not real feeling. I hasn’t happened in roughly a year tho so I dunno if it counts? Its been happening again this year. Still unsure if disordered or stress reaction.

I tend to struggle with depressive episodes from time to time. Like I’ll just lay on the bed and not wanna do anything. I have games to play, I have hobbies I could indulge in but I just..don’t want to. Don’t see the point.

Have thought that I’d be better off not existing. ( AKA suicidal ideation) Currently under control.

I’ve developed these like...weird paranoia spells? Like this one time a cop yelled at me ( to mess with me) and I was suddenly terrified of him following me and hurting me and my dad ( which yes can be attributed to the amount of police brutality you hear about, especially to people who don’t speak english fluently but like I saw it in my mind’s eye and it would not stop and the dude left and I was still seeing in my head him like following me home and hurting us) or like just recently some man asked about my dog and how much she was worth and this weird ass alarm went off in my head to get the hell away from him and what if he follows me home? What if he takes my dog? What if he follows me home AND takes my dog? They’re pretty sporadic ( though not as much as I want them to be) but they’re also really intense. Have stopped since I started Lexapro.

Physical Self Harm in the past to ground, to punish myself, in times of high emotion. All of the above. ( has stopped as of last year. Even intrusive thoughts about it are at a minimum.)

Obsession with being “good”: If I ever do something I think is a mistake I all but turn on myself. I beat myself up. I think of myself as a bad person ( there’s only Good and Bad for me..but only in regards to myself) I have to be nice. I have to be kind. I have to be good in a way that’s disordered. ( this compounds with my social anxiety and bpd to bind me into being a “good person” ( someone who never gets mad never talks back never does anything but niceness irregardless of the fact that..it’s impossible) I tend to think if I’m “bad” that people need to punish me, yell at me, or hurt me. That I need to Atone) ( could be part of CPTSD due to past abuse. Answer pending)

Intrusive thoughts: mostly about self harm but also about “learning my place” and...calling myself things I’d rather not say. I’ve so far at least managed to recognize they’re intrusive ( might be related to any of the disorders listed above but also with past abuse but unsure at the moment. Shrink thinks its tied to bpd. Could be tied to past abuse I haven’t discussed in therapy yet.)

Disordered Eating of sorts: due to my mother being paranoid about unhealthy food I’ve gone days where I can’t bring myself to eat something because I’m scared it’ll hurt me. There’s times where I’ve needed my friend to tell me to eat. There’s times where I feel like if I eat I have to exercise it off. It’s about control, it’s about fear, it’s….about everything but weight. Hella strong last year. More or less brought under control as of this year. But remain as intrusive thoughts and pop up as intrusive thoughts from time to time.

React badly to being alone, especially at home and not getting social interaction. Depression kicks up, sometimes depersonalization ( might have ties to childhood epilepsy -having to be on lock-down and kept indoors a lot due to my own risk of being hurt via seizure- but combines with bpd/attachment disorders)

Have Shown Signs/Moments of Age Regression ( more often than not with the emotional flashbacks but not always)

Literally all the symptoms act up at night/around bedtime. Mostly anxiety but some others that have now been associated with bpd. Causes sleeping problems ( I hesitate to call it insomnia because I do sleep but it can get as bad as 3 hours a night until i just conk out at the end of the week -or 2 weeks- out of sheer exhaustion. Has been present since I was a teenager.)

In The Past: Recklessness and disregard for personal safety and care.

Sometimes get this physical feeling like my brain is overloaded. Often with hypervigilance or spirals where my mind races.

Stigma:

“I’m autistic” “I’m so sorry”

“I’m autistic” “And you’re sure you wanna go for that major?”

“I’m autistic” “But not that kind of autistic right?”

“I mean if you need accommodations to take a test then are you really cut out to have that kinda job?”

I consider myself a very patient person.

“She doesn’t know any better. You know she’s special” ( I was standing right there)

“I guess you don’t love anyone huh?” ( I was uh..I was nine years old)

“You’re codependent as fuck” ( that one my abuser said to me...after...making me codependent on her..yeah)

“You talk like a robot. It’s like you don’t feel anything.” ( eeemotianl detachment due to CPTSD in my teenage years)

“You’re choosing not to grow up” ( when expressing fears of develomental problems/disordered behaviour that could cause lack of maturity. I was asking for help)

“You’re a lot”

“People with your disorder tend to be a problem for other people”

“You need therapy” “I am in therapy” “Then why are you still acting like this.”

“You’re just making excuses.”

“It’s like you like to cause trouble.” ( circa 2013)

“You just wanna hurt people that’s why you’re doing this.” ( circa...most of the 2000s)

Multiple people in my family constantly make it a point ( or have in the past like..for most of my life) to tell me no one’s wanna live with someone like me ( I’m forgetful and before I figured out some ways to help it and the depression was bad uber messy)

Multiple people in my family try to discourage me from trying things because “you know you have that...thing”

And I mean..the usual constant bombardment of Autism being something you have to Fix. Of it causing people you love pain, and them never being happy because of it, of it being a defect.

People around me use autistic as an insult.

General comments about how horrible living with my mentally ill family must be ( ignoring that I’m mentally ill as well) and how my parents probably wish we weren’t disordered ( ignoring that they are also disordered) and how basically there’s no way for us to be happy.

I think at one point someone actually said to me something along the lines of “I bet your parents wish you and your siblings were born differently”

“I’m so proud you can do this incredibly easy thing that I think is all you can really do and I’m gonna talk to you in the most condescending tone about it like who’s a good lil autistic person look at you, talkin and solving basic problems and everything.” ( obvs paraphrased but thats...usually the gist)

Define Your Disorders

Autism: a developmental disorder that affects communication and behavior.

Attachment Disorder: the condition in which individuals have difficulty forming lasting relationships ( it was the only one I can find that doesn’t talk about RAD as I don’t have the criteria for that. This one’s tricky cause I don’t have the proper diagnosis for it yet, for all I know it could be part of a bigger disorder)

BPD:a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think and feel about yourself and others, causing problems functioning in everyday life. It includes a pattern of unstable intense relationships, distorted self-image, extreme emotions and impulsiveness. Symptoms include emotional instability, feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, impulsivity, and impaired social relationships.

Major Depression Disorder: Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. Also called major depressive disorder or clinical depression, it affects how you feel, think and behave and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. You may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes you may feel as if life isn't worth living.

General Anxiety Disorder.: Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events or activities (such as work or school performance).

Amnesic Disorder Due To Epilepsy :Inability to remember events for a period of time.

Myth about your disorders and the truth

Autistic people are dangerous

Autistic people are unfeeling

Autistic people are uncaring

Autistic people are all nonverbal

Autistic people are all mentally challenged. ( I ??)

Autistic people ar a burden on their families/a parent who abuse or even kills their autistic child ( which happens so much it’s an acknowledged problem) deserves sympathy.

Autistic people are brainy and mostly male.

Autism is a spectrum disorder. People exhibit different traits and while some hyperfocus on things that help them academically some hyperfocus on things that don’t or that even make their grades suffer like other interest tend to. ( my hyperfocus was fanfiction and I failed like five classes because of it) I have a friend who’s autistic and likes to party and drink and hang out with people. I have another friend who’s autistic who likes to skate and science. I’m autistic and I like neither of those things. We’re all over the place in every way even when we do share some common traits

Literally we all have people and things we care about.

Literally all of us have affectionate moments. I’m fairly physically affectionate if I’m close to/feel safe with someone.

Nonverbal and autism aren’t always correlated. Further, some autistic people go nonverbal for a bit but can speak other times.

Autism looks different in girls/afab people because we’ve been socialized differently.

Parents who kill their autistic kids are just straight up horrible people and I resent having to be told to have sympathy for them while simultaneously wishing I had “autistic” written on my forehead so I could be angry without a guilt trip and also simultaneously hoping to god I never stop passing for neurotypical because apparently the moment you show too many traits no one cares if someone hurts you or worse.

The whole “autistic people are dangerous” thing is mostly people showing videos of meltdowns which only happen under high stress and is something people use to demonize us and make us seem like burdens...and is actually why the whole “sympathy for an abusive/murderer parent of a neuroatypical” thing is fucked ten ways from Sunday. We aren’t dangerous.

I don’t...have a lot for the attachment disorder since I’m still waiting to figure out what that one’s really about and I haven’t really….met anyone else who has anything like it or shares symptoms with me.

I think off the top of my head it’s when people think it’s “cute” that you’re super clingy or go the other way and say people with attachment issues are uncaring. The first one romanticizes a behaviour that you’re trying to work on fixing/curbing and that is honestly hell. The second one is...is just as untrue as saying an autistic person is inherently uncaring ( or any mentally ill person for that matter)

I’ve also seen people say that people with any kind of attachment disorder are broken and that I feel confident enough in saying that they’re not...and I’m not.

I’ve been told people with BPD can’t be aware of their own disorder and have been denied testing due to this.

I’ve seen people say people with BPD are a problem to others.

Anxiety: I’ve seen a lot of people who think it’s fake. And also that the only way you can have anxiety if you’re rocking back and forth gasping for breath.

There’s actually multiple ways to have anxiety attacks.

Tips for those who know/love someone with same disorders/symptoms

Well, starting off with, and keeping in mind that I’m not a proffesional or expert in...literally anything ever like ever ever....

A very dear friend of mine once said “it’s a whole lot easier to be supportive than it is not to be” Let people with disorders tell you what they need, and then respect it. Open communication and making them feel safe is key...to everything. Being informed is important but at the end of the day, different people will experience things differently and what they need is really down to them. Don’t assume that reading about their disorder means you know what they need better than them. Don’t talk about how their disorder affects you. Even if you have good intentions, you’re going to make them feel bad. If you’re a parent, don’t talk to others about your child’s disorder in front of them. And if they don’t like a therapist, listen to them as to why. Don’t assume it’s just because “they’re disordered” that’s lazy parenting.

Take triggers seriously, talk to them about what symptoms they need help with, and which they’d rather process or deal with on their own. Just..show that you have that initiative, that you’re there for them. Listen. Be patient. Establish boundaries gently but firmly. If someone with my attachment disorder is ringing you a lot and you need time to yourself, let them know. Explain. Don’t go radio silent. People with autism can be bad at reading you. Again explain, be patient, but don’t just....leave them there to guess what they did wrong. C-PTSD is traumagenic in nature so I’d add to taking triggers seriously, be ready for Tragic Backstory drop behind disclosing some triggers ( and understand how much they have to trust you to disclose that.) but also be ready for “I just don’t want this in my field of vision and I don’t feel comfortable talking about it just yet.” Don’t push for details. Don’t push period.

And also just....treat em like people you know. Disordered people are still people, let them exist outside their disorders and do the things that people in that relationship that you have with them. ( whatever relationship that is) do.

How your disorder/s affect your relationships

In the past -and before I was a bit more self aware- it’s made me uber clingy. I would call friends constantly, message them a lot. Think someone was my best friend or even closer than they really were because they were nice to me. It scared people off.

On the flip side I would also convince myself people didn’t like me or I was nothing to them the moment I caught myself having strong feelings. ( which as said before would happen mcquicklike)

As one can imagine this would put a lot of pressure on new friendships. Often it would sour them, sometimes it would make people dislike me. Sometimes it’d make them unconfortable. Which as my disorder also affects how I receive rejection...was..really bad.

On the flip side of the flip side I was also incredibly ride or die and it left me open to a lot of manipulation and abuse from friends. I couldn’t be mad at them if they hurt me. I couldn’t say no to anything they said. I needed them.

My anxiety also contributes to this as I would constantly go through a checklist of how many good interactions vs “bad” or awkward interactions I had with people before I let myself feel like I was safe to call people my friends. Or even say I did okay interacting.

I had a lot of nights while I was making friends in college where I just felt like I was nothing to anyone. Like I was messing up. Looking back, it was just standard new friend interactions.

The more people mean to me, the more I’d freak out-I didn’t want to lose them. So it made it hard to even enjoy the friendship milestones I did achieve.

I’m using past tense because it’s gotten a lot better as situations that were making this 10 times worse have alleviated somewhat but there’s still seeds of it and sometimes it flares up. I’m just aware enough I can sometimes if not stop it identify it as my disorder talking. I don’t keep lists anymore but sometimes the thought pops up.

Facts About Your Disorder You Wish People Knew

I wish people knew what scripting and autistic burnout was. And that adults can have autism. And that vaccines don’t cause autism so stupid ass people didn’t risk their kid getting sick because they’re scared of my neurology.

I wish the only thing when I search about

I wish people took triggers seriously.

I wish more people knew about attachment disorders period.

I wish people knew how hard it all is sometimes.

Favorite healthy coping techniques

Plushies, pillows. Physical grounding techniques that include physical stimming. I’m very tactile when it comes to my autism and stimming so grounding techniques were Good Textures are involved help double.

For attachment disorder spirals: Watching YT animators or vloggers. Like a lot. It recently chased off my sleeping problems.

Playing with my dog.

Walking outside.

Going to the beach.

Looking at buildings. ( I don’t..I don’t know why?? It’s like a visual stim I guess? Like buildings that stand out to me due to their shape or being different than I usually see)

Basically going outside. ( to look at buildings, to look at nature, to the dog park, out in the grass in front of my building just..Outside Good, Inside Bad)

Sending fun stuff to friends/doing things for them.

I tend to get a good happy chemical surge from helping people/doing nice things for people so that’s something I really like using to my advantage. I’m looking at volunteer options.

Also cartoons and Disney Channel shows I watch a lot of those.

Cooking. I can’t understand this one either but cooking and baking sometimes even gives me more energy.

Current biggest struggles with your disorder/s

Being at home tanks my mental health. I don’t drive. So I’m home a lot.

Seeing families be happy hurts sometimes. And that’s my main confort narrative.

Seeing my friends with their families hurts sometimes. All I can think of is how much I wish I was a part of that. So I have to...not spend time with my friends.

I’m afraid to live alone.

I can’t get anything done sometimes. My train of thought has been crashing to the point that I completely lose it and I miss goals and deadlines almost every month. I need to get assignments done, build a portfolio, at least keep shrink dates, its all a hurdle lately. Even before that it’s hard for me to get stuff done when I’m home on my own ( aka when I’m supposed to be doing things) because all my brain can think is “we’re alone we’re alone we’re alone. It’s too quiet. We need to talk to someone.” According to my shrink DBT will help with this. I can’t wait.

It’s hard to see a myself having a good future sometimes. Because of how many hangups I have and how late I am in addressing them ( I’m 28) and how much there is to do.

What not to say to a person with similar/same disorder/s

“You’re making it all up”

“You should just get over it, it happened so long ago”

“You’re bringing me down stop talking about this”

“Its all in your head”

“Every one feels that way really”

Anything dismissive.

Anything from the stigma answer.

Literally any kind of pity (granted thats more a me thing due to childhood epilepsy meaning i had to deal with a lot of that. But honestly I’ll stand by it bc I’m not sure anyone really ...likes pity. )

Ways in which your disorder/s affect your daily life

I deal with executive dysfunction which makes it hard to get anything done. I feel like I’m starting over constantly. I feel like my age doesn’t match my brain. All of this augments my depression. I have to take days off in the middle of the week to just do nothing or catch up to all the stuff I haven’t done. I miss deadlines or just barely make them. I’m also a budding workaholic which I used to do to avoid dwelling on all these feelings so having to take breaks isn’t….something I’m used to or really like. I at one point handled school, work, and 2 editing jobs. I used to do martial arts, I like running, I like swimming. I’m the kind of person that needs to be on the move and lately that’s hard because spoons and energy.

Also a lot of basic self care is hard to get done because of the dysfunction mentioned above.

Things that give you hope

The fact that I’m finally getting therapy.

I guess having people I can talk to about it.

My family isn’t as bad as it was back in 2014.

I guess I know that even if I feel like I’m at a dead end, I’ll figure something out. That’s what I do. I mean that’s life, you think things are never getting better or that something’s the end of the world but really time marches onwards and so do you and you figure it out. Things fall into place. I believe life has a funny way of working out. If anything because it kinda has to, it can’t stand still yknow. I have moments of clarity where I just kinda remember that ( its not my first rodeo.in regards to hard times or Things That Happen..its not even my hardest rodeo so..if I got through that..you kinda figure you can muddle through this and see what comes next yknow) I’m oddly hopeful for the first time in a long time so, it’s p cool.

Treatment types and personal choices

I spent most of my childhood, and teenage years...and early 20s dodging therapy and help due to it being controlled by my mother and having really bad experiences with it in the past.I do regret it sometimes but I comfort myself with the fact that it was what seemed like the best decision and i didn’t have the information I now have about keeping her out of things.

After finding better insurance and getting into university I found a way to get myself a psychiatrist and am working on finding talk therapy. For the most part I tended to patch myself up a lot by finding ways to quiet the thoughts I had ( saving text messages to remind myself people dont hate me. Talking myself down. Joining social activities. That sorta home brew stuff. I’ve been soloing a lot of shit I probably shouldn’t have been until recently but hey live and learn. Also I didn’t have insurance.) As of recently I’m on an antidepresant and hopefully going into DBT. That reminds me I have to call them.

Your support system

I’ve found some really nice friends like they’ve kinda just collectively adopted me and when your disorder stems from losing family that..that’s been incredibly helpful. All my close friends are long distance but they help me. My younger sister is also there although i try to limit how much she’s privy to as she just turned 18. My brother and I tend to spend limited time together due to him having his own stuff goin on but I’d also put him there. My parents sorta count as....one supportive unit? ( they try with the best of intentions but it uh..thats..thats really all I can say about them)

Reactions from those who learn about your disorder/s

I get told I can’t possibly have them because i “look too successful” or whatever ableist rethoric they got going. When I talk about C-PTSD symptons I get side eye for “trivializing” it as they don’t believe I can have it and think I’m exaggerating anxiety symptons. When I talk about Attachment Disorders…..I often don’t because people always say something along the lines of “people with that are often too damaged and you don’t fit the bill” which..ouch.

Mostly it goes from “you don’t look like a damaged and/or psychopath crazy person” to “oh...I guess you are one” with a bit of “okay thats fine” but still anger and impatience when I show symptoms.

I don’t talk about my disorders a lot.

Future hopes and dreams

I’d like to get my attachment disorder under control as it’s the main life wrecking thing I have. After that or along with that I’d like to live somewhere where I get the social interaction I kinda need.

I wanna be happy with whatever profession I have and just..my life in general.

I hope DBT helps. Whatever it is It’s my first time even trying it.

I have a couple of personal creative goals but I don’t wanna jinx them by disclosing them ( I did mention I had anxiety)

Interactions with other people with the same disorders

I follow some peeps with BPD and also folks on the spectrum on tumblr. I don’t really have a lot of analog interaction. ( again no driving + suburbia = being cooped up A Lot) My sister and I share some disordered traits so we talk about them often and that helps a lot.

Things you want to work on/improve

The whole black and white thinking and maybe getting things done on time. I’d like to get the spirals under control too.

Work/school experience with disorder/s

Shit’s hard.

Often I don’t get the help I need and have learned to overcompensate/regulate so I can still get things done. I pretty much need to work since i don’t believe I’d qualify for disability. I get in trouble a lot for spacing out ( dissociating) and forgetting things at work. Work friendships are also slow burn if not just nonexistent due to my autism and people..not really knowing what to make of it. I’ll probably have to quit working while I study since I can’t really split focus enough to do both lately. Further, a lot of my energy needs to go into school things staying afloat and that tends to mean I can’t do things that contribute to my mental health ( i.e spending time with friends, going out, sometimes even therapy, taking breaks) as I’ve found out that sends me way back in recovery.

Free space!

Here’s a picture of my cat. She’s a demon. What it said Free Space.

Family history of mental disorders?

Mother has Bipolar disorder and depression. Sister has bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, Brother has anxiety and shows signs of ADHD, Dad has what we suspect is ADHD and possibly some disorder traits from past trauma. Used to have anger issues.

I uh..I used to call us “The Madhouse” for most of my late teens and early 20s.

Media representation of disorder/s

Attachment disorders: characters who are stalkers and so desperate for love family and acceptance they’ll do anything, even hurt people to feel it. Also often don’t have depression and can do things like learn villain skills.

Autistic traits are often cherry picked and portrayed in an unfavorable light. I think I’ve seen some rare cases of actual representation though.

How do you feel about talking about your mental health?

I don’t...like it as much as talking about mental health in general. Most of my life is...me running away from trauma and trying to reclaim a life outside of it. It’s what I did with my epilepsy of course that one was easier because the seizures went away.

Talking about it feels like going back. I wanna just move on with it. But I’ve reluctantly come around to see that talking about it is a way to move on. And I mean its not like dodging it’s worked out that well for me so.

The true face of mental illness (Selfie if you’re comfortable with it)

Aww yiiss. Selfies.

#mental health #mental illness #mental health awareness #mental health awareness 2018 #mental health awareness 2019 #mha2018 #well..2019 but thats what they said to tag it #depression cw #anxiety cw #self harm cw #suicidal feelings cw #ableism #abuse mention #fillicide mention #uuuh I think that covers it #here goes

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rainbowattack · 6 years

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Tw: frank post about suicidality, including descriptions of what having intrusive suicidal ideation is like. Please read with caution and keep yourself safe.

When I tell people that I experience intrusive persistent suicidal ideation, I don't think they get it. I don't think they actually grasp the amount of my waking life that I spend actively suicidal.

So what do you do when this is the reality of your life?

You just keep living your life to the best of your ability. If you have to pull over and cry because the ideation is so intense that you don't trust yourself to not speed into a tree on the side of the road, then that's what you do. If you work in food service and you have to put down the big knife and walk away until the urge to use it on yourself passes, then that's what you do. If you sit at home every single night trying to stay as motionless as possible because you know that if you get up, you'll go and do something that you can't stop and can't control, then that's what you do.

My life is a constant hellscape, and I'm expected to just go about my life as if everything is normal.

Inevitably, it sometimes gets so intense that I break down and confide in friends or family, and I always get some variation of the following:

"Why don't you go to the hospital if it's that bad?"

It's *ALWAYS* that bad, my dude. If the criteria for going to the hospital is being actively suicidal with a plan in place, I should technically be living my entire life in the hospital. I cycle through active and passive suicidal ideation and planning multiple times every day. This has been my life since I was a child.

"Why don't you go see a therapist or a psychiatrist to get help?"

I'm in therapy. I've been in therapy on and off since I was 12. I've been through CBT. I've been through DBT (hell I taught DBT professionally for 3 years!). I am on medication. I take it as prescribed, and believe it or not, this state of existence is actually me when I'm relatively stable. This is my baseline.

" You have so much to live for!"

Go ahead. Tell me what I have to live for that isn't directly related to the pain my leaving would inflict on others. Go ahead. Tell me. I can't work because when I'm really symptomatic I can't even get out of bed but when I'm well I'm consisted "high functioning" (which is a shitty ableist garbage lable), so I'm not technically ill enough in a way that is considered "disabled" to qualify for disability. And even if I was, being on disability is its own hellscape. I can't afford to live on my own, and thanks to my mental illness, living with roommates isn't possible. If my dad decides he wants me out, I'm effectively homeless. I can't hold a long-term romantic relationship, I am 100% convinced that my mental illness, particularly the combination of my intrusive suicidal ideation and my lack of emotional permanence and my years of sustained trauma and trust issues, makes me unlovable in the long-term. The things that I enjoy are great but my lack of emotional permanence means that I only get to experience the happiness of them very fleetingly and the moment that activity or thing ends it's right back to where I was and there is no guarantee that I will even be able to enjoy those things on any given day because my brain takes even that away from me too.

"You help so many people/ people love you so much/ people would be devistated"

Cool, thanks for reinforcing my belief that I'm only worth as much as what I can DO for others, or only worth anything if I'm not causing them discomfort. I honestly believe that suicidal people deserve to want to live for THEMSELVES and have their own internal motivations for wanting to stay alive. Guilt tripping people to stay alive by trying to make them feel bad about how it would affect other people is shitty as fuck and just shows that you don't value that person's lived experience and instead prioritize the needs of others over their own suffering.

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem"

That may be true for many people who have contemplated suicide. But here's the deal for me...this nightmare isn't going to end. This is my life. Nothing is going to change that's going to make my brain stop doing this every single day.

I've done all of the things that we tell people to do. I exercise 4 times a week. I eat a healthy diet. I do my best to get a reasonable amount of sleep when I can. I use my DBT skills. I practice mindfulness meditation. These things all do improve the quality of my life. They improve it enough to bring it up to what I described earlier. This is my "good". It actually can and does get worse than this. This is the best it gets for me.

This is not temporary. This is the reality of my life and has been since I was 12. I'm 31. If it was going to get better it would have by now.

"Suicide is selfish."

OH REALLY. TELL ME HOW HOLDING ON WITH MY FINGERNAILS TO LIFE WHILE LIVING THIS NIGHTMARE HELLSCAPE OF AN EXISTENCE THAT LITERALLY TORTURES ME EVERY SINGLE DAY LITERALLY ONLY BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT IT WOULD DO TO THOSE AROUND ME IS SELFISH.

TELL ME HOW MY SUBJECTING MYSELF TO LITERAL TORTURE EVERY DAY SO AS TO SPARE OTHERS PAIN IS SELFISH.

TELL ME HOW CONSTANTLY EXPENDING EMOTIONAL LABOR TO EDUCATE OTHERS ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS AND SUICIDALITY IS SELFISH.

TELL ME HOW SPENDING EVERY LAST BIT OF EMOTIONAL ENERGY THAT I HAVE REIGNING IN MY SYMPTOMS AND URGES SO AS TO NOT BURDEN OTHER PEOPLE OR MAKE THEM UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE REALITY OF MY SITUATION IS SELFISH.

Suicidal people deserve to want to be alive for more than just the fact that their passing would hurt other people.

Suicide is selfish? FUCK YOU. 99% of my emotional energy is directed at protecting others from the possibility of annoyance or discomfort or pain caused by my mental illness. How much of YOUR daily life do you spend thinking about the impact you have on others?

If I eventually do leave, it will be because I have expended every last drop of energy that exists in my body and soul trying to not hurt other people and finally got so depleted that I couldn't do it any more.

This post is not pro-suicide..I'm not encouraging anyone to act on their urges. Many many people experience mental health recovery and are able to find a life worth living. For most people, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

This post is about me. My life. I'm just saying that, for me, I don't see any hope for the future or any way at all that my life could improve to the point that enduring the things my brain does to me would be comparatively worth the suffering.

So like. I don't know what the point of this post is. Screaming into the void I guess. Maybe hoping to get credit from some faceless stranger in the internet for still being here even when I have to live with this every single day. Something. I don't know.

I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired.

I'm probably not going to leave today, so there's that I guess.

That's all I can ever promise.

#tw suicide #tw death #tw #tw intrusive thoughts #actually borderline

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mental-health-advice · 6 years

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(Tag Eve) Part 1: Lately my depression has been getting worse than it ever has. Its gotten to the point where I'm no longer able to play the sports I used to love (ex. I don't have very good aim anymore while playing basketball, I can't seem to block a volleyball anymore, ect.) Its been affecting my school work as well, I haven't been completing projects on time and I can't concentrate in class. My marks have dropped big time.

(Tag Eve) Part 2: Its been getting bad to the point where some days I can't even get out of bed. Its really been affecting how I live daily. Simple things like showering or brushing my teeth have become an effort. I can't see a professional about it because I don't have a car and my parents deny the existence of depression, calling me lazy and stuck up instead, and theres no way I could afford it anyways. I've been suicidal for a while, with no real reason to be.

(Tag Eve) Part 3: I've just been doing little things like no longer looking when I cross the street or not wearing seat belts anymore. Part of me wants to stop, but I can't bring myself to stop. (As stupid as that sounds)

Hi Eve,

Nothing that you’ve said sounds stupid and I’m so sorry thatyou’re struggling so much!

What you’re describing sounds really frustrating and I wantyou to know that you don’t need a “reason” to feel like this or to be suicidal.While certain situations can lead to depression or suicidal ideation (losing aloved one or getting fired from a job, for example), mental illness issomething that just happens. For whatever reason, our brain chemistry just getsout of balance and causes issues like depression or any other mental illness.This can be really frustrating because, when something like this is going on,we tend to want to find a tangible reason for why it’s happening, which isn’tpossible when it’s caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. So although itseems like you don’t have a true reason to be depressed or suicidal, what you’refeeling is valid and you do have a reason to feel like this – it’s just not areason that’s as obvious as it seems like it should be.

It does sound like you would really benefit from seekinghelp and I think there might actually be ways around physically getting totherapy and paying for it. You mentioned that you’re in school and most schoolsoffer counseling services of some sort, so that might be worth looking into. Counselingservices in schools are often free for students, too. If that’s not an option,there may be a clinic in your area that provides free therapy for people whocan’t afford it. Some of those clinics will even offer free bus passes (orwhatever form of public transportation your area has) for people who don’t havetransportation. You might try asking around, perhaps with teachers or friendsif you have any that struggle with mental health, to see what services areavailable to you. Your doctor might even have some suggestions and you can alsotry doing some research online. We have a page about getting help if you’d likesome information on how to reach out.

When it comes to your depression, there are some things thatyou can do on your own in addition to seeking professional help. It’s reallycommon for people who struggle with depression to lose interest in activitiesthat they usually enjoy, but it can still be helpful to keep doing them even ifyou don’t like doing them as much especially if it involves being around peoplebecause that’s good for depression. For your schoolwork, you could try talkingto your teachers about what’s going on, just so they are aware of what’s goingon. In general, self-care is super important. Even if it means that you brushyour teeth or brush your hair on days that you can’t get out of bed, it’s stillsomething that will help you feel human since being stuck in bed can make youfeel bad about yourself. You can find more self-help suggestions for depressionhere if you’re interested.

It’s really concerning that you often want to get hurt orwant to hurt yourself, so I want to give you some resources in case you feellike you’re a danger to yourself. In a situation where you feel like you wantto die but you don’t want to act on the thoughts, you can try reaching out to ahelpline or web counselor. Those are helpful for when you just feel like youcould use someone to talk to when you’re having suicidal thoughts. However, ifyou’re ever actively suicidal and you’re an immediate danger to yourself, youshould contact your local emergency services or find another safe way to ahospital. I know it can be incredibly difficult to ask for help when you feellike hurting yourself, but there are always people out there who can help youand you shouldn’t ever have to go through this on your own. You’re deserving ofhelp and you deserve to keep going.

What you’re going through isn’t easy, but you’re so muchstronger than you think. Depression can make life feel so bleak and pointless,which can make it really hard to keep going. It sounds like this is somethingyou’ve been struggling with for a while and, although this is the worst it hasever been, remember that you have managed to get through all of it. You’restill here and that says a lot about how strong you really are! And even thoughit can be hard to think about the future when you’re hurting this much, itreally is possible to get back to a place where you feel okay again. It mightnot happen today, tomorrow, or next week, but eventually you will get there. Aslong as you can hang on until then, I think you will be glad that you decided tostick around. There are always reasons to stay.

You can do this!

-Samantha

#mhasamantha #advice #advice blog #mental health advice #Eve #depression #getting help #suicide #suicidal #suicidal thoughts #suicidal ideation #death #therapy #school #Anonymous

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isearchgoood · 4 years

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The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Life has taught me that good things should be expensive — especially when it comes to any type of digital marketing services. If you’re not an expert, you can end up getting something far from what you’ve been expecting.

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

My point is, just like working with freelance designers, hiring SEO consultants is only safe when you know exactly what you need and can control every step of the contract. This both relates to the scope or work and the price of contract.

I get really confused when I hear that the price of an average SEO agency contract starts at $1k USD. This number was first shared by Rand Fishkin in 2012 when he asked 600 agencies about their typical rates. Later, in 2018, that same number was published by Ahrefs when they did a similar survey.

As an SEO practitioner, I’m a bit disappointed with the stability of rates, but what bothers me the most is that this rate doesn’t really include link building. I can hardly imagine a successful SEO campaign for an SMB site without acquiring links. To back up my statement with some numbers, I’d like to mention Ross Hudgens' claim that acquiring a good link on a top-notch site should cost $1k USD. Ironically, that’s the whole budget of an average SEO contract.

But to be honest, I don’t quite agree with those rates even though I truly respect the opinion. It doesn’t seem that realistic at scale: if you want to build 10 links, it would cost you $10k, a hundred links, $100k etc. That’s just plain impossible for the majority of companies. Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to work with those rates, but I can hardly imagine a business willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars for one hundred links. And to be completely fair, in some niches even a hundred links won’t move the needle.

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

To give you some context for their SEO situation, this client also wanted to rank for keywords related to link building. Below you can see one of my favorite examples of how fierce the competition is in the niche where people want to rank for such a generic term as “link building”:

This screenshot is screaming a simple fact out loud: you need to have at least 2,000 referring domains to outrank the pages that are currently in the top. Remember the link building rates that I’ve just named? How much would such work be worth? Looks like you might need a new round of investments if a rate per link remains at $1k USD.

Now, look, I feel for you. Link building should be affordable for SMB sites because what’s the point in getting into it if the game’s been fixed to begin with? In this post, I’ll show you that link building shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg, and even a small site can do it with enough dedication put into solving the issue. I’ll walk you through some of the most popular link building strategies and explain why some of them aren’t economically attractive. And I’ll explain the costs of certain options (or in other words, why the hell does your link builder charge you so much?) and show you what benefits they can offer your business.

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Some time ago, I had quite a long flight to Bali where I was speaking at the DMMS conference. I had a chance to watch a few movies including Tolkien, who was among my favorite authors growing up. Sadly, the movie had a weak plot that doesn’t really begin to explain how Tolkien came to invent his own language. However, it did bring up something to do with link building, believe it or not. Connections that you build throughout your life impact you a great deal. Put “your site” in place of “you” in the last sentence and voilá — here’s my point. If you follow the wrong path, you’ll surround yourself with bad connections (and, using my link building metaphor, bad links).

I’m always keen to discuss things from a philosophical point of view, but let’s get practical for a moment. How can you build high-quality links that will bring the best SEO results and will still be affordable?

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

First of all, let’s clear up on the terminology. I see any strategy that includes sending emails to other websites to negotiate the possibility of getting a link as email outreach. For instance, such well-known strategies as broken link building, building links through guest posting, scraping SERPs and then pitching your content to those sites, and many others. That’s all email outreach because they all involve pitching something to someone through emails. The only way in which some of those strategies are different from the others is that they require some sort of written content. For example, guest posting requires you to write a post — that’s obvious. This significantly increases the costs of work, and here we are, approaching the above-mentioned number of 1k USD. To be honest, guest posting is not my favorite strategy due to many limitations that it has (I’ll share them with you later in this post, so keep reading!)

Links from digital PR campaigns

Even though this strategy also relies on sending emails, your recipients aren’t website owners but journalists. So, this strategy is quite harder to execute. They require newsworthy content, you should have the necessary connections, be able to pitch it to the journos etc. etc. Also, digital PR campaigns always cost 10X more than any traditional email outreach campaign. That’s just because they bring links from media outlets that have not only great SEO value, but also let your brand connect with a broader audience.

Paid links

I don’t like these types of links and I don’t recommend anyone to try to acquire them. But I feel that I can’t skip this point as, in reality, paid links are in high demand. Some marketers are always trying to find the shortcut and look for sites that sell links.

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Below you’ll find a quick sum-up of the most significant pros and cons of each strategy. It’s important to mention that here, at my agency, we only build links through email outreach as I believe it is by far the most cost-effective strategy. As of links built through digital PR, I used to do that, but in my experience, the results were not quite worth their significant costs.

Paid links

Let’s start with the tricky option — paid links. Here I’m talking about the links that you can purchase through sponsored content and that won’t be labeled with a special tag. I’m not going to talk about the ethical side of this strategy, as that would require a separate post. I just want to state that I know tons of sites that do it.

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

A few years ago, I was one of the biggest digital PR fans around, but time passed, and now I clearly see what kind of limitations this approach bears. Digital PR is an essential part of the promotion strategy for businesses that have recently established their brand and want to build trust with their audience. Plus, links from media outlets will automatically give Google’s a signal that your site is a trustworthy business. The only downside is that the majority of businesses don’t have a big fat budget for a proper digital PR campaign. Here’s a good post from Gisele Navarro that shares some extra angles on why brands do and don’t need digital PR.

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

I believe this to be the best link building strategy that fits nearly every business’ needs, especially if your goal is to start getting traffic to already existing pages. And to top it off, its cost per link is affordable even for small and medium-sized businesses.

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

To sum it up, there are many reasons to believe that link building through email outreach is your to-go strategy if your main goal is to get more organic traffic from Google. The next big question is how many links you need and what it's going to cost you.

How to estimate the number of links you need

A few weeks ago, I was lucky to listen to Robbie Richards’ speech at the DMSS conference where he confirmed my link building formula. If you’re competing with a site with similar on-site characteristics (both sites are https, mobile-friendly, fast, Google considers them both a brand plus a few other factors) then, in order to outrank it in search, you need to keep in mind only two factors*:

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

This formula might vary based on your estimated domain authority (DA) or on your domain rating (DR). If you have a higher domain score than the pages that you want to outrank, then you’ll just need fewer links. But if your DR is lower, you’ll need significantly more links, and that’s something you need to account for.

Here’s some context: let’s take a look at my own site. Digital Olympus is not doing very well in the SERPs because of its DR. On average, all sites that are ranking for search queries related to email outreach have a domain rating of 70–80, while our own site is only 56. So, this means that we need at least two times more links referring to our pages in comparison to the sites that are above us in search. For instance, to get this page to the top of search results for “email outreach,” we need to build around 200 links. As you can see from a screenshot below, the rest of the URLs have 100+ links, so we need to double that number to stand a chance:

Another approach to this situation would require us to calculate how many links we need to get the overall domain rating of 70. That’s around 250 links from sites with DR higher than 30 (I don’t consider sites that have smaller DR of good quality).

Once you know the necessary number of links to build, you should decide whether you’re capable of doing it on your own. I’m not trying to convince you to hire an agency, but if you’ve never done link building, it’s going to take around a year to set up the process and start building from 10–20 links a month, realistically speaking.

I don’t want to demotivate you, but such tasks are truly skill-demanding. A few years ago, I could barely build several links per month. So, if you have a budget and need links right away, it makes sense to hire someone to help you. The main reason why our clients hire us is that we’ve built relationships in the industry. We’re known, which allows us to build links fast.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

Different agencies have different rates when it comes to link building through email outreach. As a time-consuming strategy, it very much relies on the agency’s approach which is always unique even if it relies on the common practices. Some charge per campaign, some per link, and some would prefer to ask you to pay not less than a certain amount on a monthly basis.

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

In case you want to pay as you go and don’t want to be bound by any monthly commitments, then DFYlinks.com is your best choice. Their link building services are highly recommended by such well-known experts as Cyrus Shepard, Ryan Stewart, and many others. DFYlinks sell guest post links and their cheapest option will cost you only $160 USD:

Another link building agency trusted by such industry experts as Ryan Stewart and Steven Kang is Authority Builders. Even though they don’t have a pricing page, I had a chat with their founder, Matt Diggity, and he said that their basic rate is $170–$180 USD.

If you’re wondering where my agency stands, we’re from a bunch that charge per number of acquired links, post-factum. I think it’s the best option for small and mid-size businesses, as it gives you more freedom and allows you to build links at your own pace.

Our rate is somewhere in the middle, even though the quality of our links is above average, as we’re getting our links from corporate and top-notch blogs. Plus, we don’t send mass emails so you won’t face any associated reputation risks. We’ve spent the last couple of years building relationships with people, so right now we’re simply reaching out to them instead of doing mass email blasts. For our services, we charge from $300 USD per link, so you can easily calculate your overall budget to build, say, a hundred links. However, we work only in the B2B niche — specializations are important to consider before you choose an agency.

So that’s the rundown on how much it costs to build links. Hopefully you should now be able to estimate your budget in order to build the desired number of links to your site. And let me just say this: for businesses that have already built some trust and visibility, getting even sixty new, quality referring domains can make all the difference and help them achieve sustainable organic traffic growth:

That’s a lot to take in, I know. But there’s more to talk about. For example, there are tons of hidden benefits to email outreach delivered the right way. Just stay with me, we’re getting there.

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

People who are your link building partners today can organize a conference tomorrow and invite you to speak, which can allow you to become more visible within your niche. That’s not as rare as it may seem! And if you're curious, yes, I’m referring to our own experience: besides doing link building, we also run our own digital marketing conference Digital Olympus (which, by the way, will be next held in Krakow on April 5th 2020).

Another benefit worth mentioning is that the companies that you connect with during your email outreach link building campaign also invest in growing their businesses. As a result, the site that has a domain score of 50 might get it up to 70 in a few months. In other words, today you’re paying for something that might get much more valuable in the future, and that’s what makes email outreach link building epic!

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

Your next step is up to you, but in my experience, it’s important to start working on links as early as possible. Otherwise, there’ll be a huge gap between your site and your competitors who have been working on link building for a while.

Also, I know that the majority of businesses would like to run their link building campaigns in-house. Starting early gives you a leg-up to build your processes and test things. If you decide that it’s your way, please don’t follow the “best practices,” as 99% of them are infinitely outdated. Most of those strategies have been discontinued years ago in the link building community, and only rookies still fall for them.

The list of no-BS resources

If you’re looking for more information about doing DIY link building, here are a few useful posts that won’t turn you into a spammer who’s asking for a link because “they’ve been following another person’s blog for ages” (that’s a link builders private joke):

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

This post will help you persuade your email outreach prospects to open and, what’s more, to reply to your emails. Even though Talia Wolf didn’t write this post specifically about email outreach copy, I found tons of really actionable tips in it to make my pitches irresistible.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

I’m not sure what else is there for me to say to convince you that email outreach is the way to do link building. And so I won’t try to convince you anymore — I’ll just sum up what I’ve told you already.

First of all, assess your situation and decide what’s more important for you at the moment: building links fast or building your own process of acquiring links in-house. If you decide in favor of the first option, calculate the number of links you need to build, estimate your budget, and find a reputable agency to help you out. And if you settle for the latter, get ready to spend some time on building relationships, mastering your outreach email copy, and streamlining creating valuable content.

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

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0 notes

chauhuongtran · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

The Economics of Link Building Theo dõi các thông tin khác tại: https://foogleseo.blogspot.com The Economics of Link Building posted first on foogleseo.blogspot.com from https://chauhuongtran.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-economics-of-link-building.html

#digital marketing

0 notes

luongthuyvy · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

The Economics of Link Building Theo dõi các thông tin khác tại: https://foogleseo.blogspot.com The Economics of Link Building posted first on https://foogleseo.blogspot.com/ #FoogleSEO #luongthuyvy Nguồn: http://bit.ly/2PSH7Pu #luongthuyvy

0 notes

whitelabelseoreseller · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/13075955

#The Moz Blog

0 notes

nutrifami · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

0 notes

kjt-lawyers · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

0 notes

daynamartinez22 · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

0 notes

drummcarpentry · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

0 notes

gamebazu · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

https://ift.tt/34vvIdN

0 notes

evempierson · 4 years

Text

The Economics of Link Building

Posted by Alex-T

Here’s an example of “the best mascot image you can get for your event” that I paid for when organizing one of our first Digital Olympus events:

Just for reference, this is how our mascot looked originally:

See for yourself. Here’s one of our clients who thought that 100 links would help them:

And here’s what’s been going on with their organic traffic coming back to their blog from the links that we built:

Link building landscape: Email outreach strategy to rule them all

Even though there are tons of link building strategies, on a general note, you can narrow them down to a few:

Links that are acquired through email outreach

Links from digital PR campaigns

Paid links

There aren't too many options out there when it comes to link building. Let me show you how some of the listed options aren’t economically right or simply won’t bring any solid SEO boost.

What are the pros and cons of each strategy?

Paid links

Pros:

It’s very fast. You can build as many links as you’d like. The only limitation is your budget.

Cons:

Sites that sell links do it at scale. At some point, they will be penalized by Google.

Consequently, if those links are risky, you’ll have to disavow them some time later.

Most likely there will be a tiny number of sites with exceptionally high domain ratings.

Digital PR link building

Pros:

Getting links from media outlets will eventually grow your domain authority and give Google enough reasons to believe that your brand is trustworthy.

They make your brand more visible to a broader audience.

Showing to your potential clients that your brand was featured in The New York Times or on BBC is cool. Like, really cool.

Cons:

It’s very, very expensive. The costs for an average digital PR campaign start from $30k–$40k USD.

This strategy requires specific content which is why it gets so pricey.

It takes a few months to build such links — to ideate and execute the campaign, gather attention, get coverage, etc.

The price per link is very high. Normally it revolves around $1k USD.

Email outreach link building

Pros:

You can build links to nearly any page (including your commercial pages).

The price per link doesn’t go through the roof (it varies from $100 to $500 USD depending on the referring site’s domain quality)

A lot of link building agencies even allow you to buy one link (however, we aren’t within that tier as we prefer quality over quantity).

It allows you to build relationships with your industry peers.

It makes your brand more visible to your target audience.

It helps you get links from top-notch industry sites.

Cons:

Requires some special skills and knowledge (an average email has only an 8.5% open rate which makes it quite a hard practice).

Such links can’t be built overnight. However, the time they take is less than the PR-based links.

Such links have some hidden reputational risks (if you do it the wrong way, sending tons of outreach emails = being potentially seen as a spammer).

How to estimate the number of links you need

Your domain’s authority should be circa the same number as of the pages that you want to outrank;

You should have the same or a bit more referring domains compared to the pages that currently outrank you.

*In particular cases, internal linking plays a huge role. Not that long ago, my good friend Joe Williams published a great post where he goes into more detail on the topic.

What’s the right price for an email outreach link building campaign?

For example, the people at LinksHero charge from $3k USD and promise to build around 5–15 links per month:

How to get more from every link that you earn

I love handmade email outreach link building as it allows you to do more than build links. You’re also building relationships that can help you move the needle far beyond link building alone.

Here's a list of sites from which we built links for one of our clients. You can see how their domain scores have grown since May 2019:

Start working on a link building profile that will rule them all!

The list of no-BS resources

This post by Venngage explains how to find and reach out to people that have already shared your blog’s content.

This post shows the anatomy of great email outreach and explains why your emails have to be 100% personalized.

Here I’m sharing our very own approach to link building that we use to build links to Digital Olympus.

Tips from the industry’s best link building practitioners. Zero BS, tons of value.

The last bastion of value amid the many outdated link building strategies is broken link building, which you can read about in this extensive guide.

I use the points from this post to explain to my clients why link building takes time and why guest posting is not always the right way to go.

Conclusion

But don’t worry — in the end, it’s all going to be worth it.

0 notes