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Top 10 Anime (That I've Seen) in 2020

Well now, it has certainly been awhile. I'm currently sitting at eight months too late for posting this, but, y'know, something something life happens. More accurately, I already made this list, but wanted to try out what response I'd get from Reddit. Turns out, they're not as cool as you guys!

Anyways, as the title states, this is not a list of my favorite anime that came out during 2020, but instead my favorite anime that I just so happen to see during that year. While it's fun to have an end of the year retrospective, I find that having a list in this format not only adds variety, but also helps bring attention to anime that might have been lost in the shuffle in previous years (I also don't have enough time to stay caught up in seasonal releases).

Honorable mentions:

Aggretsuko S3, My Hero Academia S4, Today's Menu For the Emiya Family, Interspecies Reviewers (yes, really), and I Couldn't Become a Hero So I Reluctantly Decided to Get a Job

10. Maid-Sama (2010)

In hindsight, I find it a bit funny that I wanted to watch something wholesome to kick off 2020. Anyway, Maid-Sama is about a high school girl that is also a no nonsense Class President and she kind of has to be at a school where, until recently, was an all boys school. While she kills it in academics and is good at shutting down any shenanigans from the male student body, her financial situation isn't the greatest and has to balance a job at a maid cafe along with her school-related responsibilities. She does her best to hide her employment there to keep up appearances, but is one day found out by one of the boys who happens to be a big flirt and, yeah, hijinks ensue. While this anime doesn't have too many surprises, our main leads bounce off each other well enough to keep me entertained. Nothing I haven't seen already in other anime Rom-Coms, but I think it has more than earned its place at the start of this list.

9. Haganai NEXT (2013)

It's a personal rule of mine when making these lists that I don't include sequels of shows that were in previous lists. While I DID see the first season of Haganai a couple of years ago, it didn't quite make it into the top ten at that time. Because of that, it meets the criteria for this year's list. While I found the characters were just as charming here as I did during the first season, the development of their relationships really took off. It's a shame that it will most likely not get a third season, but I'm happy with what ride this show gave me. But hey! At least I can read the light novels/manga to continue the story! Wait, nevermind, the Haganai fans on Reddit are saying that's a bad idea.

8. Engaged to the Unidentified (2014)

Based off of a Four Panel joke manga, Engaged to the Unidentified tells the story of a girl in high school suddenly getting some life changing news. As it turns out, her grandfather made an arranged engagement with her and the son of a family he knew. Next thing she knows, the boy in question, as well as his little sister, moves into her family's house! While the boy is unassuming at first, there may be more to him and his family than he lets on. Plain and simple, this anime has charmed me. There's a decent amount of drama and mystery despite the source material and I applaud it! Even though this also doesn't have much new to offer, even to the point where I would compare this to Maid-Sama, what made me pick this at the 8th spot were the color choices and animation quality. Give this a shot if you can!

7. Grimoire of Zero (2017)

It's a fantasy/adventure story starring a loli sorcerer and a huge, anthropomorphic white tiger man. I honestly can't say anything else. I won't be able to do it justice. That first sentence should intrigue you a lease a little bit. Read it, again. Please check it out. It's an underrated gem that no one is talking about.

6. ID: Invaded (2020)

Hey, here's something recent! Unfortunately, this is also not something I can say much about. There may not be too many deep characters and the secret bad guy isn't hard to figure out, but BOY is this anime cool! The best way to describe this series is that it's like the movie Inception, but instead of brain heists, it's brain murder mysteries.

5. Carole and Tuesday (2019)

A runaway rich girl has a fated meeting with an orphan and they decide to make music together...oh, this also takes place Mars. Joking aside, this show was something special with its music (a new song almost every episode no less), interesting setting (freaking Mars, dude), and endearing main cast. Shoot, the music itself would be top 3, maybe number 1, but what bogs it down is the show's second half. I can easily see myself watching this again someday, and maybe my opinion will lighten up, but for now, 5 is a dang good spot.

4. Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front - Babylonia (2019)

Part of me hesitates placing this high up on list due to this show being animated, fan service spectacle for Fate fans. However, that hesitation is overshadowed by the fact that I am a Fate fan myself and I can do whatever I want with this list. Even if you're not a Fate fan or play FGO, if you enjoy some solid fight animation, this is worth a look.

3. K-On S1 (2009)

I'll admit it, I might regret not watching the second season then putting the series on the list as a whole, but this how I've been doing these lists and I'm such a creature of habit. There's not much I can say about K-On that hasn't already been said. By itself it's an anime classic and one of Kyo-ani's biggest properties. It's a sweet and wholesome watch, but be sure to have some insulin within reach.

2. Princess Principal (2017)

Imagine you're working with a team of programmers trying to make a mobile game then all of a sudden someone asks to make a show out of it. You know, a show with different character motivations, plot, twist and turns and all that? Most might say that's just a shameless, shallow cash grab, but it turns out okay for Princess Principal. Sure, most might summarize this anime as, "cute girls doing espionage things," but with its cast, visuals, and interesting alternative timeline, it works! Apparently there's a new season or movie in the works and I am all for it!

1. Beastars (2019)

I was not expecting this to be number one, but with much deliberation (with myself obviously) this feels right. It tells a pretty unique story while showing itself to be the exception to the rule when it comes to 3D anime.....it being that it's actually good. While I acknowledge that shows like K-On are classics and deserves to be number one on many different lists, it didn't line up with my personal criteria like Beastars did. My biggest deciding factor is: Now that I've watched this, do I want more? It's true that while I'm excited to start K-On S2, Beastars intrigues me more and ever since season two was announced, I'm looking forward to that more.

Sorry again for this list being so late, but at least the silver lining is that the next end of the year list is about four months away (in theory)!

Little late getting to these -- that's fully the fault of a class project I spent all of Monday/Tuesday and most of Wednesday working on -- but I finished my project and wrote up some long replies to these!

(Apologies for any funny formatting -- I'm trying out the beta for the new post editor!)

Absolutely not.

Nope! There are a few people who do know (other guides Andrew's met before, the Dryad, and I'd imagine the Witch Doctor knows something's up even if he doesn't know why), but none of them live in Purity Town proper, and the Dryad and Witch Doctor aren't the kind to participate in rumors or spread what isn't theirs to share. The old man is also aware just because he and Andrew have talked about their curses, but he's 1) not currently in town and 2) not going to share even if he were.

Most folks don't know much about Andrew in general; Becca probably knows the most out of the townsfolk, knowing a little bit about his family and where he's from (he has some pretty specific skills as a hunter that betray this, but he doesn't talk about his exact town of birth), but no specifics and certainly not time periods.

Andrew is good at keeping things quiet; he has to be.

I would actually appreciate if you didn't post to Pinterest -- usually I'm fine with people reposting with credit (several of the things I've posted to my DeviantArt have found their way to Instagram, for example) but Pinterest has something of a reputation for stolen art (things being reposted from another Pinterest post without credit this time, or credit being hard to view for users not logged in or just viewing through Google). So reposting elsewhere is fine (though if you repost to Reddit or Instagram, tag me at u/Ariibees or @Ariibees)! I'd just prefer my works stay off of Pinterest.

The terminology related to The Guide/Andrew/The Guardian/The World’s Core/The WoF is all confusing because on some level, they’re all the same being. Kind of like trying to talk about Jekyll and Hyde -- same guy, different looks/actions, haha.

For all intents and purposes, references to the WoF being the barrier/core/whatever behind or within which the spirits of light and dark are contained is equivalent to saying “these spirits are held trapped by the magic of the Guardian, who when summoned appears as the WoF.” I do break slightly from the official lore in how the WoF/Guardian/thing holding back these spirits works (mostly because I don’t really like the idea that the Hallow is a “temporary guardian” or whatever), but the basic concept of “these are trapped by [thing that makes up the WoF]” remains unchanged.

If “loony cultist” is a reference to something, I’m so sorry, but I’m lost on it. If you’re just talking about the lunatic cultist in a funny way, then yes, they’re in here as a very plot-significant character!

I had to google what meme you were talking about, but it did make me laugh.

Andrew’s most annoyed by the nickname because people do like to call him Guide, and for someone who’s dedicated his whole life to his role, it can get tiring. He doesn’t really *mind* being called Guide -- it’s fine, that’s what he is and as long as people are respectful of his job he’ll take what he can get -- but at the same time, he’d like for people to stop thinking “Aah! Monster!” or “Weird academic know-it-all” and just...treat him like a normal person sometimes. So he fights to be called Andrew. And...Malik comes along and gives him a nickname that he doesn’t like and doesn’t allow others to use, save for maybe a small group of people of which Malik is not a part. So, not cool, man!

People love to overcomplicate explaining shading/lighting, and if you wanted to you could certainly go on and on about reflections of light off the ground and shading colors and all sorts of things, but as I’m writing this at 1 AM I don’t really care to.

If you really want to get into shading, I see nice ones on DeviantArt or Tumblr from time to time, or you can always watch a YouTube video on it. Really, though, just keep at it, think about how the shadows should look and work, and you'll get better at it eventually and pick up new ideas on how it all works. (And this is coming from someone who is new to making comics and actually started as a painter.)

Purity Town’s shading comes down to this: simplicity. As much as I’d love to spend hours and hours redrawing the panels I don’t like and carefully shading every fold of fabric and painting detailed backgrounds, I’m a full-time college student and will be working full-time over the summer -- I don’t have the time. So, I cut corners: I reuse backgrounds or use brushes (see: bricks, trees, clouds) that make certain details easier, and I try not to obsess too much over panels I’m not fully happy with. Shadows go where they feel right, and light on the opposite side.

For shading, this comes down to making things quick and easy. For these last few pages, character shading/lighting has only been five layers. One hard light layer for the bluer soft shadows, one overlay layer for darker soft shadows, one linear burn layer for hard shadows, one soft light layer for soft lighting, and one overlay layer for hard lighting. I’ll often also make use of glow dodge layers for lighting, or change the color balance or add more hard/soft light layers if there’s a very heavy color filter on the scene (such as a celestial event, blood moon, or outdoors at night).

Using all the different layer types is essentially a cheat code to fancier lighting -- don’t want to use flat black? Boom, hard light or overlay or burn will give you colored shadows. Want to make your light brighter? Glow dodge will make it burn your retinas.

Sorry that this isn’t a very comprehensive guide, but in my mind, shading and lighting is really something that you pick up over time and it’s hard to sit down and write a guide for it without making it into a massive essay on art theory that I don't even know proper terminology for because I'm not an art student. Of course with some googling you’ll find *proper* guides for this sort of thing from art majors and the likes, and those can be super helpful and technical! But for Purity Town, I just sort of go with what feels right and what's easy to replicate.

Firstly, I’m happy to hear you’re liking the comic!

Secondly, those buttons are actually there due to the theme! (For those on mobile who can’t see it, I have the theme set to only display on desktop as I prefer the current mobile layout on phone.) I’m using the simple webcomic theme (a quick Google should tell you how to install it for yourself) -- except I’m not actually using it for the webcomic features; rather, it’s a case of “this is the most simple, nice-looking non-default theme I could find.”

The previous/next buttons are added by the theme with the intent that the blog is being used as a typical webcomic website, with nothing but comic pages being posted. However, I post asks and other art here too, and I do so with the intent that people looking at #Terraria or their dashboards in general will see it. So...I use html formatting to make the first/previous/next/last links, along with an index and chapter-by-chapter viewing (using /tagged/chapter##/chrono) so that no matter where you’re coming from, you can still navigate just the pages!

If you want to add just the previous/next buttons, I can’t really help you -- web development is not my area of study in the slightest. But you can check out the theme that they come from and if you want to install only them, you can surely find a tutorial on it somewhere!

(As a side note, the comments section is not from the theme, it’s from a site called Disqus. I don’t expect many people, if anyone, to leave comments, but since I link back to this site a lot and many folks don’t have Tumblr accounts, it’s an option I like to make available.)

Hiya! My hike was pretty nice; it was a short and easy one, but that was quite appreciated as the trail is unmaintained from November to April, and the trail was covered in fallen trees and quite rocky. Still had fun, though!

And for backgrounds, it depends! For indoors scenes (or outdoors scenes with buildings) I don’t tend to use references, outside of looking up things like “which side of a door is the handle on.” I will, however, integrate real-life textures (see: the quilt and rug in Guide’s house, the wood walls on the building in the background of this week’s page), and paint over paintings from the Terraria wiki.

For outdoors scenes, for simple backgrounds (such as foliage-heavy) ones, I typically don’t need references. I like the difference between detailed, lined indoor/man-made object scenes vs. painted, messy outdoor scenes. But for things like mountains, I do sometimes look up references to help with color choices and the likes.

The town’s layout is a bit strange in that depending on the scene, the background could be drastically different. One side of town faces more mountainside, one side faces the orchards/open hillside, and the other two sides face various degrees of open space and more mountainside/forest. References taken on top of mountains are helpful to get an idea of what degree of foliage I should include between the characters and the sky.

Though this is very specific to the town of Purity -- other towns/villages will have significantly different-looking backgrounds, even the foliage-heavy ones.

That said, what's even more helpful than looking at photos is looking at paintings. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is really good for getting an idea of how to draw grasslands and distant mountains, plus Studio Ghibli movies in general!

Hey, I'd like to ask for some first relationship headcanons for Shinsou and Bakugou with a female s/o? Like first kiss, first date and how did the boys actually notice they fell in love with their s/o? :3 Thank you♡

Thx for the request, I made these way too long for headcanons, but I got a little passionate. I hope mobile tumblr doesn’t screw up the formatting like it always does :^)

~

Shinsou

First encounter - Shinsou never cared for making friends, and never really had the chance. Working his way up to the hero course, and training with Aizawa on the side, he never had the time to. It wasn’t until he stayed after school for longer than he’d initially hoped.

His footsteps echoed against the walls of the empty hallway. His gaze focused down on his feet, and hands stuffed into his pockets. At the rate he was at, he knew the way to the 1-a classroom like it was the back of his hand. Something he’d rather die than admit.

“Thanks, Aizawa-sensei!” A feminine voice suddenly caught Shinsou’s attention. He lifted up his head, coming closer to the door. Another student began walking out of the classroom just as he walked in. The girl waved to her teacher as she left, her other hand clutching the bag that rested on her shoulder. The two walked at each other. Shinsou came to an abrupt stop, but the girl kept walking on. Her head slowly turned, realizing she was inches from bumping into the boy. She whimpered, halting her movement, stopping just in front of him.

“Woah,” she looked up at the boy. “That was close.” Shinsou looked away once her eyes met his.

“Uh, yeah,” he began to walk around the girl. “Sorry about that.” She waved her hands frantically, brushing off his apology.

“Totally not your fault, don’t worry about it.” She turned to face him even after he’d circled around her. “Hey,” she paused, thumbing her lip. “I know you, you’re the guy Midoriya fought in the sports festival!” Shinsou bit his inner cheek, he did not want to do this right now. “Shinsou, right?” He trailed away from the girl, slowly nodding his head. “Well, it’s nice to meet you,” she held out her hand. “I’m (S/o).”

First friend - Shinsou sat alone at lunch, that’s just how it went. He’d bring his lunch from home, and sit at his desk in homeroom. As of recently, he’d been accompanied by his (s/o). She had found him getting a drink in the lunchroom, and decided to invite herself to eat lunch with him

“You know you don’t have to sit with me every day,” he poked at his salad. “Shouldn’t you be hanging out with your friends?”

(S/o) shrugged her shoulders, leaning back in her chair. “What, you have a problem with me sitting with you?” Her brow raised, rocking back and forth in her seat. “Just because I have other friends to hang out with doesn’t mean you aren’t my friend.” The chair slammed back down with all four legs stable on the floor. “And I wanna eat lunch with you.”

First date - What the hell was he getting himself into? Shinsou hadn’t thought of it as a date, but he certainly realized that after he asked her, it sure sounded like one. He just wanted to go out to the market, maybe get something to eat. That’s what friends did right? He was so tired of seeing her at lunch in the same outfit every day. He wanted something new, and he wanted to hang out with her more, what was so bad about that?

He chuckled before taking a drink of his water, watching her as she lost her cool as well. “Anyway,” she normalized her breathing, picking up the menu. “What do you think you’re gonna get?” Shinsou set down his glass, picking up his menu as well.

“No idea,” he looked over his options. “I think th-”

“Hey, (S/o)!” She shot her head up, looking over the menu. Shinsou slightly turned his head. The girl’s face lit up.

“Oh, hey Mina!” The pink girl hopped over to (S/o)’s side. As the two of them went on, Shinsou sighed, resting his head on his hand. Any second now she’d be gone, all Shinsou would have to do was fixate on what he’d be ordering.

“I knew you two had gotten close, but I had no idea you were dating!” Shisnou’s eyes widened, (S/o) sat there in awkward silence. She struggled to find the right words, playing with her hands, focusing on them like there was nothing else in the room.

“We aren’t dating,” Shinsou put down his menu and looked up at Mina. “This is just what… friends do,” he muttered, avoiding eye contact with (S/o) at all costs.

First hug/kiss - After that night he’d been seeing (S/o) less and less every day. His mind had been racing, he had finally found something… someone that liked him. He had second guesses about asking her to go out in the first place, and it seems like his gut was right.

“(S/o),” he stood by the entrance of class 1-a. She stopped at the entryway to the classroom, looking to her left to meet with Shinsou. Her breath stiffened as she turned to face the boy. Looking at her made Shinsou’s stomach churn and ache. “I’m sorry.” 

“You’re-” (S/o)’s head popped up in surprise. Before she could speak, Shinsou cut her off.

“I made you uncomfortable, that wasn’t very cool of me, was it?” His hands fidgeted in his pockets. “So,” he bowed. “I’m sorry.” The girl let out a heavy breath, reaching out to place a hand on Shinsou’s shoulder.

“No,” she pushed the boy up. “I should be the one apologizing. I-I guess Mina’s comment made me think and…” She let her arm fall off of his shoulder, her head fell with it. “I recognized that I do have really strong feelings for you.” She clenched her fists at her side. “And I didn’t know if you would feel the same way or not, so,” she looked back up at him. “I got scared.” Her eyes began to burn. “So, I’m sorry.” Shinsou hands fell to his sides, he felt motionless. He had forgotten how to move. He fell forward, arms reaching out to envelop her in a hug. He pulled her closer, his cheek resting on her shoulder. She responded, completing his hug by wrapping her own arms around him.

“You have no idea how worried I was,” he mumbled, turning his head. (S/o)’s face began to heat up as the boy’s breath tickled her neck. She nervously laughed, pulling away, but only slightly letting her grip around him dwindle. Smiling, she pulled him down by the collar leaving a small peck on his lips.

Bakugou

First partner project - Aizawa wasn’t the kind teacher that let you pick your partners, no, he would pick for you. Bakugou wasn't thrilled about having a partner in general, but hey he was glad it wasn’t Midoriya. (S/o) on the other hand had trouble coming to terms that she was paired with Bakugou, who was notorious for not being the greatest at teamwork.

“Hey Bakugou,” the girl opened the front door. She stepped back, allowing him to come in. The boy held his usual stoic expression, stepping inside her house. He looked around, taking in his surroundings as she shut the door behind him. “I’ll take you to my room, I have most of the supplies laid out already,” she sauntered in front of him. He nodded, his hands somewhat tensed at each of his sides. As the girl lead him to her room, she took a quick glance to look at him from behind. It might’ve just been her, but he seemed quieter than usual. “All right, here we are.” His nature set the girl off a tad bit. She sat down around the pieces to the project she had set up, their topic was ‘villain behavior.’ Bakugou followed, plopping down on the opposite side of her. “Oh,” she lightly smacked her hand on her forehead. “Do you want anything to drink? If you’re hungry I have some snacks for us too.” He shook his head.

“Let’s just start this damn project,” he finally spoke. (S/o) crossed her arms, before leaning forwards towards the supplies to get them started.

First shared laugh - From the start of the afternoon to the near end of it, things only went up. Turns out Bakugou provided a lot of good ideas, and to his (s/o)’s surprise he was fairly good at working with a partner. Surely this hadn’t been the same boy...

Bakugou pressed his hand on the paper attached to the board, so it wouldn’t fall as it dried. “Do you think it’d be too much to put fake blood on our project?” The girl asked, scrolling through forums upon forums of villain psychology. Bakugou let a snort out through his nose.

“I think that’s a great idea,” he carefully let go of the picture, making sure it stayed in place as he did so. He made his way over to her side, watching the screen as she scrolled further down into the reddit abyss. “Do you have fake blood we could use?” She paused, flipping onto her stomach.

“No,” she rubbed her chin. “But I do have ketchup…”

“Would that stick?” (S/o) shrugged her shoulders.

“It would leave some sort of stain, I think?”

The girl fell back, the ketchup bottle falling out of her grip, her hands clutched her stomach as she gasped for air. Bakugou dived down, retrieving the bottle from the floor. He chuckled as he watched her struggle to regain her composure.

“It’s supposed to go on the project, idiot,” he wiped the ‘blood’ from his face, smearing it on the girls cheek.

“Hey,” she giggled, slapping his hand away.

First realization - From that project on, the two got closer and closer. Not shy of the close friendship they quickly formed during their little experience. That’s to say, they became practically inseparable, if Bakugou was busy, it usually meant he’d be hanging out with his (s/o) and vice versa.

(S/o) skipped in the sand, leaving indents behind her, she traveled over to the shoreline. “Where the hell does she think she’s going?” Bakugou grunted, slightly lifting up his head from his comfortable resting position on top of his towel.

“The sun is setting, maybe someone should go with her before it gets completely dark out,” Mina suggested. Bakugou nodded in agreement, getting up to follow behind the girl. She stopped at the bridge of the coastline, letting the water slightly brush against her toes. Joining her side, he slightly shoved her forward. 

“Oi,” she giggled, lightheartedly pushing him back. She smiled, setting her elbow on his shoulder, leaning on him for support. “The sunset is really pretty tonight,” she suddenly commented. Bakugou hummed, watching the sunset with her. His lips curled into a warm smile. He looked over at her, watching the colors of the sunset hit her face. He shook his head, looking back over to the sunset. His expression dwindled, how cliché could this get?

“Come on,” he grabbed her wrist, walking her back over to their spot on the beach. “We’re about to eat, Denki ordered UberEats, and I’m pretty sure that’s what he went to go get a couple of minutes ago.”

“Hope he ordered hot sauce with that.”

“He better have.”

First kiss - Yep, as strongly as he resented the weird gut feeling he got around his (s/o), he still knew that he really liked her. More than just friends and it made him furious. He definitely tried to push aside his emotions, but his (s/o) truly didn’t help, always around him. He started to despise the situation as a whole. Sero suggested that he should just tell her if it was such a problem. So, that’s what he did.

“Hey, (S/o).” The two walked down the street, on their way to meet up with the others. The girl hummed, looking over at him.

“What’s up?” He scratched the back of his neck, a lump started to develop in his throat.

“I don’t want to ruin this,” he looked down at the girl, slightly frowning. “But, I really like you, more than a friend.”

The girl next to him flushed red, her eyes averted from his. She stopped in her tracks, fumbling with her hands. “It’s fine,” he commented. “Sero told me to just tell you,” he looked away from her. “So, I did, to get it off my chest I guess.” A smaller hand grabbed his wrist, pulling him to the nearest vacant alley.

“Oh,” she let his wrist go. “Sorry, guess I got a little flustered,” she smiled. “I’m glad you finally told me though,” she smiled

“You knew?”

“Well,” she laughed a bit. “Mina kind of let it slip.” He groaned, rolling his eyes.

“Of course she did..” He crossed his arms. “So-” he trailed off before being pulled down. (S/o) left a small kiss on his cheek before undoing her grip on his shirt.

“I like you too.”

So - a day ago I saw a ton of posts about Instagram here and on marketing subreddit. I found a lot of them to be 'incorrect' in some manner and a lot of them to be 'brilliant'.I started sharing my knowledge on Instagram - I wrote up a post on it. A couple of people seemed to enjoy it and even sent me requests via PM to make more posts shedding light on Engagement Pods and like injection method to reach Top Post and Explore Page.Lets Get StartedEverything YOU need to know about Engagement PodsDISCLAIMER - I do own and run an engagement pod on Telegram. I am NOT going to give its link unless 10+ people request for it. Don't want to get down voted into oblivion in the name of self promotion EVEN THOUGH I have like 7 messages in my inbox asking for just that.Engagement Pod - In a NutshellA group of people that come together on a chat platform to give each other comments and likes.Imagine you making a WhatsApp group and adding 10 friends to it. You make a rule that whenever any of you guys post on Instagram you'll drop link to that post in the WhatsApp group and everyone in that group (9 other friends) will like and comment on it (or just like / comment)Thats as simple as I can explain engagement pods.How did they come into picture?They came into picture when Instagram launched advertisement on its platform and basically FCKED its own community by making it REALLY difficult for people to get noticed and essentially FORCING them to pay to get noticed. (Facebook did just that) Before any platform opens its gates for advertisement - they run a massive purge (Instagram/FB/YT - they all did - removed millions of bot accounts) - they then make it difficult for people to make it just in the name of good content - hence FORCING people to pay to go big.Where did the first 'pods' get formed?For those that would get paranoid and go like 'its risky' and shit. Guess what? Instagram engagement pods started out on Facebook (as FB groups). I mean OBVIOUSLY right? Haha.FB still has 100s of these pods. You think IG has problem with it? You've got to be kidding me.With massive growth in these pods on FB groups - most moved out to chat apps like Slack and Telegram to make it easier for people to engage.Are they safe?Why not? Unless you are in a pod that requires you to like 1000 photos in an hour then its not safe. But think of it like this. You have 30 friends. You make a post and ask them to like and comment on it. Is that 'wrong'? If you think so - then please don't read further.Where are these engagement pod?They started out on Facebook - then they went into Intsagram DM groups - then they came into WhatsApp and finally they came to Telegram.Right now - engagement pods / groups are on Telegram. (I'm talking about the major ones)Before you say otherwise - here me out.Telegram is easy to use with endless possibilities (like using bots instead of moderators to catch leechers / block spam accounts and so forth)I know this engagement pod industry REALLY WELL. On Telegram there are at the moment 50,000+ Instagrammers actively participating in engagement pods.How do engagement pods work?Engagement pods are of 2 classes. Class 1 - Rounded Cycle Class 2 - Continuous CycleRounded - 500-1500 people participate in a 'round' of engagement. Meaning at set times in a day (3-4 times a day) - all the Instagrammers come and drop their posts and give each other likes at set times. Depending on which group you are in - you may have to like from 500 to 1500 posts in one shot in under 2 hours.PLEASE DO NOT TRY THIS. Its good for scammers / CPA / bitcoin / spam accounts. Those promoting a money 'link' in their bio. Not for those of us who want to build a genuine blog on Intagram.Continous Cycle - These are pods that do not have a set time and work on continuous cycle. They work on DX format. Dx = Done x (into) Groups can be DX5 or DX10 or DX20 meaning you would have to do X 5 links before you share yours. I hope that makes sense.So if I'm in a group which is of DX5 cycle - I'd have to like or comment or both (depending on group rules) on 5 recent most posts in that group and THEN share my link. The next 5 people will then do the same for me.Hope that is clear.What groups do you suggest?Again - I cannot. I own the largest pod out there. 15,000+ members. I'd look like I'm self promoting. Just look around on Google , Reddit and within Telegram app itself. I'll give link to my group if I get 10+ (hopefully 20 requests) for it.Other than that - in general - stay away from 'round' groups. They'll get you shadow banned. Look for groups that run on continuous cycle.NEXT - SUPER IMPORTANTONLY ONLY ONLY join groups that are moderated by automated bots. Meaning bots control and keep a check on leechers. 80% of groups of continuous cycle are manually moderated. Meaning, admins sit and check links and try to warn and ban leechers. Leechers = those who drop links without giving engagement first.IF groups are moderated by humans = OBVIOUSLY a lot of leeching. No one wants to give 10 comments and get 3 back. Right? Haha.ONLY join groups that have bot that check engagement IN REAL TIME. Leech = auto warn. Leech again? = auto ban.Thats all that you should keep in mind.What group do I run?Sorry - cannot disclose and promote my shit.Let this article be just to give you guys info on engagement pods.What are benefits of these pods?Pods are of various categories. Depending on network that you're in. Networks = people who run multiple pods. Pods can be of DX5 comments, DX10 likes or D24 (24 hours of likes) and N number of that combination. Pods can further be classified by minimum follower requirement (10K+ only profiles ..... upto 100k+ only profiles) Pods can be of niche nature (beauty, travel, quotes ....)As you can see this can be REALLY helpful.What kind of people are usually in these pods?A HIGH QUALITY POD will have 90%+ actual blogging accounts. Meaning, Instagram profiles that have actual people / stories on them. Unlike an account that just posts photos of quotes and random stuff.Quality pods = quality Instagrammers (real people / real faces) (Not saying that quotes / memes accounts are low quality - its just so much more fun to connect with real Instagrammers)Demographics = To my knowledge mostly USA, Canada, Australia (70%+) and another 20% from Europe and remaining from rest of world. Over 70% females.Most pods require you to have minimum 10-15 posts on your Instagram account so that you don' look fake. (Actually that is a rule in my pod - don't know if others have started doing that yet)Most pods require you give GENUINE and HQ comments (this is a rule in almost all pods that I have seen) You can give copy paste comments. Again - if group is moderated by human - you will get a lot of spammy comments as human mods can't sit and check 1000s of links per hour. If you're in a group that has advanced bots then you'll get HQ / Relevant comments ONLY.Will it help me grow?If you're new to IG it will really help you get noticed. Getting likes and comments from REAL people (instead of bots) and having a chance to communicate with them is AMAZING. Nothing in this involves bots. Its just so pure. (Unless you get into round bots for which you will need FL, MP = shadowban FOR SURE)If you're already established then you can go viral by leveraging these pods. Getting 100s of likes and comments from authority accounts (10k+) *within the first 60 minutes of you posting on Instagram will help you rank higher and hopefully push your post to top post page and explore page = more genuine followers and likes.This is VERY mathematical.I have shared Instagram algo on another post of mine. You can read in there about it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/7erlr3/hushhush_secrets_to_instagram_no_one_would_share/So mix and match all that is there and all that I discussed here about engagement pods.Good luck to all!I seriously hope that all those who messaged me and commented asking for info on Engagement Pods have found some use from this post.I'll do my best to stay active on this post for next 24 hours to help anyone having any doubts!Cheers guys!

30 things I've learned in 30 years via /r/selfimprovement

30 things I've learned in 30 years

A month ago I turned 30. Few people would have bet on it, but here I am.

30 years is a weird age. You're definitely not old but you're also definitely not young anymore. You're "young-ish" and "old-ish". At the same time.

But now I'm digressing. On my birthday I went on a date with my amazing girlfriend. At one point, halfway through the meal (and after a couple of glasses of wine), she looked into my eyes and asked me: What have you learned so far? Given your current knowledge, would you do the same things again?

I found that question very interesting because I don't think I've ever stopped to think about it. My first, gut-instinct answer was "Yes, I would!". And I meant it. Overall, I'm happy with my life and my choices and I do believe that life is first of all about making mistakes and learning from them. So, yes: if I went back I'd definitely do the same things all over again.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I started to realise how much I've learned over the years. All the crazy situations, questionable people, inspiring books, weird encounters, everything that has shaped who I am today and the way I think.

So I thought I'd make a list of 30 things I've learned are true in life. You are welcome. Why 30? Because 30 makes it for a clickbait catchy title.

Here we go:

Say I'm sorry A lot of people (especially men) are not used to saying I'm sorry. They think it's not cool or manly enough to apologise. But saying "I'm sorry" it's such a powerful gesture because it shows that you're mature enough to accept responsibility for your actions or words, which is ultimately the difference between an adult and an immature person. 

Start saving as soon as possible If there is one thing I wish I started earlier in life is saving. As soon as you start earning money, put at least 20% of your income in an index fund returning 5-7% per year (which isn't particularly high). By the time you're 40, you will have accumulated enough money to buy a house outright. Compound interest is the name of the game.

Learn to reason by first principles The difference between reasoning by first principles and reasoning by analogy is like the difference between being a chef and being a cook. If the cook lost the recipe, he’d be screwed.

Develop healthy habits I'm far from being a healthy person at the moment, but I now understand the basics of habit formation (especially the role the environment plays in shaping our habits) and I wish I developed much better habits when I was younger. The good news is that it's never too late (for example I've developed a reading habit that allows me to read 30 books a yearvery easily).

Learn the basics of nutrition I've been a fat kid for most of my childhood. It definitely didn't help that my mum had never taken the time to learn about the basics of nutrition, the role of the different macronutrients and what my body actually needed. You don't need to be a doctor, but learning the basics will massively help you (and your kids) live a healthier life.

Avoid as much as possible starches and sugar Speaking of basics of nutrition: avoid starches and sugar (both found abundantly in processed food) as much as you can. The evidence about the side effects of a carb and sugar-rich diet is massive.

Love is about agreeing on the big, important things... ... and compromising on the small things. I'm amazed at how many couples do the opposite but not surprised they usually don't last very long. 

Never go to sleep on an argument with your loved one Enough said. 

Pick your battles Not everything is as important as you think it is. A lot of people get angry about a LOT of things. Their life runs them instead of the other way around. Don't be that guy; don't let the little things get at you.

Work on your relationships I've been notoriously bad at this but it's something I'm working hard at. A life without strong, genuine relationships is not worth living. 

Ignore social media and news Social media and news are in the business of monetizing your fears and insecurities. Ignore them and your life will be immediately 10X better.

To truly understand people study Darwinian evolution and psychology We are slightly less hairy monkeys whose actions are still dominated by hormones, pheromones and ancestral fears. Want to truly understand why people do what they do? Read Darwin and good books about behavioural psychology. 

Give without expecting anything back Give without expecting anything in return is a wonderful act of trust in the kindness of fellow human beings. And when you do it, you will feel amazing.

Learn what makes you happy A really big one for me. I don't think you should spend your life searching for your "role in the universe". However, I do believe that over time you figure out what clicks with you and what doesn't; what makes you happy and what doesn't. My advice: be an active observer and notice what you're doing when you're happy. Then do more of it.

Optimise your life for learning Knowledge is your competitive advantage. A lot of people think learning stop when they get out of school. They usually end up working for those who understood learning is a lifelong process.

Develop a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset People with a growth mindset believe that human qualities like intelligence and creativity, and even relational capacities like love and friendship, can be cultivated through effort and deliberate practice.

Learn to receive feedback Don't take things personally. Yes, some people's feedback is useless and even harmful but the only way to truly grow and improve is to get feedback and act on it.

Come up with some principles and live by them Unless you have a clear decision-making framework you'll be optimising for short-term goals. Predefined principles make optimising for long-term goals much easier.

You're not entitled to an opinion unless you can back it with facts Don't be the idiot that says "this is my opinion" as if that's sufficient to say something. Back it with facts or logic or just shut up. The world has too many people who think they are entitled to an opinion and not enough people who bother justify it.

Read the classics People way WAY smarter than you and I have figured out a lot of things already. Take advantage of the Lindy effect: if a book has been around for a long time it means it has stood the test of time (plus critics) and therefore it's more likely to contain timeless wisdom than a book that's been around for a few years.

Don't be envious of other people... ... Only compare yourself with where you want to be in 10 years. Not worrying about keeping up with the Joneses has been one of the biggest improvements to my life and mental health.

Life is much more fun when you have ambitious goals Your time on this planet is ridiculously limited. Make it worth it.

Expand your mind Travel the world, meet new people, learn about different cultures, get out of your comfort zone. You can live your life thinking that yours was the only way to live or you can go out there and know that it wasn't.

Don't wait to say "I love you" I've always waited far too long to tell people how important they were for me. And every single time I wished I did that sooner. Don't wait to tell people that you love them. Do it now.

Give second chances We all fuck up. All the time. Giving people a second chance is not a sign of weakness but it's about recognising that we are humans.

Listen to your body Big one for me. Whether you like or not, you're going to spend the entirety of your life with that mass of bones and flesh. Learning to listen to it it's one of the best things you can do for yourself.

The strong defeat the weak but the smart defeat the strong You will see this pattern everywhere in life. Be the smart guy.

Learn to sell products, not your time Your time is limited. Learn to sell products or services that can be distributed easily. That's how you create true wealth.

Love is putting another person's needs in front of yours If you ask 10 people, they'll give you 10 different definition of love. I choose this one because it's about sacrifice and selflessness.

Coming up with 30 things I’ve learned in 30 years is REALLY hard

The next 10 years of my life look terrifying: getting married, buying a house, making a baby or two and all the other grown-up things. It will be fun to write this list again when I turn 40 and see how many items in my list I believe are still true.

Submitted September 14, 2018 at 04:43PM by Manu66 via reddit https://ift.tt/2QuvrBS

INCOMING TRANSMISSION#10

*(audio to text format for back up records.)*

Recording Location:<Undisclosed Location>

Date: 02/28/2017

Time: 12:50 am

-Recording Start-

(some one knocking on a door.)

William Afton: What do you want?

Wolfy: hey Bossman everyone’s here. Do you want me to send them in?

William Afton: Yes Please do..

(sound of a door opening and multiple footsteps entering the room)

William Afton: Sandy.. Charles..Michael It's good to see you all.

Charles: Good to see you to Boss.

Sandy: A pleasure as always Mr. Afton.

Michael: Hello father.. why have called us here.

William Afton: I called you all here today, because I need you all perform a difficult task.

Charles: What fucking new? I’m always your muscle for your shityer jobs.

William Afton: Ha! that's very true, but only because you’re the best man for the job. after all who else would be more qualified to train my 3rd generation mercenaries then a trained combat specialist such as yourself.   

Charles: Fair enough..

William Afton: Now as you all know in three weeks after we get the Gen two’s back into our warehouse. we are going to proceed with operation Crypt. as you know Operation Crypt involves us locking down our underground warehouse and sealing the Gen Two’s there indefinitely.  due to their deteriorating health they eventually die down there and we can all retire without the repercussions of our experiments. 

Sandy: (raises voice) serves those crazy bots right. they deserve to rot down there... after everything they done.

Michael: It’s ok Sandy. we all know what they did to your son. they will get whats coming to them.

Sandy: my Son?... they better...

William Afton: Except there’s a looses end we have to sever.

Sandy: the prototype Gen three’s.

William Afton: exactly! as you know.. unlike the Gen Two’s they don’t have a time limit, and if they’re discovered we could face some serious jail time. 

Michael: I’m guessing that you called us in here to ask us to deal with them.

William Afton: Exactly! tomorrow night I Want the tree of you to enter the warehouse and destroy the Gen Three prototypes.

Charles: Are you fucking Nuts? Going after them with the Gen Two’s around would Be God Damn Suicide! 

William Afton: of course it would be! that’s why I’m sending the Gen One’s to help you. besides I have a plan.

Sandy: Really?

William Afton: yes.. you see you’re each going to split up and each of you are going to take a Gen One with you. you’re then going to head to the different auditoriums and find and destroy the Gen Three’s, while the Gen One’s keep the Gen Two’s busy. 

Sandy: will that even work? 

Michael: of course it will father is a genius. the Gen Two’s strength lies with their intelligence. A full on surprise assault would easily overcome them.

Sandy: of course, but there’s a slight issue.

Charles: Right the mole. 

William Afton: yes about that.. has any of you found out who the mole might be?

Michael: unfortunately I have had no luck infiltrating the reddit board. recently the board has been put on a members only mode and the admin keeps refusing my requests to join regardless of what username I try to use.

Charles: I tried my self same here. I've also tried finding more information on the Boards creator and Admin LuckDoGGG2. I got nothing. it's like the bastard doesn’t fucking exist. 

Sandy: I tried checking for bugs and had no luck whoever LuckDoGG2 is has access to our security system. Even after We make changes to the security clearance. he even manages to to use programs to cover his tracks. who ever he is must be very skilled with programing and the sort. 

William Afton: How about you wolfy? you find anything?

Wolfy: no... Sorry boss I’ve had just about the same luck as you guys.

William Afton: No matter... you are the best people I have. also my only option at this point. regardless of whether the Gen Two’s know about our plan or not. you must get this done. for the sake of all of our future retirements. 

Charles: you got it boss!

Sandy: yes sir.

Michael: We’ll get it done.

William Afton: Good.. you’re all dismissed. 

(sound of footsteps leaving the room and the Door closing)

Charles: this going to be a God Damn Suicide mission.

Sandy: I know but what choice do we have. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in prison.

Charles: fair point... I just have a bad feeling bout this one. 

Michael: I know the Feeling... come on let’s go to bar drinks are on me.

Charles: Alright then.

-Recording Stop-

–End of Transmission–

TinyCo Facebook Live Q&A – Recap

Hey there Clammers!

TinyCo announced recently that they wanted to try out a Live Q&A on their Facebook Page, and a bit like their previous Reddit AMA  there were mixed feelings about them doing this, but I think it was long overdue that they reach out to the community again and as much as this didn’t go quite as I’d hoped, (more on that later), hopefully it’s a start.

For those of you who missed the Q&A, it was live on Monday 20th March, and you can still watch it in full via TinyCo’s official Family Guy Quest For Stuff Facebook page, but incase you don’t want to go there, I’m going share my thoughts on what was a rather unusual Live Q&A for me.

THE TINYCO TEAM

Left to Right we have: Jason (Lead Artist); Jay (Lead Producer); Kimberley (Narrative Designer); Damon (Animator) and Kate (Lead Community Support).

THE LIVE Q&A – MY THOUGHTS

Now this was a 30 minute forum, and I’m not going to sit and do a word by word transcript as I’m not sure who would lose the will to live first, me writing it or you reading it. Instead I’m going pull out and highlight any interesting info and just give my general thoughts on what worked in this format, and of course what didn’t.

I’m going to be straight up honest before we go much further and say I was disappointed by the way the Live Q&A went, and I don’t mean due to the comments and questions being hijacked by trolls. No, it was the fact that from the outset this whole Live Q&A came over as very scripted, like when politicians give a Live Q&A briefing but the questions have actually been wrote by their own team and the answers rehearsed earlier, this just lacked the spontaneity i associate with a Live Q&A. I’m sorry TinyCo but this was the way it came across, the questions were too much about the Team and not the game. And that’s not the type of questions we see day in day out from players.

There was possibly too much talk about who the guyswere, where they came from and the Family Guy show rather than the game itself, after half an hour of listening I feel I learned very little about the game I didn’t already know but I sure as hell felt like I’d known the TinyCo guys all my life. I felt by the time things ended I wanted get them all friendship bracelets as a token of my affection, lol. And hey, maybe that was the point of it, so we’d get to know them as people and not just TinyCo employees, and hey they all seemed awfully nice but by doing this the Live Q&A lacked spontaneity, fun, the unexpected and the down right bizarre that anything linked to Family Guy usually demands.

It also seemed to lack a lot of player questions, the whole point of going live is to answer questions that aren’t only asked before but actually asked live on the timeline, encouraging quick fire and fun responses. Check out this Addicts LIVE stream to see what I mean. Instead I sensed some nerves from the guys, although not the gals, and pre-rehearsed responses to pre-set questions. I’m sorry if that wasn’t the case but it’s certainly how it came across listening to it live.

So that’s my main criticism, and as this was a first outing I can forgive that, I guess some performance nerves combined with not knowing what to expect from what can at times be a very hostile Facebook audience, probably made this a who drew the short straw jaunt for the guys we got to meet. But on my 2nd, and 3rd listen of the Live Q&A  I started to look past this and pull out little bits of info I thought players might want to hear about, and yes I’m going share them with you soon.

I’m also hoping if you watched the Live Stream you’d give us your thoughts in the comments. But please no hating, this isn’t what this post is about, it’s about saying a little Thanks to the TinyCo guys for making the effort but also telling them what worked and what didn’t in order when the next Live Q&A happens we might see more of our questions and less strategically planned answers. Also we might see a bit more interaction with what’s going on on Facebook as they chat, I’d have loved for one the guys to have joked about sending them some love and likes as that sea of little angry faces ran across the bottom of my Facebook screen. You know an instant reaction but in a joking way, jesting with us, playing with us, truly interacting with us. Even a “hey you guys, stop mocking us” in their best Stewie voice. Sometimes it’s ok to show us you’re only human after all…..

THE LIVE Q&A – WHAT THE TINYCO TEAM TOLD US

Well they told us a lot about themselves, which I’m guessing most of you don’t want to know so I’ll try to be brief. But suffice to say, although they weren’t jumping up and down Tiny Tom style they all appeared to love working on FGQFS as much as some of us love playing it. Even Kate, who surely has the toughest job of any at times.

Here’s a few of the things they said about working on FGQFS: It’s a dream; It’s wonderful; It’s great; Every day is different; Can’t wait to go to work everyday; Paid to do what we love; Get to spend the day making stuff up and playing; Team is like a family; Gives you an adrenalin rush and that’s despite the long hours, stress, the brutal nature of the mobile gaming industry and even at times being so busy you end up sleeping in the office.

They are also all big Family Guy fans, they said this about the show: Love the humour; The random nature of the show; How it always comes back to family & friendship; It’s got heart at the centre of it.

And Brian & Stewie seem to be their favourite characters from the show, so it must frustrate them as much as us they can’t use Stewie more. But it’s great to know they all have a passion for the game, and want to be there devising content and events for us for a long time.

Now the second overall thing I took from this is the way they all talked about the game going forward, as let’s face it there’s been a lot of speculation that with the Futurama game looming the end was nigh for FGQFS. But the TinyCo’s teams general chat and body language did not seem to signal the end is imminent in any shape or form so it could be the game everyone loves to hate it going to endure for a while yet.

What made me think this, well talk of bringing in more land once we see more of the older devices disappear from our lives, so they talk in terms of the game outliving these devices. They also talked about the issue with The Blimp, in fact they referred to the ongoing problems as a horror story as every fix causes a new issue, so they are planning to remove it and redo that part of the game, now that’s not something they’d consider if the game were on its way out surely? There’s also still a team of 40 or so working on the game, so it’s not down to one guy and his computer just yet.  And the artists continue to create 3 new characters a week. So this all says to me FGQFS isn’t going anywhere just yet, so don’t unbuckle your safety belts guys as this crazy ride continues.

Ok now onto more specific bits and pieces, as I mentioned above there’s a team of about 40 that work on FGQFS, so next time we moan about having to buy a premium item I guess we should think that those folk need paid, they ain’t doing voluntary work. And Kimberley revealed for every 4 week event they need to come up with at least 200-250 new jokes. I take my hat off to that as like Kate, I struggle to come up with one joke, never mind being able to roll off a production line of them. I’d be laughing all the way to the Bunny Asylum if that were my job.

They told us how they plan an event, sometimes they pick an episode and build the event around it, and I must say this is the events I like to see, ones where I recognise characters and costumes from the show. But they also confirmed sometimes they do the opposite and they get the rights to an Intellectual Property, say for example, Power Rangers, then they look to see if it has links to the show and if it doesn’t they devise a way to merge the two together in a funny Quahog kind of way.  They also revealed they still working very closely with the writers at the Family Guy TV show who continue to share ideas with them.

They also talked about something we see in our comments a lot, a desire for new gameplay and features during events, many of you have recently felt that too many events are the same format onl with different content to unlock. And they talked about this revealing that even when they reuse a format they do endeavour to make it better, for example they said the Quahog Heat gameplay features were based on those of The Hauntening, only with some tweaks to improve it.

But they also added not only did they understand our cries for new features in future events, they were actually going to be delivering some in the next event, Mighty Morphin Power Griffins.  So as much as many of us say they don’t listen, they obviously do!

Likewise they touched on the ongoing demand for old event characters to return, the most popular requests being for American Dad characters; Superheros characters and of course Star Trek characters. This is a question that they’ve now answered many times, but did so again. Basically they only get a limited time contract to give them the rights to use these characters during an event. If they want to bring them back they need to agree a new contract, so they can’t just drop these characters into the game at any time to please new players. But Damon stressed he’d love see some return himself as he hasn’t got them in his game either.

They chatted about their favourite Family Guy characters that they get to work on in the game and for everyone who’s fed up with Peter having so many skins, please be kind to Jason as they’re one his favourite things to work on. And Jay, well Joe’s his go to guy, and as for Damon, he’s got a soft spot for Bruce. And Kimberley well it’s all about Brian & Stewie. And Kate well she kept that her little secret, lol.

They also found time to chat about all us multi-millionaires and tried to explain why some of us have more coins than we’ll ever be able to spend. They said they will try introduce items to buy but in order to try keep events balanced and fair they will always use an event currency or else us multi- millionaires would just burn through events too quickly. And they are right, we would and then we would probably complain we’re bored, cause hey we’re entitled multi-millionaires aren’t we. Lol.

There you have it, hopefully the start of a new relationship with the Staff at TinyCo currently working on Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff.

Did you see some things you were curious about answered? Have some helpful suggestions/replies to some of the questions you saw or the LiveQ&A setup adopted? Thoughts on the Current Staff? Let us know.

~ Russian Tigger

TinyCo Facebook Live Q&A – Recap was originally published on Yatterz

Hey everyone,Over 6 months ago I posted here with growing 57 trends that you could capitalize on for business opportunities, along with a plug for the app I’d created that found them.Your feedback was awesome and motivated me to keep running with it and growing it. And thanks to that, I managed to sell the site to Brian Dean of Backlinko recently. So I thought I’d share the story here.I have to admit though, I hadn’t monetized yet and I was incredibly lucky with how things worked out. So I’m not recommending this as a reproducible guide for anyone but hopefully you still enjoy the read.How It StartedI began work on Trennd.co back in April while living in Japan, and back then it was originally called TrendList.io.imageI’d started to realize that it’s 100X easier to bootstrap a profitable online business if you ride a big market trend. Jump on the opportunity before the competition gets too fierce.A great example of this is Jon and Justin at Transistor.fm, who spotted a growing B2B market for podcast hosting and bootstrapped a SaaS for it.Another classic example — Pieter Levels tapped into the digital nomad and remote work trend while scratching his own itch with Nomad List and Remote OK.Both market awareness and market timing were critical for these guys. On top of execution skill of course.But also, businesses take years of sales, marketing and general hard work even after you’ve launched. I’d like to know that life force is going into a growing opportunity, not a shrinking one.I needed something that could surface opportunities by automatically monitoring the web for new topics. So that I can then plug them into Google Trends.I needed a shiny new app or tool to play with. 😛But I couldn’t find anything, so I started to build it for myself.The first version was literally just a CLI tool that output trend graphs to the console.I thought I might as well package it as a B2C SaaS product. But woaaaah no, not another sales grind. Especially B2C.Let’s just put it up for free and see if I can even build an audience (basically email list) around it first.As I proclaimed on the about page, “Revenue is obviously at zero right now. It will likely stay there for a while. Probably forever.”Not wanting to miss the opportunity to try a fancy new web stack, I wrapped the tool up into a NextJS web app. This choice was primarily to capitalize on the out-of-box server-side rendering it offers. That way, I could actually get this project to rank properly on Google for all the various trends.I listed Trennd in early May (way before it was finished) on Product Hunt’s Ship service. Admittedly though, I probably should’ve done much more than this and actually talked to potential users/customers before writing any code.But I was very bullish on the concept since I was building Trennd to solve my own problem. 👹imageBut with a total of 153 subscribers from PH Ship 2 months later, it definitely felt like there might be more cost-effective ways to acquire initial users than the $80/month there. But the brand exposure and potential support from those guys on launch is still valuable.By May 20th I felt I had something that I could finally start to show people.But around the same time, I also realized that Trend List was the brand name of Trendlist.org. This is a contemporary graphic design site with Domain Authority of 38 and a huge presence on Google SERPs. I really didn’t want to compete from day 1 just to show up on Google when people search the brand name.imageAnyway, I found 3 other names that I’d be more than happy with: Trendful, Trennd and Trend Geek. I threw Nice Trend Bro into the running at the encouragement of my wife.Then I realized this rebrand could be a fantastic marketing opportunity in itself. So I decided to run a public vote on the new name via twitter poll as a fun and novel way other people could get involved. Plus this way I’d ensure it’s a solid name that works for everyone.With the Twitter poll underway for a week, I wanted to capitalize on this 7-day window and get as many votes as possible.Reddit Pre-launchI quickly got it up on Reddit as an initial “pre-launch”. I’d mainly wanted to get some initial users to help iron out any wrinkles and bugs, and to point out any big holes in terms of functionality.And as a professional “wantrepreneur”, I’m often lurking here on r/entrepreneur and I thought you guys might find Trennd useful.But I came in with my guard up. I knew full well you would chew me up and spit me out in an instant if you sensed I was here solely to promote.So I found 57 of the most interesting trends I had at the time and used them as a shield going into the post. I made sure to provide value first and ask for feedback second. I stuck around the comments section all day replying to everyone who took the time to comment.imageThe response to this Reddit post was huge! It received over 500 upvotes across 3 subreddits. One kind stranger even gave me Reddit Gold.In terms of number, Reddit brought:80 email subscribers50 user signups1k trafficNot a bad start.I also got a huge amount of awesome feedback on how I can improve the app and make it more valuable. Like requests for:Better data granularity for shorter time frames.Enabling Keyword trends too, not just Google Topics.Plus dozens of smaller things (like moving the trend close button to the top right so it’s easier to click on mobile).After this Reddit success, the twitter poll had over 100 votes for the new name. It was a close run between Trendful and Trennd.And, somehow, Pieter Levels came across Trend List, loved the concept and voted for the name Trennd!imageI’m a huge fan of Pieter’s and Nomad List. I was watching his Bali video about his maker journey literally days before starting Trend List! So for him to vote and like the idea was both uncanny and amazing.And in the end, the name Trennd won by a small margin.Following all this initial traction, Trennd was featured on Harry Dry’s killer Marketing Examples blog.imageI made the front page of Indie Hackers too with the top milestone too. Love the IH community so this was a big deal to me!imageAfter the first 5 weeks I was absolutely chuffed with the results. (That’s British slang for very pleased!)I hadn’t set any goals, but 353 email subscribers was way beyond anything I expected.And I was even more pumped that the initial feedback was so overwhelmingly positive.I’ve made some other small products, but they were like trying to get a massive boulder uphill. Every time you stopped pushing for new customers, it would roll back down on you. Old customers would churn and you hadn’t replaced them.But this one felt obviously different. It was the first thing I’d made that people just shared automatically and it kind of took flight by itself.And with an email list in the hundreds, I started a weekly email newsletter called Trennds For The Weekend**.** My primary goal there was to make no-fluff, straight to the point emails, with a carefully curated list of the most interesting and fresh trends each week.imageThe newsletter was the one thing that I made sure happened every week. It was great motivation to get things done to have something to talk to the readers. Plus it was an invaluable way to keep in touch with Trennd’s growing audience and have an open channel for feedback. If I started to go in a wonky direction re: trend quality, web design, email format, bugs, or anything really, somebody would usually let me know via email reply and help to straighten the ship’s course.Next up was a Show Hacker News launch, which I expected to be a giant flop as most things usually drown in the noise.Show HN LaunchSo Friday at 10pm and I’m sat at my desk in Japan ready to post to Hacker News. My wife’s already gone to bed, but I figured this was the best time to post such that people were awake in both US + Europe. Plus I could reply to any comments and keep check on things through to Saturday morning JST if I had to.So I drafted my opening thread comment and hit submit.“Sorry, your account is too new to submit this site.”Oh man. I’d been thinking about this submission all day. And I couldn’t even post. 🤦🏼‍♂️Anyway, I emailed the mods at Hacker News to explain and they very quickly and kindly marked it ready to go through. My account was made in 2017, but turns out “too new” can also mean not having participated much in the community.Flash forward to the following Friday and this time it went through.We’d made sure to phrase the title to resonate with the audience. On Hacker News (and in most places I suppose) simple, clear and humble works best. this is where fellow indie maker Vincent was awesome — he helped me to get this title spot on, along with a bunch of other great advice that made a huge difference.The post immediately moved onto the best of Show HN page, and then quickly onto the main page.imageTraffic increased to 400 concurrent users on Trennd and we briefly peaked at #1.imageIt was at this point that Trennd got the infamous “Hacker News hug” and the site died. The free MongoDB Atlas database plan did not appreciate this flood of connections. So I had a frantic 15min where the website was down while I upgraded to the paid tier.It’s a shame that I lost this quarter-hour of Hacker News prime time. And I’ve since implemented some server-side caching that prevents the database from getting hammered.But since I recovered quickly, we remained near the top of the front page for 12 more hours, which is good enough for me. Let’s not be greedy. 😛I manned the comments section into the early hours of the morning, got some great discussion and a tremendous amount of positivity from the crowd.Twitter BonanzaJust as I started to think everything was all over and we were back to normality. The buzz started to spill over and have a huge domino effect onto Twitter.Dozens and dozens of people tweeted about Trennd.Thankfully I’d updated the twitter preview image beforehand (thank you Michael!). So there was a pretty placeholder image and sweet description when dozens of people shared and tweeted about Trennd.And then, the cherry on top of it all was that Rand Fishkin of Moz tweeted about it! Unbelievable! This made my month. 🍒imageThe number of likes and retweets on the back of this was insane too. I’m a twitter newbie, so to get this kind of exposure blew my mind! 🤯It also led to us getting picked up by the hackernewsletter and kottke.org which drove some good traffic our way too.imageAll of this combined to rocket us above 2000 email subscribers:Subscribers: 2,163 🎉Visitors: 28,353 🕵️‍♀️Pageviews: 124,026 👀It was really cool how ready people were to contribute and add trends of their own too. It confirmed my hypothesis that we could crowdsource the surfacing of new trends to some extent. In a similar way that Product Hunters crowdsource new products.But with this came the issue of quality control. One visitor, for example, added “Donkey Porn” as a new trend, and it may well be trending, but I had to moderate it away. 🤫At this stage, I felt I’d truly validated interest in the project with over 2000 subscribers, marketing to get another X hundred subscribers wasn’t going to change anything.I needed to make the platform more powerful. So I held off a Product Hunt launch thinking I’d keep that powder dry.Monetization (Or Lack Thereof)I also started to think long and hard about how to monetize the site at this time. I needed it to at least pay some of its own bills and maybe even some of mine!In the medium to long term, I knew a premium version of Trennd was the way to go.But I couldn’t figure out what this should look like and wanted to do it right.There’s no point damaging hard-earned goodwill by pushing out a rushed premium product too soon or something that’s the wrong fit.Somebody did ask for a “private Trennd dashboard” where they could favorite trends and even get personal alerts. They even said they’d pay $100-$200 per month for it. Turns out, they found Trennd immensely valuable to discover new programming languages sooner so that they could make Udemy courses around them. (If they were the first to get a course out and get good reviews, it’s like a winner take all market and can be very profitable.)But, to me, all the value seems to be in the trends themselves and spotting hotter trends sooner. Not the ability to put certain ones in a personal dashboard. They’d just use the free version! Plus how many tech course creators are there out there? For better or worse (I think better!), I dismissed it as a dead-end.Instead, I began to look for a community or affiliate sponsor and started to have pricing conversations with people. Even though I was still small fry in terms of traffic and a few thousand email subscribers.I managed to set up a nice sponsorship ‘swap’ with Unreadit (which is awesome, check it out!) and that was a good fit and worked out well for both of us.It drove a bit of traffic, some new subscribers and gave me some stats about how well Trennd sponsorship slots converted for future potential sponsors. But it didn’t bring in any cash money since it was just a swap.imageHaving that deal in place did give me an excuse to scuttle back into my code cave though. 🦀Code CaveThis was with the view to making Trennd more robust and sustainable for the long term.The #1 challenge was, and still is, the noise to signal ratio. Nobody wants to click through page after page trends to find the ones relevant to them. They need to be able to slice and dice the trends in more ways/dimensions that are relevant to them.So I hunkered down in my little white room in our Japanese “mansion” (which in Japan basically means an apartment).imageI added things like absolute search volume data and the ability to sort on it. More consistent categorization standards and automatic classification of trends too.With the data granularity, you can see the 3-month chart data was weekly at first. So pretty crummy with only 12 data points.imageBut then below that with daily data points instead you can really see the difference.imageAnyway, I’ll stop boring you with the various small additions and improvements I made over this time. Back to the story. 😛Traction Despite InactionI’d done zero marketing for over a month. 🤦‍♂️The hype last month around the Hacker News launch and Twittersphere had naturally died down, along with the web traffic.It’s way too easy to put marketing on the back burner and keep building in general. That’s where I’m personally most comfortable.Yet, I know too well marketing should be an ongoing crusade, alongside product improvement.The most successful indie hackers I see around — they have systemized routines that enable them to continually output valuable content.But to my surprise, the mailing list count was still ticking up every day despite all this, and the site had seemed to reach a healthy equilibrium of 100–300 daily visitors.imageThese were both big green flags to me. (I’m not sure if green flags are actually a real thing. Emojipedia doesn’t think so… 🚩)Pieter Levels tweeted about us again out of the blue too! This was several months after the first time and drove several thousands of visitors to the site. imageAcquisitionAll kinds of people had been putting themselves forward asking to get involved. And this was happening on a semi-regular basis!The problem is, co-founders bring a huge amount of risk with them. Differences in vision, work ethic, and so many other things.They’re big unknowns, so I’d decided to stick by myself and the devil I know.That is until I received the following email from:imageI thought I recognized that name. Googling Brian Dean… Oh snap!Yep, it’s Brian Dean of Backlinko.com 😮imageMore googling… Interesting, he’s acquired things before. I don’t think he’s joking around.imageI’d just had my wedding 2 days before and we were off to Okinawa for 4 days, so my call with Brian had to wait. Best to play hard to get anyway. 😜Then 1 call, 1 hour, 21 minutes and 31 seconds later — we had a deal.And we literally shook hands over Skype video! 🤝As for the acquisition number… that’s why you’ve read this far, right?!It’s really difficult to put a price on something that’s not making any money yet. Well, actually it’s not. Most people would just say $0. And traffic was growing but spikey and low in an absolute sense.But at the same time, we were both massively excited by the potential and the concept is partially validated and de-risked given the initial traction obtained.We settled on an amount equivalent to how much I’d earn as a US-based engineer working 6 months, but then multiplied by X for the traction/success factor already achieved. And I also still have a stake in the project going forward.So I can’t retire yet, but it���s a HUGE win!The main thing is - now I don’t have to worry quite so much about paying rent every month and I can start to think more big picture in general.And perhaps even more importantly, it provides validation to myself (and my wife!) so that I can keep working on these “projects” of mine and not get a “real job” just yet.To be honest, I didn’t know if I was just crazy and wasting my time for 6 months.To my Japanese in-laws, I was the slightly strange, unemployed “freeter” at home on my computer all day.imageI have to say, writing during the process made a huge difference. It keeps you sane as a solo-founder and allows you to track your own progress at a high level.Also, being as open as possible and sharing metrics such as subscriber growth, traffic and revenue helped to attract support and keep me accountable when it was only me working on it.And overall, all of this helped to create a story around the product, without which people don’t have reason to care.What’s NextIt’s awesome to have Brian behind the project now. This is fantastic news for Exploding Topics. He’s a massive name in the SEO industry of course, but also a super-smart guy who really knows his stuff and enables us to take the project to the next level!He has a great instinct for direction, based on years of experience and success online. This includes his “head-ache detector” as he calls it, which can foresee potential problems way further in advance than I can.And we’ve also fast-forwarded to having Brian’s huge audience to put new features in front of and see what they think.I no longer need to slowly grow Trennd’s audience via a trend community/discussion platform over months and years, while also trying to wrestle with product-market fit.Instead, we can focus on building a better product. This means the core value of trend discovery and getting people hotter trends faster**.**To this end, we’ve been able to refocus on the backend. Now we monitor way more places on the internet as sources for interesting new topics and keywords across health, business, marketing, fashion and more.We’ve also decided to niche down. This is a vital step and something I’d been sweating and delaying for several months. But with Brian’s help, this is something we’ve been able to move forward on.The problem is there are so many different potential customers: indie makers like me looking for their next project idea, investors looking for a company stock pick, affiliates seeking the next hot product or people just seeking to feed their curiosity.But we’ve settled on professional bloggers**.**These guys are our new focus as they constantly need fresh content ideas across a range of categories to write about. And if they’re one of the first to write about an exploding topic then this makes a huge difference to their results.They also potentially make for good customers. (Even though we don’t have our premium version yet!) It’s still good to choose a nice market where people immediately ‘get’ the product and are willing to pay for it if it provides value.This market has proven itself before too, as Nathan Barry of ConvertKit said about going from $1k — $10k MRR:Niche down as small as possible. Going from a generic email marketing company to “email marketing for professional bloggers” was critical. (source)We’ve renamed it too. I know, I know… I’ve already rebranded from Trend List to Trennd, and now we’re doing it again? But hear me out.This product spreads by word of mouth very well.But try telling your friend to “check out trend, but with two n’s. Oh and it’s .co not .com”. Not good. 😅So we’ve gone with ExplodingTopics.comLovely. Easy to remember and easy to spell. Has a balanced look to it on paper too, but maybe that’s just me.And the word “topics” aligns better with our new target audience.Plus we now have a sweet new design. I feel it’s much more intuitive and way sexier in general. 🤩imageBefore it looked like a project, now it looks like a product.And here's the plug, the inevitable plug:And we’re finally launching on Product Hunt today. Both Brian and I will be active in the discussion all of today (3rd December 2019):That’s it! Glad you made it to the end, hope you enjoyed the story and thanks again to you guys at r/EntrepreneurUntil next time,😘Josh