#and twitter is now pay to win. i only got maybe 5 likes per post before. now i get none at all. which is expected...

[alchemiclee]

I have so many photos I need to post. 15 years worth!!! I started posting them on my old tumblr's side blog but never finished and then I abandoned tumblr for years. but tbh I feel like posting my work doesn't benefit me and it's just more pointless work for me 😭 especially instagram and twitter where my posts get maybe 1 like from a follower if i'm lucky and that's it. why do I even bother 😭 no one is excited to see my work so it'd hard to motivate myself to actually share anything when it doesn't benefit me and when no one else is excited for or looking forward to it. sometimes I lose that "I made a thing I want to share it like a kid hanging their finger painting on the fridge" mentality 😅 even kids can get discouraged and give up sharing if you don't ooo and ahhh over their work. does that make sense?

[mitigatedchaos]

On Defeating Trump

Trump is not a beacon of technocratic excellence.

What, did you think I sent him?  If you want nationalistic technocrats, go scour Asia and maybe something will turn up.  

Trump didn’t come to power through genius - he was selected for by the weaknesses that he exploits.  He uses a few simple strategies that his opponents' supporting structures are vulnerable to, and he monopolizes a few key issues.  That’s it.  That’s all there is to it.

If you want to beat Trump, you’ve got to take out one of those two things.

Co-opting Trump’s tactics is redundant.  People have been saying dumb shit like “we should dissolve the United States” to out-Left each other and rile up conservatives for years.  The conservatives just don’t have the cultural power now, which is why we’re not still arguing Atheism v. Christianity (Part XVI) and internet trolls have moved on to trying to meme the “OK” hand sign into a symbol of white supremacy.

Pissing off right-wing Boomers to show off how they “really” feel?  Multinational corporations do it as a marketing campaign to sell overpriced tennis shoes.  That should be our cue that it’s stale.

Copying Trump tactics won’t make Trump go away.  Just being nice to other people won’t do it either, because even if you do it, he’ll just say something more outrageous to keep Twitter occupied.  

Because Trump is neither a political genius, nor an excellent technocrat (if he were both, this one opening would have made him President for life), if you take away his issues, there’s not enough left to keep him in power.  People won’t buy the sizzle without the steak.

Is it possible?

With enough force of will, almost anything is.

The key is that in terms of how Trump acts, what he says he wants and what he “actually” wants are two different things.  (He’s operating on sharp instincts, but without the analytics to back it up.)  Further, what Trump wants and what the marginal Trump voter want are not the same thing.

The first perspective of perceiving Trump’s hardline stance on detainment (e.g. throwing unauthorized migrants in jail) is “Trump is just an evil, racist, fascist.”  This is “how the opposition want to portray Trump,” and certainly how many claim to feel about him.

The second perspective is perceiving the hardline stance as a negotiating tactic.  Since there were previous amnesties, but large-scale unauthorized migration continues, immigration restrictionists don’t have a reason to give up leverage now for a promise that there “might” be a deal on enforcement later.  They’re going to force a deal while Trump is still in power, whether Democrats want it or not.

But I think what’s really going on is a third perspective.  To stay in power, Trump needs to push the Democrats farther to left of the median voter than he is to the right, and he does that by getting Democrats do things like say stuff that doesn’t add up mathematically.  For instance, if you combine “we’re obligated to pay for medical care for anyone who crosses the border” with “we shouldn’t kick out anyone who hasn’t committed a felony” (or something along those lines), you create an unbounded financial commitment with no upper limit.  The US doesn’t actually have the money to give medical treatment (e.g. cancer treatment) to everyone in the world who has an expensive medical issue (e.g. cancer), won’t attempt armed robbery on arrival, doesn’t live in Europe, and can afford a plane ticket.  People will notice this and vote Trump due to the unbounded commitment, even if Trump’s to their right.

Current tactics appear focused on preventing Trump from getting anything he can claim as a victory, either based on perspective one (”Resist!”) or perspective two (”don’t give in to blackmail”), combined with a sort of “starve the beast” mentality where he’ll be portrayed to his base as impotent.

But Trump has instincts.  If he won’t get anything, then he can bluff as much as he wants.  He can say to himself, “let’s go paint some random small fry from a safe district in New York as the face of the entire Democratic Party.”

It’s not that sophisticated of a strategy.  It’s just that the current environment is weak to it.  

The marginal Trump voter is not going to be as far to the right on immigration as Trump is, even if they’re skeptical.  Give up on the idea of demographic change in America as positive (”diversity is good”) instead of neutral (”race is a neutral quality”), then call Trump on his bluff.

Propose a bill that

Grants amnesty to all unauthorized migrants currently in America that have not committed a felony.  This provides a temporary non-voting status that will turn into full status some number of years into the future.  This isn’t an “I automatically win the next election” button; it’s an “empties most of ICE’s facilities” button.

Does not fund Trump’s wall.

Prohibits the employment of people who do not have valid legal immigration status in America, including not only the firms doing the hiring, but the firms that receive services from those firms (to defeat corporate shell games).  Importantly, the bill also establishes a system that will tightly (and not loosely) enforce this, probably through some sort of verification system.

Something similar to #3, but for housing.

Switches legal immigration to a more merit-based system.

Restores certain programs which involve gaining immigration status through the US Military.

This has the results

Everyone gets to feel good about most of the ICE facilities closing.  (There will still be some carjackers to be held, but the whole argument from the Left/Liberals is based on the idea that unauthorized migrants are not carjackers at a rate notably exceeding that of the native population.)

Abused migrant workers can legally contest their employers, since they won’t be deported.

People mostly stop entering America without permission, because they won’t get paid, unless they really are terrified of whatever it is they’re fleeing from.  In that case, Democrats already like asylum laws.

You’ll have to give up on the $15 minimum wage, of course.  With so many people who were paid under the table, wages are going to take time to adjust.  This is why we need point #5 - integrating all those people properly is going to be expensive, and ordinarily we might cool down immigration to allow for gradual/intergenerational accumulation of resources.  That would be unacceptable to Democrats, so this plan switches to bringing in higher-productivity workers instead.

The thing is that Trump doesn’t have an answer for this.

If you have #3 and #4, you aren’t likely to need the Wall.  If you have #5, you’re not bidding down the price of native unskilled labor.  #6 is something he already tripped up on.  And while #1 is really juicy to Democrats, delaying the voting ability (the most important part being not being threatened by ICE), combined with #3 and #4 make it tougher to argue that it’s about diluting the votes of the native population.

(If you really want to troll Trump in particular, include a federal program to teach all new immigrants English.)

Pretty much the primary reason to oppose this (from the Left/Liberals) is if you think one million immigrants (an entire metropolis) per year isn’t enough for some reason - but as already discussed, there are already major issues with housing supply, so even if you wanted to increase the amount, it would be a problem not to deal with housing supply first.

Of course, I can be confident in posting this that the Democrats won’t actually do it, since charitably the people on the Left intend to use America as a lifeboat into which to empty hundreds of millions of people due to the effects of global warming, and setting this as a precedent makes that tougher.

[growthmktingpro-blog]

Top 10 Best Blogging Platforms for Creating and Hosting your Blog

Today, there are over 152 million blogs on the internet..

Almost all of us read blogs:

News sites and other blogs associated with big companies like CNN or Wall Street Journal

Themed blogs related to our favorite stuff like TechCrunch, Refinery29 or Hypebeast

Professional blogs of leaders in our industry  

Personal blogs: ones of our friends, travel, lifestyle and fitness blogs

Starting this blog was a turning point in my life

I was a great digital marketer and I always loved writing. So I married those two passions and took the plunge.

Today, my blog is not only one of my greatest sources of happiness but it also generates a good portion of my income! In our first year, we got 53,781 pageviews. Today, the blog is making over $15,000/month.

Maybe you’re thinking of doing the same thing. The good news: it takes less than 20 minutes to set up a blog.

But before you begin writing furiously, you need to choose the best blogging platform to create and host your blog on the internet.

Unfortunately, it’s a bit confusing because there are so many options. Choose wisely. It’s quite annoying to move your blog from what platform to another once you’ve started.  

There’s some important things to consider when choosing the right platform for creating and hosting your blog:

Ease: Blogging should be about making great content, not battling with software or settings.

Customization: If you want your blog to look a certain way, you have to be aware of the limitations of certain blogging platforms.

Support: Will it be easy to get help if/when you need it?

Search optimization: If you want people to discover you serendipitously via internet searches, there are some blogs that offer much better “search engine optimization.”

Price

Features: Some of the blogging platforms offer all-in-one solutions including website domain name and web hosting; the others just provide the Content Management System (CMS) suitable for blog publishing. Based on your goals, you need to choose the features you care about.

I’ve done the research on each of the major blogging platforms. In fact, I’ve used nearly all of them at one point or another in my career. Below is how each of them stacks up.

WordPress.org is still my favorite blogging solution. Learn to start a WordPress blog here.

But keep reading if you’re considering others.

Top 10 Best Blogging Platforms for Creating and Hosting Your Blog

1. WordPress.org

When it comes to choosing a blogging platform the first option that comes to mind is WordPress.org. In my opinion, WordPress wins the award for best all-around blogging platform.

In fact, this blog is a WordPress blog!

Believe it or not, WordPress powers 29% of the internet. By that, I mean WordPress.org powers 29% of the internet. Note that WordPress.com is not what people are talking about when they mention “WordPress.” Curious about the difference? Read WordPress.org vs WordPress.com: What’s the Difference?

Because so many people use WordPress, there are hundreds of help websites for it and developers everywhere understand it in case you run into trouble.

WordPress excels in search engine optimization. Your blog posts are automatically organized in a way that Google crawl them (read and categorize them). This means that people across the internet are more likely to discover your content in Google searches.

WordPress also has a whole host of plugins — in fact there’s over 53,291 as of today. These plugins require no code to implement and can do things like:

Make your blog look completely different,

Add analytics so you can see user behavior

Collect email addresses from your visitors

Further improve your search engine optimization

Sell products to visitors

And just about anything else you can think of

Finally, WordPress blogs are beautiful. There are hundreds of themes to choose from so that your blog looks exactly like you want.

WordPress is one of the simplest blogging platforms.

Our guide on how to set up a WordPress blog is best-in-class and perfectly simple. Launch your blog in 20 minutes.

Pros

Suitable for beginners and professional blogs like CNN.com

Over 50,000 themes and plugins available

Search engine friendly; certain plugins make WordPress’ search optimization even more powerful from a search engine optimization perspective

Cons

Not as easy as a drag-and-drop editor like Weebly, but not very difficult

Types of blogs From fashion blogs to high powered Fortune 500 companies and everything in between, WordPress is a great solution.

Price Free, but you have to pay for hosting. Fortunately, we have a $3+ per month hosting deal thanks to our partnership with BlueHost!

Link WordPress

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O5pyFS4VTA

2. Blogger

Now owned by Google, Blogger is one of the longest-running blogging platforms on the Internet.

While the most blogging platforms offer paid features, Blogger is completely free. This platform is perfect for the beginners. It’s very easy to set up a blog and begin publishing here.

The other advantage is deep integration with Google.

You may choose the photos for your posts from the images stored within your Google account; there’s integrated Google Analytics for site stats tracking, and you can even make money on your posts by using Google AdSense option which automatically displays relevant targeted ads on your blog.

The Blogger users get unlimited space for their blogs, and the number of blogs owned by each user is also not restricted. You may even run your blog on a custom domain, which was a feature they once didn’t allow.

While the customization options are limited here, the users still have some room for the creativity. It is possible to choose from the number of the templates and to customize them by digging into HTML and CSS.

You can even edit the blog’s code to include third-party advertising.

Blogger also offers a lot of built-in tools, called widgets, which are actually Google Apps integrated with the platform. There are clocks, calendar,  Google Maps, Google Translate, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube widgets among the others.

Pros

Unlimited traffic and storage space for free

No fees for adding a custom domain

Google AdSense integration

Built-in analytics

Strong search engine optimization

Cons

Limited number of features

Limited customization

Types of blogs Best for small “hobby” blogs or “about me” blogs

Price Free

Link Blogger

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2QvwgaECps

3. Tumblr

Tumblr is positioned as one of the simplest blogging platforms. As the official site says ‘It is so easy to use that it’s hard to explain’. It’s a totally free service which offers yoursite.tumblr.com address for your blog.

There is also an opportunity to connect your own domain name.

Tumblr is not intended for the people who like to write, as it has the really tiny text field. In fact, Tumblr is more focused on a short content and thus, attracts those who are visually-oriented. It stays in the middle between the classical blogging platform and the social media feed.

It’s very straightforward to post links, mp3s, videos, Spotify tracks, photos, and any content you could possibly imagine. You can instantly see the similar posts from the other Tumblr users and share them on your blog.

Apart from the posts, one can also create pages which don’t move through the feed and thus are always accessible to the visitors. The number of pages is unlimited on Tumblr.

One of the outstanding Tumblr features is the mass editor. It’s very simple to work with the dozens of posts on one screen and make some batch actions with them. For example, you can tag, untag, or change a tag on a selected number of posts which are displayed as the thumbnails.

Tumblr is not optimized for search at all. If you want your blog to be discovered, stay away from Tumblr.

Pros

No fees for adding a custom domain

Convenient mass editor

Unlimited number of pages is possible

Your posts are advertised on the similar blogs

Cons

Limited design controls

Bad management of the comments

Types of blogs Only for bloggers who want to curate images (similar to Instagram) — not for serious blogs.

Price Free

Link Tumblr

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yv-woY0gXA

4. Medium

A lot of famous folks and influencers have chosen Medium for their blogging platform.

Created by the Twitter founders, this platform uses microblogging approach. There is one standardized template you use to publish all your posts.

It is possible to choose a grid or stream based layout for your publication, as well as add your logo, background color, or image to the header.

However, the customization options are very limited, so you’d better focus on what you write.

Medium has the robust WYSIWYG editor which recognizes key commands and formatting characters, correctly displays styles and more.

This makes it easy to use. But Medium is much better for pure written blogging than anything visual.

Once a post is published, Medium makes it simple for the other Medium readers to discover the content. The recommendations are based on the users’ interests. The readers can also easily subscribe to authors they enjoy. But Medium posts aren’t naturally very discoverable by Google, so SEO is just okay.

There are built-in analytics tools and inline commenting. You may also share your post draft with the interested users before it goes online.

Unfortunately, there is no option of using the own domain for your blog, so you can’t get the full control of your content. So you’re stuck on medium.com.

Pros

It’s easy to reach the existing Medium audience

Built-in analytics

Cons

Direct competition with other writers

Impossible to use your own domain

Just okay for search engine optimization

Types of blogs Not for business blogs or blogs that want to make money because of the lack of search optimization. Best for personal blogs.

Price Free

Link Medium

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPc4IvUlY6U

5. Ghost

Ghost is another blogging platform very focused on written content. It’s extremely minimalistic and thus clutter-free.

However, it’s much easier to use Ghost if you or someone on your team has an engineering background. The editor involves code, plus most people customize the look and feel of their Ghost blog in code. There are few plugin or theme choices out of the box.

Ghost installation is much more complicated than WordPress. You need to have the strong technical background to make it work on your domain.

Ghost(Pro) is a simpler option as you instantly get the fully working site with it. However, there is no free plan of hosted version like on WordPress.

The other thing that you should keep in mind about Ghost is the lack of the visual editor. Instead, the posts are written in Markdown which is a text-to-HTML writing syntax that translates your text into the formatted output.

Thus, you should have some idea of how to use HTML and CSS if you move forward with Ghost.

Ghost is an open source content management system made for midsize companies and up — who have engineers that can help with the look and feel of the blog.

Pros

It is seen as the fastest blogging platform

Easy writing

Clean and simple

Cons

Free version is difficult to setup

The number of themes is limited

No plugins

You must have a technical background to use ghost

Types of blogs Most businesses and personal bloggers can use Ghost. However, given that some coding is required to use Ghost, you need to be a proficient engineer.

Price Free to install on your own domain. Paid plans start at $19 per month and include 1 blog and 50,000 unique views/month.

Link Ghost

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-WToqkx7GM

6. Weebly

Weebly is not a blogging platform out of the box, but it can be transformed in one.

In actuality, Weebly is a website builder — meant for creating just about any type of website.

All setup job is done by dragging and dropping the required elements like pictures, paragraphs, videos, buttons, maps, contact forms, and more.

What you see in the site builder is what you get on your pages (WYSIWYG).

Updating the site is easy as well. Weebly includes a lot of extensions that can be added if necessary — related to ecommerce, design changes and analytics. Of course, blog functionality is among the plugins.

If you ever need advanced site features like forums, membership options, integrated advertising, or file uploads it’s pretty easy to add them as well.

The best thing about Weebly is that it supports apps made by 3rd party developers. The app center is constantly growing making it easy to find the extensions for any task.

The free version of Weebly includes weebly.com subdomain and 500 Mb of storage which is not much if you want to share images with your visitors.

Weebly offers a number of beautiful themes for all kinds of blog categories: business, academic, education, e-commerce, writer, musician, and so on.

They not only look great but also very responsive and perfectly adapt to mobile devices. And it is possible to customize them making your site to look different.

Pros

Drag-and-drop support

Affordable e-commerce functionality

A lot of extensions and third-party apps

Cons

The pages are difficult to manage if you have more than 10

There isn’t great SEO optimization

Types of blogs Better for ecommerce sites than for blogs.

Price Free. Paid plans start at $8 per month and include unlimited storage and free domain.

Link Weebly

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VnRMP7jRjY

7. Postach.io

Do you use Evernote for organizing your personal information? Then you’ll be happy to find out that there is a way to blog right from this application.

Postach.io is a simple blogging platform directly connected to Evernote. How does it work? You create Postach.io account and connect it to your Evernote account.

Then you specify which notebook will be used for writing and storing the blog posts. That’s it.

The best thing about Postach.io is that all your content is actually backed up on your computer and can be reached from Evernote.

The blogging features of Postach.io are basic. The user gets a free yoursite.postach.io domain. By default, your name and surname are used as a subdomain, but you can choose the one you like in the blog settings.

It is also possible to customize blog appearance with a number of themes, to add social profiles and cover photo, to write a blog description, to specify the purpose and category. F

or the small monthly fee, you are allowed to use your own domain as well as to protect your site with the password.

There are also some useful add-ons that can be easily added to the blog. You can power your site with Disqus comments, add analytics to your site with Google, as well as configure automatic sharing of published posts to Twitter, a Facebook page or profile. Social sharing is implemented just by ticking posts with ‘share’ tag in Evernote.

Overall, pistach.io has limited use cases and should not be used by serious bloggers.

Pros

Evernote integration

Social sharing

Google Analytics support

Password protection

Cons

Few opportunities for customization

No advertising possibilities with a free account

Types of blogs For starting your online notebook. Not for serious blogs.

Price Free. Paid plans start at $5 per month and include a custom domain, password protection, more themes, source code access.

Link Postach.io

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IamSDEpNkDY

8. Wix

Like Weebly, Wix is a website builder — it’s not a blog out of the box. But still, people do use it to power their blog.

Wix is one of the most beautiful blogging platforms.

Fully powered by HTML5, this website builder offers stunning templates for every niche you can imagine. The choice of the niche is made during the registration.

Once you tell Wix what site do you want to build it offers thematic templates for every taste.

Artists, photographers, graphic designers and other creative people are among the most loyal Wix fans because there are so many different animation options, photo galleries, video players, and so on.

With a free account, you get 500 MB of storage and the ability to create the unlimited number of static pages. Secure hosting and a mobile site are also included. The posts are created within intuitive blog editor with drag and drop support.

You can edit drafts, schedule upcoming posts, tag and categorize the posts to help the readers easily find what interests them.

Wix also offers video and photo galleries that could be embed into the posts. And you can even embed HTML code to add quizzes, polls, surveys, and other interactive content.

Pros

Great looking themes

Themes are customizable

A lot of widgets for adding new features

Cons

Free plan has too many restrictions

Wix Ads on a free plan

Types of blogs Good solution for fashion blogs and ecommerce websites.

Price Free. Paid plans start at $4.50 per month and include the custom domain. To remove Wix ads and increase the storage/bandwidth the $8.50 per month plan should be used.

Link Wix

Video https://youtu.be/pWDr1MNfJ34

9. Penzu

Most people who start blogging want to attract as many readers as possible. Best go with a blog platform that specializes in search optimization like WordPress if this is your goal.

But there are a couple blogging platforms that behave more like diaries — for people who don’t want their thoughts to be discovered by others.

Think about pregnancy or food diary, the reflective journal where all daily emotions and activities are covered, private dream journal that makes you feel happy, and so on. This is when Penzu is useful.

The service offers handy blog editor with a focus on writing. There are not too many possibilities for design customization, but basic things like colors and fonts can be changed so that your journal can look the way you please.

Mobile support is also included in the free account, so you can write your thoughts from any device. And don’t worry about the post preservation, since autosave option is also in place.

The main focus of Penzu is security. All posts are private by default. You need to use one password to access your journal and the second for editing and adding the new posts.

And if you’re really concerned about privacy, the paid plans also include encrypted journal locking. Also, Pro plans and tags for your posts, individual entry locking, PDF Export, starring entries, custom writing reminders, version history, trash recovery, and more.

Pros

Possibility to have private blog

Mobile apps for easier blogging

Cons

Pure customization options

No encryption for the free accounts

Not a real professional blog, more for writers who want to keep a diary

Types of blogs Penzu is more of a personal diary. Not for serious blogs.

Price Free. Paid plans start at $2+ per month and include multiple journals, added security, reminders, and journal customization.

Link Penzu

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGVh4ckt6M0

10. Pen.io

Like Penzu, pen.io is geared toward bloggers who don’t want necessarily want others finding their content. The search optimization is not good, but that is by design.

Registering and setting up for Pen.io is incredibly easy.

It is an extremely minimalistic approach to publish your thoughts and to share them in seconds. This platform is also handy for the or online resumes, anonymous letters, lecture notes and so on.

How does it work? Think about services for temporary files sharing. It’s almost the same, but for the blog posts. You need to enter your page title and password which could be used later for editing the entry. Write your post and add images from your computer (drag and drop is supported), then save.

You’ll get the unique link to the post that can be shared with other people. You may also create multi-page posts using tags. No user account, to blog customization, just the pages with the content. The page can be edited by clicking the link at the bottom.

It is not search optimized.

Pros

No registration required to create blog posts

Simple editing

Cons

No customization for the blog

Once the editing password is forgotten, it couldn’t be restored

No social sharing

Not search engine friendly

Types of blogs Pen.io is more of a personal diary. Not for serious blogs.

Price Free

Link Pen.io

Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9fyf3hDyyI

Conclusion

When you are just thinking of your own blog you really have the freedom of choice.

Of course, if you’re a novice it’s important to choose the blogging platform that is easy to set up and customize. But it is always a good thing to look ahead because switching the platform is not easy when your blog is already running.

So, before making your choice, try to visualize your blog in the future.

Could it grow into something bigger (online store etc.)?

Are you considering advertising option on the site?

Do you want to own all your content and have an access to it and thus, ready to buy a domain? Answers will definitely help you to choose the best option.

There’s a reason most bloggers use WordPress. It has the out-of-the-box features and flexibility to serve your needs today or however you decide to grow in the future. See the guide by clicking below.

–> How to Set Up a WordPress Blog: Easy Step-by-Step Guide <–

Originally published on www.growthmarketingpro.com: 

https://www.growthmarketingpro.com/top-10-best-blogging-platforms-creating-hosting-blog/

[flauntpage]

With Kawhi and Paul George Off to the Clippers, the Sixers Have a Clear Path to the Finals

The NBA is simply glorious. When the East Coast went to bed, Kawhi Leonard’s free agent decision loomed over the city of Toronto, nay the entirety of Canada. Leonard’s now former teammate Danny Green was waiting with baited breath to see where his fellow NBA champion would land. The Bucks and Sixers were likely the most interested, aside from the Toronto Raptors. The oddsmakers were up in the air on which teams would fill out the top three in the Eastern Conference. Then it happened. A signing and a trade that dramatically altered the NBA landscape.

Kawhi signs with the Clippers

In a surprise to few, Kawhi chose to go to his long-rumored destination in Los Angeles.

Free agent forward Kawhi Leonard has informed runners-up teams of his plans: He's signing with the Clippers, league sources tell ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 6, 2019

Instead of finishing an unprecedented trio of MVP contenders with LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the Lakers, Leonard opted to team up with former Sixer Landry Shamet. Okay, I got the Sixers Twitter fanboy line of the day out of the way. Leonard isn’t stupid. He knew that before he could commit himself to a max deal with the Clippers, he’d need another star to shift the competitive balance of the Western Conference. Boy did he get one.

Along Came Paul-G

It was a year ago when I openly begged the Sixers to make a move for Paul George. Despite the owner of this site claiming PG13 is one of the most overrated players of this generation, George was widely considered to be a Top-2 or Top-3 MVP candidate for two-thirds of the season, until a shoulder injury rendered him nearly unable to shoot (and unlike a former #1 overall pick, this was a real injury… I digress). After George opted to sign an extension with the small market, Russell-Westbrook-led Oklahoma City Thunder, it seemed unlikely he’d be going anywhere. In fact, most analysts expected the Thunder to deal one of Steven Adams or Westbrook if for no reason other than to clear salary and get under the luxury tax threshold.

No one expected PG13 to get dealt. That was until the reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard stepped in and out GM’d LeBron James.

After Leonard pushed George to find a way to get to the Clippers, Paul George approached the team and requested a trade, league sources tell ESPN. OKC was left with no choice and made the best out of a difficult situation, per sources.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 6, 2019

Winners and losers and what this all means for the Sixers after the jump:

Winners

LA Clippers

The Clippers went from being the forgotten child of the West Coast to the preeminent team in Los Angeles. They’re going to be a must-watch squad with Leonard, George, and Patrick Beverley hounding teams on the wings. More importantly, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has full reign to drink the tears of every Lakers executive who mocked him.

Oklahoma City Thunder

The return is insane. Not only did OKC get back a player the Clippers didn’t want to part with in Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but Danilo Gallinari, two pick swaps (2023 & 2025), and FIVE first-round picks:

2021 via Miami

2022 via LAC

2023 via Miami

2024 via LAC

2026 via LAC

That’s a remarkable haul. It’s better than what the Lakers got for Anthony Davis. It’s 100x better than what San Antonio got for Kawhi. It might be one of the most loaded packages ever sent out in North American sports history. Yes, I get that some of those firsts will be late in the round if all goes according to plan, but still.

The Philadelphia 76ers

Kawhi’s departure leaves a wide-open door to the Finals available to the Sixers should they choose to walk through it. Milwaukee has arguably gotten weaker through the departures of Malcolm Brogdon and Nikola Mirotic. Toronto is a shell of their championship squad. Boston replaced Kyrie with a lesser Kyrie in Kemba Walker. Indiana added the aforementioned Brogdon, but let’s not kid ourselves. Brooklyn upgraded by swapping out D’Angelo Russell for Irving, but Kevin Durant will miss the upcoming season as he rehabs from a torn Achilles. Orlando is lower playoff seed paying close to the luxury tax. Does anyone really believe Detroit is a threat? Atlanta will be a real nuisance in the next two or three years. Charlotte is dead in the water without Kemba to keep them relevant. Maybe Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat could… nah.

There will be growing pains with this team, but exceeding 50 wins shouldn’t take much, especially with Al Horford poised to provide Joel Embiid some much-needed relief at the center position.

Losers

Chris Broussard

Kawhi Update: Raptors had strong meeting yesterday. Drake heavily involved. Talked of having Kawhi involved w/his OVO record label. Kawhi in deep soul searching. Wants Lakers but wants to make sure Big 3 will fit/work. Clippers out. It’s btwn Lakers & Raptors. Very close.

— Chris Broussard (@Chris_Broussard) July 4, 2019

This dude has had nearly all of his professional credibility shredded with his ‘throw it against a wall and see if it sticks’ methodology. It’s been a wicked-fast fall from his ESPN days.

LA Lakers

LeBron James once again failed to get a superstar free agent to sign on with his team. The Lakers’ dysfunction proved to be an obstacle. Anthony Davis must feel like a complete boob for waiving his $4.095 million trade kicker in an effort to clear max cap space for a guy of Leonard’s ilk. Instead, he saw his new team re-sign Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to a two-year, $16 million deal and JaVale McGee to a two-year, $8.2 million deal. The only good thing the team did is sign Danny Green to a two-year deal, though $15 million annually seems a bit high. All of these two year deals seems to signal another thing: the Lakers intend on selling 2021 to their fans. It’ll be fun to watch Lakers fans and Knicks fans wallowing in sorrow after failing to woo Giannis.

Russell Westbrook

Westbrook is now left with a small market team that has lost any chance to contend. Steven Adams is going to eat up nearly $25 million against the cap next season and Westbrook reportedly missed out on a potential superteam-forming trade that would’ve landed him in Toronto alongside Leonard and George. Alas, he’ll get the chance to jack up 35 shots per game in OKC or maybe New York if the Knicks decide to delve further into chaos.

Brett Brown/Sixers Twitter

There’s no excuse. If Brett Brown fails to implement a system that best utilizes one of the most talented starting fives in the entire league, there will be no one to hold back Sixers Twitter. On the flip side, if Brown is able to make better in-game adjustments -especially with a great locker room addition in Horford and removal of Jimmy Butler- his detractors will have to go into hiding… for a bit at least. It’s Finals or bust for Brown. The chips have been pushed in. Is he the man to lead this team to their first title since 1983? We shall see.

For more Sixers coverage, check out Crossing Broadcast with Kevin Kinkead and Russ Joy. Please subscribe to the show ([Apple Podcasts] [Spotify][Google Play] [Stitcher] [iHeartRadio] [RSS]), leave a 5 star review, and follow them on Twitter: @Kevin_Kinkead @JoyOnBroad 

The post With Kawhi and Paul George Off to the Clippers, the Sixers Have a Clear Path to the Finals appeared first on Crossing Broad.

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If you are not currently doing affiliate marketing then you are really missing a trick.

Affiliate marketing evolved from the simple concept that if another website sends you a visitor and that person becomes a customer of yours then you should say thanks to the other website by giving them a small piece of the pie.

Affiliate marketing has now become a lot more complex but the basics are still the same. You want as many sites as possible to be shouting about you to their visitors so that they come and see your wares, and then in return you pay a suitable reward to that site based on your business profitability and margins.

In this article I will go through a few of the things that a newcomer should consider when setting up an affiliate marketing programme:

1) The best commission/reward structure for your business

2) The best network/s to work with based on their affiliate base e.g. the kinds of affiliates that are with them and that they tend to attract.

3) How to get visibility on the key affiliates websites and with the affiliate network.

4) Working on new promotions and incentive schemes to motivate affiliates to promote you rather than your competitors.

Deciding on an affiliate reward structure for your business The first thing to look at is your new customer recruitment costs, e.g. If over one month you spend £5000 on marketing and you recruit 100 new customers then your new customer recruitment cost is £50. Cross reference this with your customer lifetime value(if you know it) to work out how much commission you can pay your affiliates.

A Basic explanation of how you could calculate this is as follows: The customer lifetime value will be the average top line profit that each customer brings you over their lifetime.

To calculate a customers life time value the best way maybe to take a group of customers that you recruited within a months date range and to track their spend over a few years, you will lose some of these customers, but others you will maintain so you need to have a good sample size for the calculation to be worthy.

e.g.

1000 customers recruited in June 2008.

Over the following 2 years they spent an accumulative 1,000,000GBP therefore you have a customer lifetime value of 1000GBP

BUT

Cost of goods sold were 700,000GBP

Business fixed costs were 100,000GBP

Variable business costs were 80,000GBP

Therefore a total profit for these 1000 customers of 120,000GBP over 2 years, and a per customer profit of 120GBP/customer.

This is obviously a very rough fag packet example but it is worth doing this exercise so that you can then determine the profitability of all of your marketing channels through looking at what their cost per new business customer acquired is and comparing it to the customer lifetime value.

Anyway, to keep from steering too wide form the point of the post... From this figure you can then determine how much you are willing to spend per customer on your affiliate marketing.

You now know that if you spend 120GBP per customer acquisition then you will break even on that customer so if you build in that you want to make 50% profit and spend 50% of the customer value then you can spend 60GBP per customer acquired.

Now, if you work out the average number of orders of those 1000 customers over the 2 years then you will know your average order size through dividing total revenue by total orders.

Say for example that the average number of orders was 4 then you will have an average order size of 250GBP.

So based on this if you can spend 60GBP per new customer order then your commission level for "new" customers can be just under 25%.

However, not all orders are from "new" customers so you could do one of 2 things:

1) Decide to average out commission across all sales by saying that every 1 in 4 customers is new therefore you can pay 6% commission overall

2) Decide to have a higher level of commission on new business orders and a lower level on other orders e.g. 10% and 5% respectively (although you will need to have the backend website functionality available to track different customer segments).

As well as the cost to the end affiliate you will need to figure in a network cost. As a basic guide this is about 25-35% of the commission paid to the affiliates. Therefore if you pay affiliates £1000/month then you will also need to pay your network a fee of around £300/month so this needs to be factored in when determining commission levels.

Always set your commission levels slightly lower than you can afford so that you have the option of increasing commissions for seasonal promotions and for giving high performing affiliates added incentives etc.

What is the best affiliate network for me? The amount that the affiliate networks are willing to disclose to you will depend on your skills as a negotiator and also the potential size of your business for the affiliate networks.

Approach all of the big networks - Tradedoubler, Buyat, Linkshare, Commission Junction, Affiliate Future and Clickbank, explain that you are going to be setting up an affiliate marketing program and that you want as much information as possible on why you should go with them.

Ask them:

How many affiliates drove a sale for them last month?

So that you can compare their size and reach with others

How many affiliates are promoting merchants in your industry?

So that you can see their reach in your vertical

How much revenue did they drive for your entire industry last month?

To judge the level of bottom line success in your vertical. You should also look (if possible) at the % breakdown of the revenue by affiliate e.g. what % of revenue is made up by the top 5 affiliates? Is there a lot of long tail/small affiliate opportunity?

How many new affiliates did they recruit last month?

To judge how actively they are growing and how proactive they are.

How many new merchants did they recruit last month?

Ditto, are they an arrogant and lazy network?

How many merchants from your industry are with them? (good to go with the bulk as there will be a good affiiate base ready to promote you if they are already promoting your competitors).

Who are the biggest 5 affiliates working with them?

Who are the biggest 5 affiliates with them for your industry?

How much commission will they charge on sales?

Can they run multiple commission rates?

Can they do lead generation on a fee per lead basis?

What does their management fee include? How much support and help can you expect from them with affiliate recruitment/reporting/problem shooting/industry updates?

What technology do they offer that is unique to them?

If you can get a fair bit of detail on all of these questions then you should be in a good position to approach the negotiating stage and play them off against each other. Obviously the amount of leverage you have and how far you can go will largely depend on the size of your business and what kind of revenue you will bring the affiliate networks. Make the networks excited about your marketing and growth plans. Explain your past performance and what your plans are for the next year - if they see you as an expanding and growing brand then they will stretch further to meet your needs.

By the time you have got to this stage you will have your preferences, go with the data, the best deal and your gut feel. If you like and get on with the people on a genuine level and trust that they will take your business seriously and will spend time promoting you then go with them, but only if the commercials and their business proposition stack up too. Getting visibility with the key affiliates for your market Once you have your account set up and you are ready to go the first thing to do is to put together a target list of affiliates that you want promoting you. Rank the affiliates on the list by potential and then work with the networks on getting the best real estate possible on the affiliates sites.

Get the affiliate network to give you a list of every affiliate who has driven a sale for any competitor of yours (that is in their network) within the past 6 months. Ask the affiliate network to rank the affiliates in order of revenue driven (obviously without the sensitive data) if they mess up and give you the sensitive data (unlikely) then all the better. Put together a promotional plan for the first 3 months and make sure that your offers blow the competition out of the water. Affiliates are businesses in their own right so are just interested in promoting the merchant who can earn them the most cash, so if you give them a better % commission and your conversion rate is as good as your competitors or better then you will quickly win them over. Check out the top affiliates EPC (earnings per click). You then need to work out how you can give them the opportunity to earn over this with you - basically calculate: (site conversion rate x (commission rate per sale X Average order size).

Ensure that the affiliate network have agreed to give you featured merchant status for the first month and that you are featured all over their website/blog/twitter/facebook etc and emails.

Email all of the other affiliates straight away introducing yourself as their support at your company, explain your proposition, affiliate program terms (commission rate etc) and explain that you have an unbeatable offer for the first month that is going to have sky high conversion rates.

Save some fat in the promotional spend plan for the top affiliates so that you can offer them something special for a great location on their site.

Once you have the top 10 on board and are recruiting the long tail through the email then get on the phone and work your way down the list getting more and more affiliates on board, there will be many that you cannot get hold of and/or who do not reply; do not be disheartened as this is normal, affiliates are busy people. Just try to think of good ways to grab their attention and leverage all contacts at the network to aid you in getting in contact with the affiliates.

Keep in close contact with the network - let them know that you will make them work for their commission, be thankful and complimentary when they are good but beware of them being more lazy after the initial flurry - you need to hold the pace for at least the first 3 months and then it should start to get easier as you have some secure relationships that do not need too much maintenance. This applies to both affiliates and the networks.

New affiliate promotions to get the affiliates promoting you instead of your competitors This is obviously a tricky one with no clear right/wrong way. There are a few rules that I would stick to though:

Keep things fairly simple - as mentioned above affiliates are busy so if you come up with a highly complex (however fun) promotional idea they may just switch off before you sell it in to them. Keep things fresh - do not just dole out the same old promos every month to the affiliates, there will be no real incentive for them to keep promoting you and trying new things for you if they already know how it will perform on their site.

If possible base your promotions for the top affiliates around their site and what works well for them e.g. if you sell T-shirts and cushions and one site is flying on the cushions then give them special offers around cushions.

Use the data you have after each promo - see what works for who and try to understand their site use profile so that you can meet their needs. Show your face at affiliate events, make friends in the industry, do people favours and just generally enjoy yourself as if people see you being fun and positive socially then it will impact the business relationship you have with them.

If anyone has anything that they think could be added to this post then just let me know and I will add it in. All the best with your affiliate marketing!

[eelgibbortech-blog]

Customer Acquisition Strategies That Won’t Break the Bank

Getting new customers isn’t always cheap.

That’s one of the reasons why I tell businesses to focus on customer retention.

With that said, it’s impossible to retain customers if you can’t get them through your doors or to your website in the first place.

If you’re a new company without an existing customer base, you’ll need to come up with some creative ways to acquire new ones.

The problem is new businesses typically have a limited marketing budget.

They need sales to generate money for promotional content, but they can’t get any sales without those promotions.

It’s a paradox.

This goes for companies that may have been in business for a while but are struggling with their revenue streams.

Regardless of your situation, new customers can always help.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on customer acquisition.

Here’s a basic formula that shows how to calculate your acquisition cost:

If you want an even more accurate version of this formula, you can add additional costs besides sales and marketing. They may include:

wages

infrastructure

production

any other costs

That’s the true representation of how much it costs you to get a new customer.

Keeping this number low will give you a much higher return on investment.

The strategies I’m going to show you actually work.

I know this from personal experience.

These are the most inexpensive techniques to acquire lots of new customers.

Start by retargeting old customers

I know what you’re thinking.

If you’re focusing on existing customers, it’s retention, not acquisition—right?

Not exactly.

If you’ve been in business for a while and it’s been a year or two since a customer was active, I wouldn’t refer to that person as an existing customer.

Getting them back to your business is basically like getting a brand new customer.

Dig up any old information you have on this person:

email

phone number

address

Anything you have.

Reach out to them with a promotion to try to get their business back.

Here’s an example of an email campaign from Carter’s:

They give an old customer a reason to make another purchase and come back to their brand.

If you’ve recently made new improvements to your business, don’t be afraid to let old customers know.

Maybe the reason why they left in the first place was because they thought your company was outdated.

Share any information about your infrastructure that has improved the customer experience.

Do you have a new mobile application?

Have you renovated your brick and mortar location?

These are examples of things to promote when you contact these old leads.

Step up your presence on Instagram

To survive, you have to adapt to the times.

The days of using snail mail and local print advertisements to promote your business are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

Your business needs to have a digital presence.

Stay engaged with prospective customers via Instagram.

Over half of users on Instagram are active on a daily basis.

There are also 800 million active monthly users.

These numbers continue to rise each year.

The popularity of this platform isn’t going to phase out any time soon.

One of the reasons why I like to use Instagram is because it’s so inexpensive.

It doesn’t cost you anything to create a profile.

The only cost is your time.

Even if you’re paying someone to manage your social media accounts, it’s OK as long as they’re being productive.

Here’s what you need to do.

Work on getting more followers on your profile.

Realistically, not all your followers will become customers.

Don’t worry about converting all of them.

Let’s go through a scenario.

Start with a goal.

You want to gain 10,000 Instagram followers in the next month.

It’s a high number, but it’s attainable.

You’re aiming to convert 20% of your followers to customers.

That’s 2,000 new customers in just one month.

Don’t forget the best part: it didn’t cost you anything.

For those of you who think a 20% conversion is too high or unrealistic, think again.

Based on this generational data, it’s actually quite modest:

Internet users in the United States are likely to purchase something from a brand they follow on social media.

If you get more followers, you’ll get more customers.

You can improve your conversion chances if you’re managing your Instagram account properly.

Post pictures and videos of your products and services.

Get your followers involved as well.

Try to encourage them to post images of themselves using your products.

One of my favorite ways to do this is by featuring customer photos on your account.

When your followers see they can get recognition for their photos, it gives them some extra motivation to post pictures with your product.

Here’s an example from the Thule Instagram:

Now anyone who has one of Thule’s products knows they can be featured as well if they take a cool photo.

Getting customers to post photos on their personal accounts is a great brand awareness strategy.

You’ll get more followers and acquire more customers.

Again, this strategy is completely free.

Create more video content

Like I said earlier, you need to stick with the trends.

Video content is trending upward at record rates.

Across the globe, 52% of marketing experts say video has the highest return on investment compared to other marketing content.

That’s great news for you if you’re trying to keep acquisition costs low.

Doing something as simple as adding a video to your landing page can increase conversion rates by up to 80%.

One of the best parts about creating a video is that you can use the same one across all of your marketing channels.

I’ll go through some examples to show you what I mean.

Let’s say you created a video for your website.

You can also send it via email to your subscribers.

Not everyone on your subscriber list is a customer.

Some people may have provided you with their email addresses, but never actually bought anything.

Here’s a great opportunity for you to acquire those individuals.

Look at how Patagonia embedded a video in their email marketing campaign:

You can use the same strategy.

Don’t create a different video for each marketing channel—that’s a waste of time.

If the video is less than a minute long, you can even add it to your Instagram profile, which I discussed above.

Is your video longer than a minute? No problem.

Just include a specific clip from the video or make it into a top highlights clip.

All of this is much more cost effective than creating an entirely new video.

In addition to email and Instagram, add videos to your:

Homepage

Blog

YouTube channel

Facebook

Twitter

I know what you’re thinking.

How can this be a low-cost strategy if I need to hire a professional cameraman and crew to make a high quality video?

I’ve got good news for you: none of that is necessary.

In fact, the vast majority of businesses produce their video content in-house.

This helps keep costs low.

Just invest in a decent camera and microphone.

You don’t need anything too fancy.

There’s plenty of inexpensive or even free video editing software that you can get on your computer as well.

If you’re willing to pay for a video editing tool, you can try Moovly.

You can get a subscription for as little as $5 per month.

They even let you try the software free for the first 30 days to see whether you like the experience.

Some of you may have wanted to create videos in the past but didn’t know what kind of content to produce.

Remember, we’re trying to acquire customers here.

Your videos need to display your competitive advantage.

What makes your products or services better than something similar on the market?

Try starting with a video tutorial.

Go through a step-by-step process of how your product can solve a problem.

You can also create videos that demonstrate a product.

That’s not necessary for all products.

For example, if your company produces hats and headbands, I don’t think you need to teach potential customers how to put a hat on.

With that said, you can still come up with a creative video that shows what makes your product unique.

Dollar Shave Club uses this strategy with their promotional video content:

The video doesn’t teach you how to shave.

Instead, it walks prospective clients through the process of getting razors and other shaving products delivered to their front doors.

It’s an effective and low-cost strategy for customer acquisition.

Start running epic giveaways

If people aren’t buying your product, you need to come up with a clever way to get the product in their hands.

Give it to them free.

Let me clarify.

I’m not saying you should give away thousands of products.

But you can run monthly or even weekly promotions.

You can choose between:

A sweepstakes means you’re giving away something to a person picked at random.

It doesn’t require any skill, and there’s nothing someone can do to increase their chances of winning.

All the person can do is enter and hope for the best.

Contests require skill, and the winner is selected based on judgment.

I think contests are more effective.

It gets the participants more involved, which is great if you’re trying to acquire new customers.

Let’s say someone entered your contest but didn’t win.

They put lots of effort into their entry and were looking forward to getting the product.

Well, now they may be more inclined to make a purchase.

Here’s an example of what a conversion funnel looks like when you run a contest:

That’s what I love so much about this strategy.

First of all, it’s not going to cost you anything except for the cost of the product you’re giving away.

But it’s also a great way to build your email subscriber list.

In order to enter, make it a requirement for customers to provide you with their email addresses.

After all, how else will you be able to contact them if they win?

Now at the very least, you’ll be able to send them promotional emails.

If the contest didn’t entice them to make a purchase, your email marketing campaign can get the job done.

Remember earlier I said that if you get more followers on Instagram you could get more customers?

Well, the same concept applies here.

Additional subscribers on your email list can improve your conversions.

It’s an inexpensive way to acquire new customers.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend a fortune on customer acquisition.

This holds true for startup companies as well as businesses that have been operating for years.

While customer retention should be a priority as well, you can’t keep a customer if you never got them on board in the first place.

That’s why I like to start with retargeting old customers.

You already have their contact information. If it’s been years since they last made a purchase, the additional revenue will have the same impact as the impact you would get from a new customer.

Instagram is one of my favorite social platforms for customer acquisition.

Since people are more likely to make a purchase from brands they follow on social media, focus on getting your follower numbers up.

You’ll be able to convert a percentage of those followers to customers.

Adding more video content to your promotional channels will help as well.

You can make these videos in-house, so it won’t be very expensive.

Contests and sweepstakes can increase brand awareness and get you some new customers.

These strategies will also help you get more email subscribers, so you can continue to market to those people and increase conversions.

What are some budget-friendly ways you’ve used to acquire new customers?

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The post Customer Acquisition Strategies That Won’t Break the Bank appeared first on Ebulkemaimarketing Blogs and updates.

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Customer Acquisition Strategies That Won’t Break the Bank

Getting new customers isn’t always cheap.

That’s one of the reasons why I tell businesses to focus on customer retention.

With that said, it’s impossible to retain customers if you can’t get them through your doors or to your website in the first place.

If you’re a new company without an existing customer base, you’ll need to come up with some creative ways to acquire new ones.

The problem is new businesses typically have a limited marketing budget.

They need sales to generate money for promotional content, but they can’t get any sales without those promotions.

It’s a paradox.

This goes for companies that may have been in business for a while but are struggling with their revenue streams.

Regardless of your situation, new customers can always help.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on customer acquisition.

Here’s a basic formula that shows how to calculate your acquisition cost:

If you want an even more accurate version of this formula, you can add additional costs besides sales and marketing. They may include:

wages

infrastructure

production

any other costs

That’s the true representation of how much it costs you to get a new customer.

Keeping this number low will give you a much higher return on investment.

The strategies I’m going to show you actually work.

I know this from personal experience.

These are the most inexpensive techniques to acquire lots of new customers.

Start by retargeting old customers

I know what you’re thinking.

If you’re focusing on existing customers, it’s retention, not acquisition—right?

Not exactly.

If you’ve been in business for a while and it’s been a year or two since a customer was active, I wouldn’t refer to that person as an existing customer.

Getting them back to your business is basically like getting a brand new customer.

Dig up any old information you have on this person:

email

phone number

address

Anything you have.

Reach out to them with a promotion to try to get their business back.

Here’s an example of an email campaign from Carter’s:

They give an old customer a reason to make another purchase and come back to their brand.

If you’ve recently made new improvements to your business, don’t be afraid to let old customers know.

Maybe the reason why they left in the first place was because they thought your company was outdated.

Share any information about your infrastructure that has improved the customer experience.

Do you have a new mobile application?

Have you renovated your brick and mortar location?

These are examples of things to promote when you contact these old leads.

Step up your presence on Instagram

To survive, you have to adapt to the times.

The days of using snail mail and local print advertisements to promote your business are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

Your business needs to have a digital presence.

Stay engaged with prospective customers via Instagram.

Over half of users on Instagram are active on a daily basis.

There are also 800 million active monthly users.

These numbers continue to rise each year.

The popularity of this platform isn’t going to phase out any time soon.

One of the reasons why I like to use Instagram is because it’s so inexpensive.

It doesn’t cost you anything to create a profile.

The only cost is your time.

Even if you’re paying someone to manage your social media accounts, it’s OK as long as they’re being productive.

Here’s what you need to do.

Work on getting more followers on your profile.

Realistically, not all your followers will become customers.

Don’t worry about converting all of them.

Let’s go through a scenario.

Start with a goal.

You want to gain 10,000 Instagram followers in the next month.

It’s a high number, but it’s attainable.

You’re aiming to convert 20% of your followers to customers.

That’s 2,000 new customers in just one month.

Don’t forget the best part: it didn’t cost you anything.

For those of you who think a 20% conversion is too high or unrealistic, think again.

Based on this generational data, it’s actually quite modest:

Internet users in the United States are likely to purchase something from a brand they follow on social media.

If you get more followers, you’ll get more customers.

You can improve your conversion chances if you’re managing your Instagram account properly.

Post pictures and videos of your products and services.

Get your followers involved as well.

Try to encourage them to post images of themselves using your products.

One of my favorite ways to do this is by featuring customer photos on your account.

When your followers see they can get recognition for their photos, it gives them some extra motivation to post pictures with your product.

Here’s an example from the Thule Instagram:

Now anyone who has one of Thule’s products knows they can be featured as well if they take a cool photo.

Getting customers to post photos on their personal accounts is a great brand awareness strategy.

You’ll get more followers and acquire more customers.

Again, this strategy is completely free.

Create more video content

Like I said earlier, you need to stick with the trends.

Video content is trending upward at record rates.

Across the globe, 52% of marketing experts say video has the highest return on investment compared to other marketing content.

That’s great news for you if you’re trying to keep acquisition costs low.

Doing something as simple as adding a video to your landing page can increase conversion rates by up to 80%.

One of the best parts about creating a video is that you can use the same one across all of your marketing channels.

I’ll go through some examples to show you what I mean.

Let’s say you created a video for your website.

You can also send it via email to your subscribers.

Not everyone on your subscriber list is a customer.

Some people may have provided you with their email addresses, but never actually bought anything.

Here’s a great opportunity for you to acquire those individuals.

Look at how Patagonia embedded a video in their email marketing campaign:

You can use the same strategy.

Don’t create a different video for each marketing channel—that’s a waste of time.

If the video is less than a minute long, you can even add it to your Instagram profile, which I discussed above.

Is your video longer than a minute? No problem.

Just include a specific clip from the video or make it into a top highlights clip.

All of this is much more cost effective than creating an entirely new video.

In addition to email and Instagram, add videos to your:

Homepage

Blog

YouTube channel

Facebook

Twitter

I know what you’re thinking.

How can this be a low-cost strategy if I need to hire a professional cameraman and crew to make a high quality video?

I’ve got good news for you: none of that is necessary.

In fact, the vast majority of businesses produce their video content in-house.

This helps keep costs low.

Just invest in a decent camera and microphone.

You don’t need anything too fancy.

There’s plenty of inexpensive or even free video editing software that you can get on your computer as well.

If you’re willing to pay for a video editing tool, you can try Moovly.

You can get a subscription for as little as $5 per month.

They even let you try the software free for the first 30 days to see whether you like the experience.

Some of you may have wanted to create videos in the past but didn’t know what kind of content to produce.

Remember, we’re trying to acquire customers here.

Your videos need to display your competitive advantage.

What makes your products or services better than something similar on the market?

Try starting with a video tutorial.

Go through a step-by-step process of how your product can solve a problem.

You can also create videos that demonstrate a product.

That’s not necessary for all products.

For example, if your company produces hats and headbands, I don’t think you need to teach potential customers how to put a hat on.

With that said, you can still come up with a creative video that shows what makes your product unique.

Dollar Shave Club uses this strategy with their promotional video content:

The video doesn’t teach you how to shave.

Instead, it walks prospective clients through the process of getting razors and other shaving products delivered to their front doors.

It’s an effective and low-cost strategy for customer acquisition.

Start running epic giveaways

If people aren’t buying your product, you need to come up with a clever way to get the product in their hands.

Give it to them free.

Let me clarify.

I’m not saying you should give away thousands of products.

But you can run monthly or even weekly promotions.

You can choose between:

sweepstakes

contests

A sweepstakes means you’re giving away something to a person picked at random.

It doesn’t require any skill, and there’s nothing someone can do to increase their chances of winning.

All the person can do is enter and hope for the best.

Contests require skill, and the winner is selected based on judgment.

I think contests are more effective.

It gets the participants more involved, which is great if you’re trying to acquire new customers.

Let’s say someone entered your contest but didn’t win.

They put lots of effort into their entry and were looking forward to getting the product.

Well, now they may be more inclined to make a purchase.

Here’s an example of what a conversion funnel looks like when you run a contest:

That’s what I love so much about this strategy.

First of all, it’s not going to cost you anything except for the cost of the product you’re giving away.

But it’s also a great way to build your email subscriber list.

In order to enter, make it a requirement for customers to provide you with their email addresses.

After all, how else will you be able to contact them if they win?

Now at the very least, you’ll be able to send them promotional emails.

If the contest didn’t entice them to make a purchase, your email marketing campaign can get the job done.

Remember earlier I said that if you get more followers on Instagram you could get more customers?

Well, the same concept applies here.

Additional subscribers on your email list can improve your conversions.

It’s an inexpensive way to acquire new customers.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend a fortune on customer acquisition.

This holds true for startup companies as well as businesses that have been operating for years.

While customer retention should be a priority as well, you can’t keep a customer if you never got them on board in the first place.

That’s why I like to start with retargeting old customers.

You already have their contact information. If it’s been years since they last made a purchase, the additional revenue will have the same impact as the impact you would get from a new customer.

Instagram is one of my favorite social platforms for customer acquisition.

Since people are more likely to make a purchase from brands they follow on social media, focus on getting your follower numbers up.

You’ll be able to convert a percentage of those followers to customers.

Adding more video content to your promotional channels will help as well.

You can make these videos in-house, so it won’t be very expensive.

Contests and sweepstakes can increase brand awareness and get you some new customers.

These strategies will also help you get more email subscribers, so you can continue to market to those people and increase conversions.

What are some budget-friendly ways you’ve used to acquire new customers?

https://www.quicksprout.com/2017/12/01/customer-acquisition-strategies-that-wont-break-the-bank/ Read more here - http://review-and-bonuss.blogspot.com/2017/12/customer-acquisition-strategies-that.html

[theholidaze]

My first experience in Nepal was filled with earthquakes and relief work, so it was not until my third trip to Nepal that I finally got a chance to go trekking Annapurna Sanctuary, something most people do their first trip. Was great to cross another thing off my travel bucket list (because we all know my lazy ass isn’t making it up to Everest Base Camp).

View of the Annapurna mountain range from my hotel room at the Pokhara Grand. We didn’t check-in until late in the afternoon, hence all the dust in the air….but still a great view 😉

How To Get To Pokhara

All Annapurna adventures begin in Pokhara, arguably Nepal’s most beautiful city. Flights in/out of Pokhara offer an amazing view of the Annapurna Mountain Range, including Machapuchare aka Fishtail. (Had I not been sitting in the aisle of out little Buddha Air plane, maybe I would have actually gotten a photo.) Arriving via road is also a scenic sight, albeit decidedly less fun on your posterior. Nepal is like a mountainous wild west, and while there are luxury accommodation options here, getting to/from them is often everything but luxurious.

Twenty years ago Pokhara was a village, a bump in the road, but now as a result of modern tourism and increased numbers of trekkers pouring in to the region, Pokhara has turned into a thriving city that rivals Kathmandu in modern technology and soon smart phones may even be available for sale here.

What To Pack For Trekking Annapurna Sanctuary

Follow @the_HoliDaze

Trekking in Nepal nowadays is not like it was 20 years ago. Most of the guesthouses have hot water available for showers (for an extra charge) and wifi available, although yes it is as slow as you guessed and not useful for much more than sending tweets. Items like water and toilet paper are not hard to find while trekking, but other supplies you should get before leaving Pokhara:

A quality backpack   Even if you hire sherpas to carry your gear (see below), you will still want a small camera bag or backpack to carry your camera, water, snacks, first aid kid, wallet, etc.

Walking sticks   Not everyone uses these, but those who do swear by them. I personally prefer to have my hands free to operate a camera or catch myself if I fall, but if you fall less than me…

Your camera equipement   Don’t be that guy who flies halfway around the world only to forget his camera battery charger in Pokhara because trust me, you won’t find one up in the mountains.

Consumables   There’s plenty of tea houses in Annapurna Sanctuary but if you like granola bars, trail mix, or any other foreign foods, Pokhara is your last place to grab them.

Beer / Alcohol   There is nothing more refreshing after a long day of mountain trekking than a nice cold beer. Unfortunately alcohol increases in price drastically the higher you get up the mountain, so if you plan on drinking a lot during your trek, it is best to start prepared. Bring a couple bottles of beer with you, or better yet a bottle of whiskey. If the weight is too much for you, just toss the bottle in the sherpa bag.

Forgetting any last-minute supplies?

Nepalese people from around the country come to Pokhara to find work but foreigners come here to trek. Any last minute items you need to prepare for trekking the Annapurna Circuit can be found at one of the many shops around town. This includes camera gear, SD cards, GoPro accessories and/or solar chargers — here is your last opportunity to get them.

View on the way to Nayapul

How To Get To Nayapul

Nayapul is your gateway to the Annapurna Conservation Area. It is also where the roads end. Small groups would probably find it most affordable to take a public bus from Pokhara to Nayapul (less than 200 rupees / $2 USD) but larger groups and more discerning trekkers will want to hire a driver from in town. It is around 2000 rupees ($20 USD) per vehicle for a ride to Nayapul, however rides back to Pokhara after your trek can be negotiated for cheaper, as there will be extra drivers around “town” eager to make some money. (I use the word “town” loosely.)

We opted for a private jeep. Two, actually.

While much of our group slept on the 40km drive from Pokhara to Nayapul, the view was too beautiful for me to close my eyes. The road switchbacks up along the mountain edge until you reach Nayapul, which is essentially your last access point to the human world. From here on you’ll have to rely on your legs. Or in our case, our sherpas.

Our group photo before trekking Annapurna Sanctuary….wait until you see the after photo at the end 😉

With our sherpas already a good hour ahead of us, our ragtag group of questionably-prepared travel bloggers, writers and photographers hit the road — I mean, the mountain — running. However despite high hopes for this adventure, only one of our group decided to start the trek with an ice cold “Gorkha beer to give me strength like the Gorkha”….can you guess who?

Love how you are holding a beer before trekking a mountain in Nepal. Good lad.

— Andy McElwaine (@andymcelwaine) May 28, 2017

Trekking Travel Tip: *Do* Get Sherpas

While much of the Annapurna Conservation Area offers mild to moderate trekking, there are definitely some steep spots and hard stretches. These are even trickier when wet and/or covered in buffalo poo. Unless you are traveling very lightly then I recommend hiring sherpas to accompany your group. Our tour package included several sherpas, so we didn’t have to pay extra for them, merely tip each one 500 rupees a day ($5 USD) for their services.

Sherpas make trekking Annapurna so much easier!

Where is the Birethanti TIMS checkpost?

From Nayapul it is a 15-minute walk along the Modi River to the “New Bridge”, entrance to the Annapurna Conservation Area. Register at the TIMS checkpost before crossing the bridge — after the bridge is another checkpoint and you’ll need to have all your paperwork in order. Do not lose your card as there are checkpoints scattered throughout the ACA. (Although there was much talk of updating the TIMS system after the Nepal earthquakes in 2015, nothing appears to have changed yet.)

Which Route To Choose?

The beauty of trekking around the Annapurna Conservation Area is that there are small villages scattered throughout the mountains here. Not only does this allow you some flexibility to “create your own route” but it also prevents you from getting too lost, because within a few hours of hiking you are guaranteed to pass through another small village or past a couple of tea houses or guesthouses.

The Annapurna Conservation Area

Our group of professional bloggers only had 4-5 days free for trekking, so unfortunately going all the way to Annapurna Base Camp was out of the question. Instead we headed for Ghorepani and Poon Hill. From there we went to Tadapani and then on to Ghandruk. However rather than continuing to on Chnomrong and ABC we trekked to Kimche and from there caught a jeep back to Birethanti.

You Cannot Fight Mother Nature, So Don’t Even Try

One thing you learn very quickly when traveling is that you cannot fight Mother Nature. Don’t even try it. She always wins. And unfortunately for us, she decided to make our Annapurna trek as rainy as possible from the first day.

Nepalese Raincoats   The tea shops and guest shops will happily cut one side of a plastic trash bag to make you a Nepalese jacket for the modest fee of only $1 each. That may sound expensive, but if you encounter more than just a few minutes of rain, this will be the best dollar you spend in Annapurna. 😉

Charlene ditched her expensive rain jacket or a $1 Nepalese rain cover 😉

If the rain gets really bad it can take the fun out of trekking, so don’t be afraid to take a day off and lounge around your guesthouse. Beds only cost a few dollars a night and food/electricity/wifi costs are minimal, you might as well stay another day. Crack and beer, put down your phone and soak up the surroundings.

Warning   Haggling around Nepal is normal but inside the Annapurna Conservation Area all prices are set by ACAP and there is no haggling allowed. After the second tea house you’ll realize all the menus on the mountains are also the same — this is why. ACAP regulates everything.

Our group gathering for food and drinks at our guesthouse in Ghorepani

Souvenir Shopping While Trekking

The souvenirs for sale in Kathmandu and Pokhara are exactly the same as the ones for sale up in the mountains around Annapurna EXCEPT for one important difference — here all the profits will go to a family that can really use them, instead of to some middleman in Pokhara.

We all purchased Nepalese wool hats for 400 rupees each ($4 USD)

I purchased all my clothing and other souvenirs in Ghorepani and Ghandruk where the money will go to good use. I also bought a lot of postcards and mailed them out to friends, fans and followers via Twitter. Thankfully there are plenty of post offices on the mountain trails 😉

Annapurna post office 😉

Oh The Sights You’ll See!

Trekking in Nepal is first and foremost about the scenery….unless you are climbing Everest, then its about the challenge, obviously. But for most of us the scenery is enough. Remember to soak up as much of the view as possible, even if the weather is cloudy or less than ideal.

More photos from our Annapurna journey:

Entering ACA

The trekking starts smooth

The stairs aren’t easy but nice

Passed a beautiful sanctuary in a dry river bed

One of our sherpas fell behind

Sherpas relaxing near the top

The peak is peaking through

View from Ghorepani

Annapurna South

How To Get Back To Civilization

Getting down the mountain is decidedly much easier than getting up. And much faster, as one might expect. However the views are no less beautiful so be sure to soak up every minute of it. After all, when is the next time you’re going to be trekking in Nepal? Plan ahead and make the most of your trip — Bookmundi has 400 separate Nepal tour packages covering not just the Annapurna Circuit but every corner of Nepal. Earthquake repairs are still ongoing — come here, spend a few dollars, and rest easy knowing that you’re helping Nepal, one of the friendliest and most beautiful countries on earth.

Our group and sherpas after trekking around Annapurna Conservation Area for 5 days

Trekking Annapurna Sanctuary: A How To Guide My first experience in Nepal was filled with earthquakes and relief work, so it was not until my third trip to Nepal that I finally got a chance to go trekking Annapurna Sanctuary, something most people do their first trip.

[nicolesrollins]

295: Tech Stocks Finally Back to Year 2000 Highs. Now What?

Learn how tech stocks get ahead of themselves sometimes and how not to get burned.

Stocks got ahead of themselves in the year 2000 and it took 17 years to get back to where they were! Bubbles can create unreasonable valuations that are very extended because investors invest by betting on their success in the future and ignoring the outrageous valuations of today.

Just like today we have FAANG stocks, in 2000 – the “Four Horsemen of the Internet” – Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and Cisco Systems.

Back in the year 2000, what drove them is the “Y2K” scare, only people didn’t realize it. They thought is was the “New Economy”. It was about “eyeballs” and “bricks and clicks”, not earnings and profits.

This can happen for an extended period. Investors get caught up in the next “new thing”.

They forget it has to make money!

Earnings growth is what drives stock prices! Investors buy stocks in anticipation of future earnings growth, but it can get out of hand. In this case, it was 17 years ahead of itself!

Back in 2000, it seemed like Microsoft was unstoppable and would forever be on every computer. Then LINUX came out, the US Government started an anti-trust case, and Apple started to get more popular as a micro computer.

Then corporations that had approved special budgets for hardware and software to be safe for Y2K, stopped buying and profits dried up and the stock market crashed.

When companies miss their earnings targets, their stocks decline. The darling “4 Horsemen” tanked and so did the rest of the market. It declined over the next 3 years until the bottom in 2002.

Now the information technology index has risen above where it was in 2000.

Tech stock fundamentals look good, but the FANG’s may have gotten ahead of themselves.

The stock market has narrowed considerably to a few stocks – the FAANG’s.

Here is the article. I’ll also post the article on my website.

Here is the article: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/19/sp-information-technology-sp701-spx-near-2000-high.html

How can you tell if stocks are ahead of themselves?

An easy metric is checking the P/E ratio.

Price-to-earnings ratio is price divided by earnings per share.

The average for the entire stock market is about 15 to 17 over the long term.

Certain high growth stocks can get ahead of this.

A P/E of 25 says you’ll pay $25 for $1 of additional earnings.

Right now Amazon has a P/E of about 178. That means you’re paying $178 for each $1 of additional earnings. Does that make sense to you? It seems like bubble territory to me.

2. Are sales and earnings rising?

What are the new products coming? Apple iPhone has a new version coming out. I hear it is going to be $1200. Is that going to generate sales or stagnate them?

Tesla has a less expensive version coming out, but can it sell enough to continue to justify a high stock price over $300 and P/E ratio of -$68.86. It has an EPS loss of -$4.77.

Just to be clear, it’s not profitable yet, but the market has given it a valuation of $54B. Could that have gotten ahead of itself and priced in gains that won’t be seen for maybe another 17 years? Hmmm.

Are there even earnings at all? On many tech leaders, there aren’t. That makes is a big game of musical chairs because as long as the music keeps going, the stocks keep going up. When the music stops (from whatever cause, internal or external), the price may drop substantially because there is nothing to support it except investors bidding up the price based on future hope.

It should be noted, it does have a huge group of investors who are selling the stock short, betting it will go down. Because you have to borrow the stock and hope to buy it back at a lower price, your losses can be unlimited. Therefore, short sellers are forced to buy back the stock to cover their positions and losses, driving the price higher. It’s convoluted but it is happening!

3. What are competitors doing?

Are there new competitors in the market place?

4. Is there new technology competing with this? Is the market changing? Is the market growing or declining? Oil vs. solar will be a big change.

5. The main thing I want to stress is profitability. When companies get way ahead of themselves and sell for outrageous valuations, a realignment is coming, the question is only: when?

**********************************************************************

Have you heard?

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Here’s what you need to do:

1. Leave the “Be Wealthy & Smart” podcast a review on iTunes (or Stitcher Radio for Android).

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from Be Wealthy & Smart – Linda P. Jones http://www.lindapjones.com/tech-stocks-finally-back-to-year-2000-highs-now-what/

[1taiwan-blog]

why Messiah was used? only brains can move is he was a pop star and rich followed him as Jesus his ex dead daddy and younger brother or family pets HE types! be Catholics to worship! Messiah was followed and appeared in Buddhism meaning Buddhism was after Messiah. generally, it's called Herstory per religion claims to find Messiah! so messed, Buddhism says they have messiah the GOD and the Buddha but why did they kill Christians?? no one found Messiah and Messiah ignored dame Christians got Buddhists killed them 這世代！過去含未來。無人敢稱彌賽亞為義！ 沒有了彌賽亞教會或現彌賽亞教徒。 猶太人永遠不相謀，耶穌是基督。 耶穌教徒 基督教徒 彌賽亞教徒 神說，耶和華們創世。 但是耶和華們皆非真神。是外星人！ GOD and BIBLE say, Jehovahss they created for the one real true and truth GOD! Jehovahss are or were ET ETS Aliens. None of them is or was GOD my invocation is who no one says they're not fake Christians but the Messianic MESSIAHISTS?? 假基督教徒 與 真彌賽亞教徒！！ 天主教會崇拜耶和華家人，卻以教皇為謊！！ 基督的弟弟的子嗣在哪？？ 基督木匠兄妹父親的遺族在哪？ 神隨隨便便撿破爛拾起一條狗狗嗎？ 鄰居怒了！7萬箱「蝦味先」棄空地　日曬雨淋飄惡臭 | 三立 無奈？？ 對岸判唯一死刑！ 賭贏40萬美金回台　入境沒收38萬 my Benediction is ETS are your Gods, Buddhas but no one is the real God my Benediction is ETS are your Gods or Buddhas but no one! None of them is the real God. this explains why he didn't go to Taichung miss mission and whoever came here to take photo of me and the neighbor Mission Office for Allah and he did make TPE Temple this trash shows you the Mormonism whispering is as fake as Chian in meditation Buddhism both buy HE types! the ET ETS Aliens garbage. see me is enough 【佛說：愛了，是續寫前世故事。恨了，是了卻前塵仇怨】 Thus, both Buddhism and BIBLE force people to hate 紅塵中，一個捨不得，耽誤了多少人； 佛法中，一句無所得，難倒了多少人。 they knew they were grass bums and they can do is to memorize TV to hand scripts for them to act on talking shows to live it's only because all 4 of them wanna be nuns mayor to sacrifice under KMTers my invocation is you must know it's awesome to experience been or be proposed 曾被譽「怪物右腕」…少年投手患性早熟　走過創傷更愛棒球 | 三立新聞網 | of course they had tried CN medicine but they needed the real not fake one and NHK is non profit to be very evil to service fake governments and when you still watch pokemon through digital and many different local Japanese channels offer quiet vary local TV commercials not as Taiwan's kids programs have non kids targeting advertisement for giant markets the Lunar's going to be JU Jun 6-26 6-27 6-28 6-29. then back to twin 6-01. 6-02 not only for funeral the traditional wedding has to be like Taiwan Nation had their wedding last Sunday as all black sedens and Twitter blue wedding dress 【18禁】4男女在沙灘上活春宮　眾人興奮圍觀 | 即時新聞 | 20170708 | 蘋果日報 True! USA My BENEDICTION is hello! welcome to GHOSTS worldwide who does not know? she speaks as Sam as Saudi Saffiyah when she isn't often to see GODS inside Temples this idol gets my face after Lin died Lotus had no ghosts business although you suspected to assume her disciple Lin who stopped tankers construction but the temple never ask her to restart Lin generations old business besides my disciple who goes to the root temple once per year and she was asked to be in charge of as the President if the owning couple will be gone and the business card is their wardrobe which Allah wears again today and she was so so so happy that I'd prepared my wardrobe like we all did twin weeks ago she's yellow and we met last year's before pink face king GOD of foxconn theirs she started to dream of me ten day before Red Sea Foxconn birthday and the banquet is always seven days and three more days at advance to come the first day she had seen Foxconn to come with bunch of GODS at her first time inside the temple. she was born by the second house next to the temple and she had never seen and Foxconn GOD and other GODS all told her those three days during daytime their GOD is coming to the city's she was my disciple and she worked with Lin thousand generations over ten years ago that Lin her eyes looked differently at old when her face is round and be no more scary 銀行員太正網友狂開戶　洋男友氣炸報警 Foreigner boyfriend is brain damaged 探訪樂視總部：門口躺滿討債人 旗艦店大門緊閉 Allah likes new iPhone and one finger or twin are not very proud that new of my oppo runs slower than mi but Mi is very bad to type as LG. Samsung Galaxy and all Samsung's no any damage but battery must die and who would spend for expensive batteries ? Maybe Allah will HTC died the worst design power control and fix for NTD 1k to above [新聞] NBA》搭上奪冠列車！林書豪前隊友加盟勇 but Nick Young has signed days early 5千年前就有巨人！　山東出土發現「高人族」 so sad， Bible Giants were so so so short (short) [新聞] 法國宣布在2040年取締汽油車和柴油車 I'm proposed and I said no too thick and Allah's still smart which we go to EU and French to buy twin cars before 2040 for made in 1996 then wait for brend bread new vehicles be swapping Trump must pass the Sam LAW and Allah will buy 20 x 1996. I'm showing you be kidding USA Founder always get many free why hate GOD? Allah I bless Japan and why hate GOD? my Benediction is JU Jun 6th was proposed and today's 7th has invocation at Love U! 最新》蔡英文到寺廟贈匾 反年改群眾抗議 駕駛擋路：or any colo has ghosts stars 超強生化武器　這種昆蟲每小時殺85人 here our products are we re do youth line Colo and Taylor's Swift's black ghosts stars and for comin next week's Closed God's is me birthday had pink face the pink Colo till ten days later with no more 7 mother GODS but 15 100 year old mother GODS Like the new oppo phone but it's under above twin new phones my brother's back has wings not fake Mormonism can you all possibly to wear her black ghosts stars shining Colo? I like my new purchased house and will move soon plus Allah got my family's new iPhone and new Mi and Allah doesn't like complicated MacBook laptops but Microsoft is dangerous for wanna cry and I use Apple tv for YouTube and Apple books for FacePhone UFOLine accounts. LINE beats Facebook is you don't need who are weirdly and Facebook users are peeking and tracking others and Twitter can have private line messages 2, never to disturb any use as LINE 3, long posts as LINE then Twitter by keywords are not trash as Facebook moon at cancer is bad for dark to enjoy very short minutes of selfishness. Sagittarius is better than Leo and Sagittarius is priority then Scorpio and Libra. my ascended is cancer, too. so I'M more is a cancer than a Libra. Venus is Virgo isn't bad but has to be a very hungry Virgo. forgot where's my mars but now Allah fights to win and build kingdoms totally Virgo is very very bad with Scorpio Allah hates Virgo the most! my moon is cancer (cancer) 96. Taiwanese be a HTC phone to beat all single EYETH cameras to win French international photo gallery and a KMTer to be a Mi its 4G or 3G 64 are much cheaper than OPPO but OPPO selfie to help to reality sells and he's an Asus when ghost used him to show YouTube closed caption is 18 better to believe than 17 evilness she complained wall street journal TV WSJ to drop Peter Jennings to live and arranged bold and ugly white meaning she's something doesn't PARTAKE humanitarian to advertise themselves again by cheating fans will stupid good bless? bless you to be fools to all sit morons to punish you and say you're sinners but DON'T pay GODS pay black ghosts fake pastors! last year the train station temple did send 7 gifts with orchestra to deer haven to plan and they had refused to take the saint medical word paper and when North Haven temple and New Haven temple to be around that they do refuse be joining!! they say their wood idol is the oldest in Formosa but the Tainun city's has been the official as national temple before Japanese LIN is called Tsunami Tsunamlin Da Hi is his Nick name by aboriginal word my Benediction is you can use my creation to image that we're only happy together about the university male student to dream a ten years old who was killed over ten years ago that the death she had been over few years to cross many spaces not for her to suffer to lose her memories by long DPP forces wash first eggs if you looked at me then simultaneously Allah looked back when you use eyes to call my or our food are ready then you got mute to try to ask why the supernatural power by Samsung's copy Samsung's and you must bow and offer free dish to Allah! or you saw we sat far then you walked out then the first isle you could see U.S. and Allah looked promptly you must no stop your heart minds brains to stop you to say marvelously and be directed to ask are you Allah?? the convenient store manager must ask how they were thrown or gave who or did food still be inside when no pay for pigs owner not till weeks later to check surveillance and they didn't ask them not to after the first scene which the store is guilty 7 is very weird because they don't want this happens which the most 7s refuse to offer and sell to pig owners to pay for pigs our okay USA had asked Allah was it o.k. to give to a mother but the problem was we could sell much much cheaper for still earing not to give by one was that mom would be only waited to get plus after midnight we must not give about one of possible nights it could be she got sick or she sued U.S.. even late night shift had to sign if they ate to get sick that we could be no guilty!! we did allow late night shift to share with their classmates but not for a regular mom or who didn't sign as you and strong.. the neighbor Hi life couple owed lots money and they never offered 60 percent off for the Sam day food although sometimes we did at early 4 P.M. or that day's morning to try to get rid of stuff and that couple just brought everything home!! even gym counter sometimes happened cash was short but how about they both moved hospital funds to their personal packets!!! 1, Buddhism isn't religion 2, when you are not 100 percent vegetarian you can force your dog's be 110 percent vegetarian. at noon there's a vegetarian dog who grows old and it still love US U.S. 3, KD is Klay Thompson's USD 2,500

[topicprinter]

Hey /r/Entrepreneur! How are we all doing today?I know that there are probably a few people who are struggling financially. Maybe you're a student and can't find a part time job. Maybe you're working fulltime but are living paycheck to paycheck because you have a debt to repay. Maybe you're doing fine and just want to make some extra cash to invest into your main business. Or maybe you just want something productive to do with your free time.Last year I made a few bad business moves and had to halt work temporarily due to some mental health issues. By the time I was back on track and had things rolling again, I had no money in the bank. I wasn't in trouble, but needed more money to make more money, and I hustled and made as much money as I could. Here are 3 things that I did to make some money when I really needed it: 1. Importing Tech & Reselling LocallyBuy from Aliexpress and list on classified ads websites (I'm talking Craigslist, Gumtree, Kijiji, etc.). Buy low, sell high. It's as easy as drop shipping, and you can start with any amount of money. Say you have $200 to work with: you could buy a 20x $10 smartwatches (I did well selling the U80 watch, just make sure it comes in a sealed retail box and has a strong and comfortable band, also check reviews, there are lots of variations of the same products going around in China), list them for $15-$20 each and offer free local delivery (if you have a vehicle you can drive around in), and publish your ad to local classified ads websites or Facebook groups. I'd recommend getting a $19 'Square' card reader so that you can take card payments as well, people appreciate the professionalism and the fact they don't need to get cash out in advance.It might take you a month or two to sell those 20 smartwatches, but then you'll have turned your $200 into $300-$400, and you can go for round 2 with multiple products and more of them, or just bank it and put it into something else. Once you have a few thousand dollars, you'll be able to buy enough products to have constant stock with a wider variety and have a consistent stream of revenue coming in (the revenue could be anywhere from a hundred dollars, to several hundred dollars depending on how much money to have to use to buy stock, where you live, competition, time, etc.).Products that I had success with included luxury looking smartwatches, fitness watches, car dash cams, cheap wireless security cameras, cheap drones, gaming headsets and gaming mice. You'll need to test your own local market to see what works for you.Tips: Buy a portable card reader so you can take card payments (Square sells one for $19 that plugs into your phone). Offer free delivery if you can, it will increase sales. If you don't have a good camera, use the photos from the Aliexpress listing, even though they are generally bad they come across as more professional than dark low quality phone photos. Don't advertise a warranty, but replace anything that is broken out of the box or doesn't last (or just refund them); it's a good business practice. Be careful with what you buy from China; if a smartwatch you sold explodes when charging, burns down the buyers house and kills someone, it's on you (if you can't afford insurance or to register the gig as a business, just be cautious with what you sell). Check local stores and the sites you are going to list your products on before ordering to make sure there isn't competition with that specific product, or at the least make sure you are the cheapest seller in your area. Spend time writing your listing copy, get it perfect before publishing. You may need to relist each item every few days as they can get pretty far down the ranks on classified ads sites and stop getting found pretty quickly. Experiment with listing upgrades (highlighting, homepage promotion, etc.). 2. Selling ServicesThe services you can offer will depend on what you have. If you have a lawn mower or other landscaping related equipment, you can start offering garden care services. If all you have is an iron, start ironing peoples clothes and charge by the basket. There are several airconditioner cleaning businesses in my local area that make a killing; they charge around $100 per aircon and the average house probably gets 3 done at a time, they seem to take 40 minutes a piece. What I personally did was lawn mowing.Once you have your equipment and know what service you want to provide, review your competition. The good thing is, you don't need to be the cheapest and as long as it's something that has alot of demand in your area you'll be able to get customers (hopefully repeat customers).If you're broke, get some paper and a marker, and draw up flyers (or design and print them off a computer if you have access to one). Put them on notice boards, hand them out, deliver to letterboxes; whatever you need to do. Make sure to let friends and family know what you're doing as well, they may be interested themselves or could refer someone who would be. A website isn't a must if it's a short term thing, however it can make you look more professional and established and get you higher end clients; a WordPress theme is $50, learning to customize it is free, and website hosting can be as low as $1 / month.Tips: Offer the best service possible. If you have the skills, time, and money then setup a website, create a logo, brand your uniform, and go all out after you've tested your local market and know that the service your offering is going to work. Don't waste money on a TV or radio ad for the service sidegig, you can advertise for free on classified ads websites and local Facebook groups. Letterbox delivery services often have good deals for first time customers; last month I saw a company offering flyer design, printing, and delivery to 10K houses for just a few hundred dollars. Don't be the cheapest as you might miss out on customers who think you're services could be dodgy, there are lots of people in my area who pay $100 to have their lawn mowed even though people offer the same service for $40; don't work twice as hard to bring in the same money as a competitor. 3. Growing & Selling Instagram & Twitter AccountsIf you're tech savvy, this can be an easy way to make some money. It's free, and requires very little work time, however takes a few months to grow each account and make any money. I sold several packages of accounts that I grew and it was really easy money.Sign up to a service for either Instagram or Twitter that allows you to automate your account growth. The software will need to be able to follow and unfollow other users, and schedule posts, that's it.Create say 10 accounts on Twitter, and 10 accounts on Instagram, and connect them to the website/software that automates the growth tasks. Set up the follow and unfollow feature so that the software follows and unfollows around 500 people per day, and press go.Go to a free stock photo website such as https://pixabay.com/, search keywords relating to your accounts niches, and download 20 photos for each account. Use the software to create the posts all at once, and schedule the 20 photos so 1 is posted every 5 days to each account.After the 3 months once all of the schedule posts have been published, each account should have close to 5000 followers (assuming your have your follow/unfollow settings setup okay so you can achieve a 10%+ followback rate).What you'll want to do now is sign up to EpicNPC here: https://www.epicnpc.com/forums/583-Social-Media and create an ad in the social media section promoting the accounts that you are selling. If you sell 20 accounts together with 5K followers each, you should get $150-$300 USD. It's not alot, however it's very easy and even though it takes 3-4 months to get paid, it is only like 1 day of setup work so is still worth it.Tips: Don't set up more than 2 accounts per platform per day, otherwise your device and IP address may be flagged for spam and your current and new accounts could be banned. Accounts in travel, luxury, and fashion niches sell well right now. A source has informed me of an Instagram algorithm update that is going to be rolled out soon that will make low following accounts worthless as their post reach will be very low (because if this, I'd recommend just focusing on Twitter). 3. Safe Sports Betting With Bonus BetsThis is not a business, it's a one time money making idea. I was able to make a couple of hundred in 2 days with just a few hours work and a few dollars to start with, and it got me out of trouble as I did it with less than $100 in my bank account with some bills coming up.What you need to do is turn off any ad blocker software then search google for keywords like 'sports betting', 'sports bet websites', etc. Look at the ads on the first few pages of search results, there will be a few promoting sign up bonuses (generally things like 'Deposit $10, Play With $80').Once you have one or more websites open on the page you need to go through to get the sign up bonus, open up the terms and conditions pages to see what conditions are set on promotional money. Most websites require you to turn the money over 2-5 times before you can cash out, after that some websites take away the bonus money from the win (so if the bonus was $50 and you win $100 you're account will only show $50), and most sites require you to bet on games with certain odds (generally 1.3 or higher).Find out the odds you need to play to quality and how many times you need to turn the money over. Then, go to the tennis section and find games that have great odds in favour of one person (I'm talking 1.2 to player 1, and 6 to player 2). Then what you need to do is not bet on the team winning, rather bet on them winning at least 1 set (which is highly likely as they are tipped to win the whole game anyways), and create a multi bet with 3-5 games involved until the odds are what they need to be.Let's assume you deposited $10 of your own money, and the site gave you $100 to play with. To withdraw, you need to turn the money over 3 times at 1.3 odds or higher. Do the multibet strategy on Tennis matches, betting that the player will win at least 1 set. Once the game is over, if you've lost then you've lost, move onto another site that offers a good sign up bonus or just quit. If your bet won and was successful, you'd now have $130 in your account on the website.Now remember, you need to turn the money over 2 more times before you can withdraw. Don't be stupid and gamble the money. What you need to do is find any tennis game and bet on both teams to win. Use this calculator: http://www.aussportsbetting.com/tools/online-calculators/arbitrage-calculator/ to find how how much money to place on each team, and it will work out so that you lose only a few dollars on the game no matter who wins. Make 2 bets using the same strategy, then withdraw the money and delete your account on the site.Tips: There is risk involved with the first bet, so don't use this method unless you can afford to lose the money. Never gamble, it's stupid and rigged, you will lose everything eventually. This works because you only need to go in with $10-$20 and can make $100+ on a very safe bet with bonus money. Do not sign up to the same website under a different name, you will get banned for claiming the bonus bet twice if you access the site and both accounts from the same IP address, device, and with the same bank account connected to deposit/withdraw to. If this method works for you, look into sports betting arbitrage; it's another way to make money with very little risk and can be used long term as opposed to just once per website. Feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions or want help executing on a side business idea. Get off your ass, get pumped, hustle, make some money. Work hard, but work smart. Good luck /r/Entrepreneur!

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50 Hot Takes for the Philadelphia Sports Fan

It’s come to my attention that I’ve been incredibly neutral lately, just trying to do quality analysis and post-game breakdowns without the knee-jerk overreaction or outrageous hot takes.

In other words, I’m trying to be fair.

But fair doesn’t necessarily move the needle in 2018, when the most well-known media personalities are people who just say ridiculous and off-base shit, contradict themselves, and continue to make things up until someone finally pulls the plug or they retire.

I can hold my own alongside Jason Whitlock and Colin Cowherd, and to prove that I’m not Mr. Milquetoast, I pulled 50 hot takes out of my rear end, which you can dive into after the jump:

Philadelphia sports writers are some of the worst-dressed people on the planet.

Both radio stations should cut down on listener phone calls by 50-60% and book more guests.

I love hockey, but it will soon be the 5th major sport in the U.S. I’m not just saying this because I’m a soccer guy, but just take a drive around the city and see for yourself the changing demographics in this country.

Baseball didn’t necessarily slow down [editor’s note: it did, as game have risen to an average of over three hours] society just sped up. We have smartphones and Grubhub and instant access to everything, which killed attention spans and our general ability to sit still and relax. The game isn’t broken, but MLB is doing a poor job of adapting to this societal change.

Television personalities who only show up to 8-10 games per year generally ask the most useless questions in press conferences. We use the derogatory term “playoff people” to describe them.

When people tell you to “stick to sports,” they aren’t trying to silence you or suppress your First Amendment rights. They’re simply saying that they would prefer to get their politics from political experts and their sports from sports experts.

Rocky is played out and cliche.

Gritty is becoming dangerously close to played out, like Philadelphia’s love for Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam.

More young and able-bodied writers should be actively participating in the sports they cover because it adds credibility to their stories and opinions.

We don’t care who wins the game. It’s a job. We’re going to write about it whether they win or lose. When sports becomes business, the emotion and fandom is fully drained from you (which is kind of a shame, but necessary).

Very few Philadelphia media bosses have any clue what they’re doing.

Talen Energy Stadium features the best atmosphere of any regional sporting venue.

Building Talen in Chester was a huge mistake.

The Sixers should build their own arena.

College football is better than the NFL.

I hate the fact that Philadelphia does not care about college football.

Penn State and Pitt and West Virginia and Syracuse and Rutgers should be playing each other every year. I know PSU fans don’t want this, but I’m a believer in eastern football and conference realignment really killed a lot of great rivalries and traditions.

Lincoln Financial Field is the third-best football atmosphere in Pennsylvania.

The vibe and excitement at any SEC or Big 10 football stadium is better than anything at the Wells Fargo Center, Linc, or Citizens Bank Park.

Philadelphia DOES have a large section of sports fans who are total assholes. However, bad fan behavior takes place all around the world, which is why we share those stories whenever they happen.

The best local beat writer is Sheil Kapadia. He asks smart questions, doesn’t do hot takes, puts together detailed video breakdowns, and consistently produces interesting content.

A lot of people got totally screwed during the Josh Innes RADIO WARS shuffle. Rob Ellis and Jon Marks are two of them. Jon got shoved on the morning show where he was barely allowed to talk and Rob was pulled off nights, moved to PM drive, then again moved off that shift to accommodate Josh.

I appreciated the fact that Josh challenged the typical corny radio routine that we’ve been subjected to for years. He was an outsider, which was a breath of fresh air. However, he really rubbed A LOT of people the wrong way behind the scenes and wore out his welcome rather quickly.

Butt-hurt Flyers fans need to relax. We don’t hate your sport, it’s just down in the pecking order right now because the Eagles and Sixers are good. I covered soccer for eight years, so I understand the struggle for media coverage and respect in a football town.

I hate music in the middle of a sporting event, especially during Sixers games. It feels corny and inauthentic. The fan atmosphere was great at The Wells Fargo Center last season and you don’t need shitty mumble rap to be played in the middle of a possession to generate an interesting ambience.

The best sports video game was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.

Robert Covington is overrated by Process supporters and underrated by Process opponents.

Saying that John DeFilippo and Frank Reich were a “big loss” is a bad take because no fan or media member can realistically quantify or qualify their behind-the-scenes contributions to the 2017 Eagles’ offense.

I’m intrigued by the Philadelphia Fusion, but the fact of the matter is that the squad features zero Americans and they do not live in Philadelphia.

The Fusion choked in the Overwatch League final.

Fortnite sucks.

The mental health of athletes is important and I appreciate the NBA’s forward-thinking here. We also have to draw lines between those who have legitimate and diagnosed issues and those who do not. It’s unfair for an athlete who is taking medication for a diagnosed bi-polar disorder to be lumped in with someone who got booed after a bad shooting night. One is a true mental health problem and the other is not.

Dreams and Nightmares is overrated, as is Meek Mill’s music.

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman do not hate the Eagles.

Say what you will about Angelo Cataldi, but the guy is a master of his craft, expertly plays to his listener base, and knows exactly what he’s doing from a business standpoint. Wing Bowl is a cash cow for WIP and the morning show has enjoyed more stability and continuity than any other program in Philly sports radio.

Villanova is a Philadelphia school. I mean, for fuck’s sake, we worship at the altar of Mike Trout, who grew up 46 miles away in Millville. Nova’s campus is 17 miles from Center City.

Every Eagles fan should be pulling for Andy Reid to do well in Kansas City.

There’s too much media availability in the NBA. There’s no reason a coach should have to speak before or during a game. Ben Simmons does not need to speak five times a week.

I don’t like being in the locker room and I don’t think reporters should be allowed in the locker room. I’ve always felt like it’s a “sacred” kind of place reserved for players and their game preparation.

I also HATE advertisements on the Sixers and Union jerseys. Jerseys should have a name, number, logo, and nothing else [editor’s note: rich take coming from a soccer Emirates fan]. I wouldn’t want to be a walking advertisement, no matter how much Bimbo or Stubhub is willing to pay.

Not every show on sports radio needs to feature a former football player.

If you’re a reporter on the team payroll (like Dave Spadaro), please let independent media ask their questions first before tossing up a couple of softballs. This goes for TV and radio broadcasters as well, or anyone affiliated with the team (they generally do a good job of this).

There are too many credentialed reporters at various sporting events who are not working or doing much of anything at all.

When a coach or athlete goes out of their way to tell you that they don’t read your stories or pay attention to Twitter, it means that they definitely read your stories and pay attention to Twitter.

All Philadelphia teams should be owned by Philadelphia-based groups. No more New York City carpetbaggers down here, please.

Big 5 basketball features a lot of interesting matchups and storylines that unfortunately become buried in a pro sports town.

The Flyers’ black uniforms are the best uniforms in town.

I wish people would appreciate mixed martial arts for the interesting clash of styles and incredible physical gifts each fighter possesses. Combat sports are much more than Conor McGregor shit-talking and a violent punch-fest.

“No one likes us, we don’t care,” is a very entry-level way of motivating yourself, though it is effective to a certain point. The best athletes in the world don’t play the rudimentary disrespect card, but have essentially risen above that to a sort of self-motivating nirvana where they know they’re the best and don’t give a shit what anyone has to say (Tom Brady, prime Tiger Woods, Serena Williams).

If you’re young or have the ability to move, go live somewhere else before resettling in Philadelphia. You’ll have a better of understanding of sport and how people around the country (and around the world) support their teams and consume content.

That’s 50. I’m not sure all of them were hot takes. Maybe a couple of aphorisms made it in there, like a Friedrich Nietzsche publication. Twilight of the Idols was my favorite.

Anyway, hope that was hot enough for you. I’ll be back tomorrow with fair and balanced lukewarm takes.

The post 50 Hot Takes for the Philadelphia Sports Fan appeared first on Crossing Broad.

50 Hot Takes for the Philadelphia Sports Fan published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[eelgibbortech-blog]

Getting new customers isn’t always cheap.

That’s one of the reasons why I tell businesses to focus on customer retention.

With that said, it’s impossible to retain customers if you can’t get them through your doors or to your website in the first place.

If you’re a new company without an existing customer base, you’ll need to come up with some creative ways to acquire new ones.

The problem is new businesses typically have a limited marketing budget.

They need sales to generate money for promotional content, but they can’t get any sales without those promotions.

It’s a paradox.

This goes for companies that may have been in business for a while but are struggling with their revenue streams.

Regardless of your situation, new customers can always help.

You don’t need to spend a fortune on customer acquisition.

Here’s a basic formula that shows how to calculate your acquisition cost:

If you want an even more accurate version of this formula, you can add additional costs besides sales and marketing. They may include:

wages

infrastructure

production

any other costs

That’s the true representation of how much it costs you to get a new customer.

Keeping this number low will give you a much higher return on investment.

The strategies I’m going to show you actually work.

I know this from personal experience.

These are the most inexpensive techniques to acquire lots of new customers.

Start by retargeting old customers

I know what you’re thinking.

If you’re focusing on existing customers, it’s retention, not acquisition—right?

Not exactly.

If you’ve been in business for a while and it’s been a year or two since a customer was active, I wouldn’t refer to that person as an existing customer.

Getting them back to your business is basically like getting a brand new customer.

Dig up any old information you have on this person:

email

phone number

address

Anything you have.

Reach out to them with a promotion to try to get their business back.

Here’s an example of an email campaign from Carter’s:

They give an old customer a reason to make another purchase and come back to their brand.

If you’ve recently made new improvements to your business, don’t be afraid to let old customers know.

Maybe the reason why they left in the first place was because they thought your company was outdated.

Share any information about your infrastructure that has improved the customer experience.

Do you have a new mobile application?

Have you renovated your brick and mortar location?

These are examples of things to promote when you contact these old leads.

Step up your presence on Instagram

To survive, you have to adapt to the times.

The days of using snail mail and local print advertisements to promote your business are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

Your business needs to have a digital presence.

Stay engaged with prospective customers via Instagram.

Over half of users on Instagram are active on a daily basis.

There are also 800 million active monthly users.

These numbers continue to rise each year.

The popularity of this platform isn’t going to phase out any time soon.

One of the reasons why I like to use Instagram is because it’s so inexpensive.

It doesn’t cost you anything to create a profile.

The only cost is your time.

Even if you’re paying someone to manage your social media accounts, it’s OK as long as they’re being productive.

Here’s what you need to do.

Work on getting more followers on your profile.

Realistically, not all your followers will become customers.

Don’t worry about converting all of them.

Let’s go through a scenario.

Start with a goal.

You want to gain 10,000 Instagram followers in the next month.

It’s a high number, but it’s attainable.

You’re aiming to convert 20% of your followers to customers.

That’s 2,000 new customers in just one month.

Don’t forget the best part: it didn’t cost you anything.

For those of you who think a 20% conversion is too high or unrealistic, think again.

Based on this generational data, it’s actually quite modest:

Internet users in the United States are likely to purchase something from a brand they follow on social media.

If you get more followers, you’ll get more customers.

You can improve your conversion chances if you’re managing your Instagram account properly.

Post pictures and videos of your products and services.

Get your followers involved as well.

Try to encourage them to post images of themselves using your products.

One of my favorite ways to do this is by featuring customer photos on your account.

When your followers see they can get recognition for their photos, it gives them some extra motivation to post pictures with your product.

Here’s an example from the Thule Instagram:

Now anyone who has one of Thule’s products knows they can be featured as well if they take a cool photo.

Getting customers to post photos on their personal accounts is a great brand awareness strategy.

You’ll get more followers and acquire more customers.

Again, this strategy is completely free.

Create more video content

Like I said earlier, you need to stick with the trends.

Video content is trending upward at record rates.

Across the globe, 52% of marketing experts say video has the highest return on investment compared to other marketing content.

That’s great news for you if you’re trying to keep acquisition costs low.

Doing something as simple as adding a video to your landing page can increase conversion rates by up to 80%.

One of the best parts about creating a video is that you can use the same one across all of your marketing channels.

I’ll go through some examples to show you what I mean.

Let’s say you created a video for your website.

You can also send it via email to your subscribers.

Not everyone on your subscriber list is a customer.

Some people may have provided you with their email addresses, but never actually bought anything.

Here’s a great opportunity for you to acquire those individuals.

Look at how Patagonia embedded a video in their email marketing campaign:

You can use the same strategy.

Don’t create a different video for each marketing channel—that’s a waste of time.

If the video is less than a minute long, you can even add it to your Instagram profile, which I discussed above.

Is your video longer than a minute? No problem.

Just include a specific clip from the video or make it into a top highlights clip.

All of this is much more cost effective than creating an entirely new video.

In addition to email and Instagram, add videos to your:

Homepage

Blog

YouTube channel

Facebook

Twitter

I know what you’re thinking.

How can this be a low-cost strategy if I need to hire a professional cameraman and crew to make a high quality video?

I’ve got good news for you: none of that is necessary.

In fact, the vast majority of businesses produce their video content in-house.

This helps keep costs low.

Just invest in a decent camera and microphone.

You don’t need anything too fancy.

There’s plenty of inexpensive or even free video editing software that you can get on your computer as well.

If you’re willing to pay for a video editing tool, you can try Moovly.

You can get a subscription for as little as $5 per month.

They even let you try the software free for the first 30 days to see whether you like the experience.

Some of you may have wanted to create videos in the past but didn’t know what kind of content to produce.

Remember, we’re trying to acquire customers here.

Your videos need to display your competitive advantage.

What makes your products or services better than something similar on the market?

Try starting with a video tutorial.

Go through a step-by-step process of how your product can solve a problem.

You can also create videos that demonstrate a product.

That’s not necessary for all products.

For example, if your company produces hats and headbands, I don’t think you need to teach potential customers how to put a hat on.

With that said, you can still come up with a creative video that shows what makes your product unique.

Dollar Shave Club uses this strategy with their promotional video content:

The video doesn’t teach you how to shave.

Instead, it walks prospective clients through the process of getting razors and other shaving products delivered to their front doors.

It’s an effective and low-cost strategy for customer acquisition.

Start running epic giveaways

If people aren’t buying your product, you need to come up with a clever way to get the product in their hands.

Give it to them free.

Let me clarify.

I’m not saying you should give away thousands of products.

But you can run monthly or even weekly promotions.

You can choose between:

A sweepstakes means you’re giving away something to a person picked at random.

It doesn’t require any skill, and there’s nothing someone can do to increase their chances of winning.

All the person can do is enter and hope for the best.

Contests require skill, and the winner is selected based on judgment.

I think contests are more effective.

It gets the participants more involved, which is great if you’re trying to acquire new customers.

Let’s say someone entered your contest but didn’t win.

They put lots of effort into their entry and were looking forward to getting the product.

Well, now they may be more inclined to make a purchase.

Here’s an example of what a conversion funnel looks like when you run a contest:

That’s what I love so much about this strategy.

First of all, it’s not going to cost you anything except for the cost of the product you’re giving away.

But it’s also a great way to build your email subscriber list.

In order to enter, make it a requirement for customers to provide you with their email addresses.

After all, how else will you be able to contact them if they win?

Now at the very least, you’ll be able to send them promotional emails.

If the contest didn’t entice them to make a purchase, your email marketing campaign can get the job done.

Remember earlier I said that if you get more followers on Instagram you could get more customers?

Well, the same concept applies here.

Additional subscribers on your email list can improve your conversions.

It’s an inexpensive way to acquire new customers.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to spend a fortune on customer acquisition.

This holds true for startup companies as well as businesses that have been operating for years.

While customer retention should be a priority as well, you can’t keep a customer if you never got them on board in the first place.

That’s why I like to start with retargeting old customers.

You already have their contact information. If it’s been years since they last made a purchase, the additional revenue will have the same impact as the impact you would get from a new customer.

Instagram is one of my favorite social platforms for customer acquisition.

Since people are more likely to make a purchase from brands they follow on social media, focus on getting your follower numbers up.

You’ll be able to convert a percentage of those followers to customers.

Adding more video content to your promotional channels will help as well.

You can make these videos in-house, so it won’t be very expensive.

Contests and sweepstakes can increase brand awareness and get you some new customers.

These strategies will also help you get more email subscribers, so you can continue to market to those people and increase conversions.

What are some budget-friendly ways you’ve used to acquire new customers?

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