#basically chrome exists to monetize your data

[flintandpyrite]

@xkhlijhag here’s a good place to start!

hey instead of bullying or scaring you into switching to firefox, let me tell you why i LOVE firefox and how my online life has improved significantly since installing it

- the setup process is easy, and even fun! if you’re using tumblr rn, you can handle it, and if you’re the kind of tumblr user who likes customizing your blog or tinkering with xkit, you can have a lot of fun personalizing really granular settings and picking themes and extensions and everything, it’s very customizable and i happily spent like 2 hours getting everything perfect.

- you can use a command line entry tool to change specific settings right from the search bar! i did this to make firefox stop auto filling my email information since i use a different password locker (which you should too! try bitwarden!), and it was easier than digging through a bunch of submenus for a setting i wasn’t sure existed. you can just turn shit off!

- there’s a preset theme called aurora that’s purple and VERY pretty

- once you get ublock origin and as many other blockers as you’d like set up, no ads, anywhere, ever! streaming sites, youtube, all the basics, totally no stress and no compatibility issues for me

- in browser screenshot and picture in picture functions!! holy shit i use these every day, the PiP is especially helpful, it replaced an extension i used to use on chrome and it’s leagues better and works on all video content pretty much

- overall better downloads management imo, it’s a lot easier to get to your downloads and find them later

- better bookmark system, with the ability to organize your bookmarks with searchable tags and assign them a shortcut you can type into the search bar to go to

- containers! you can have two accounts to the same website open in two different tabs and switch between them without having to switch accounts. also gives firefox the ability to contain facebook and their trackers, so you can click that party invite link without feeling like you just let mark zuckerberg into your house

these were just off the top of my head, i love firefox a lot and actively enjoy using it, which i never felt with chrome! please download firefox!! you will not regret it!!! where’s your fucking rage!!!!!! go!!!!!!!!!

[thelmasirby32]

Subscription Fatigue

Subscription Management

I have active subscriptions with about a half-dozen different news & finance sites along with about a half dozen software tools, but sometimes using a VPN or web proxy across different web browsers makes logging in to all of them & clearing cookies for some paywall sites a real pain.

If you don't subscribe to any outlets then subscribing to an aggregator like Apple News+ can make a lot of sense, but it is very easy to end up with dozens of forgotten subscriptions.

Subscription fatigue is turning into subscription stress. Something alarming, guilt inducing about having 40+ reoccurring charges each month. Financial death by a thousand cuts.— Tom Goodwin (@tomfgoodwin) January 28, 2020

Winner-take-most Market Stratification

The news business is coming to resemble other tech-enabled businesses where a winner takes most. The New York Times stock, for instance, is trading at 15 year highs & they recently announced they are raising subscription prices:

The New York Times is raising the price of its digital subscription for the first time, from $15 every four weeks to $17 — from about $195 to $221 a year.

With a Trump re-election all but assured after the Russsia, Russia, Russia garbage, the party-line impeachment (less private equity plunderer Mitt Romney) & the ridiculous Iowa primary, many NYT readers will pledge their #NeverTrumpTwice dollars with the New York Times.

If you think politics looks ridiculous today, wait until you see some of the China-related ads in a half-year as the novel coronavirus spreads around the world.

Outside of a few core winners, the news business online has been so brutal that even Warren Buffett is now a seller. As the economics get uglier news sites get more extreme with ad placements, user data sales, and pushing subscriptions. Some of these aggressive monetization efforts make otherwise respectable news outlets look like part of a very downmarket subset of the web.

Users Fight Back

Users have thus adopted to blocking ads & are also starting to ramp up blocking paywall notifications.

Some of the most popular browser extensions are ad blockers & tracking blockers like Adblock Plus, Ghostery & Privacy Badger.

Apple has made tracking their users across sites harder with their Intelligent Tracking Prevention, causing iPhone ad rates to plummet: "The allure of a Safari user in an auction has plummeted," Rubicon Project CEO Michael Barrett told the publication. "There's no easy ability to ID a user."

The Opera web browser comes with an ad blocker baked in.

Mozilla is also pushing to protect user privacy in Firefox.

Google recently announced they will stop supporting third party cookies in Chrome in the next couple years. Those who invested into adopting AMP will have to invest into making yet more technical changes to manage paywalls on AMP pages.

Each additional layer of technological complexity is another cost center publishers have to fund, often through making the user experience of their sites worse, which in turn makes their own sites less differentiated & inferior to the copies they have left across the web (via AMP, via Facebook Instant Articles, syndication in Apple News or on various portal sites like MSN or Yahoo!).

A Web Browser For Every Season

Google Chrome is spyware, so I won't recommend installing that.

Not good enough for you? Not a direct enough corollary? How about this?Also out today: https://t.co/6dUWCCEyii Google has a backdoor to track individual Chrome users by installation ID.Even GG's denial admits pieces of the same complaints y'all had about Jumpshot last week! pic.twitter.com/Km2mQfOgbJ— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) February 4, 2020

Here Google's official guide on how to remove the spyware.

The easiest & most basic solution which works across many sites using metered paywalls is to have multiple web browsers installed on your computer. Have a couple browsers which are used exclusively for reading news articles when they won't show up in your main browser & set those web browsers to delete cookies on close. Or open the browsers in private mode and search for the URL of the page from Google to see if that allows access.

If you like Firefox there are other iterations from other players like Pale Moon, Comodo IceDragon or Waterfox using their core.

If you like Google Chrome then Chromium is the parallel version of it without the spyware baked in. The Chromium project is also the underlying source used to build about a dozen other web browsers including: Opera, Vivaldi, Brave, Cilqz, Blisk, Comodo Dragon, SRWare Iron, Yandex Browser & many others. Even Microsoft recently switched their Edge browser to being powered by the Chromium project. The browsers based on the Chromium store allow you to install extensions from the Chrome web store.

Some web browsers monetize users by setting affiliate links on the home screen and/or by selling the default search engine recommendation. You can change those once and they'll typically stick with whatever settings you use.

For some browsers I use for regular day to day web use I set them up to continue session on restart, and I have a session manager plugin like this one for Firefox or this one for Chromium-based browsers. For browsers which are used exclusively for reading paywall blocked articles I set them up to clear cookies on restart.

Bypassing Paywalls

There are a couple solid web browser plugins built specifically for bypassing paywalls.

Academic Journals

Unpaywall is an open database of around 25,000,000 free scholarly articles. They provide extensions for Firefox and Chromium based web browsers on their website.

News Articles

There is also one for news publications called bypass paywalls.

Mozilla Firefox: To install the Firefox version go here.

Chrome-like web browsers: To install the Chrome version of the extension in Opera or Chromium or Microsoft Edge you can download the extension here, enter developer mode inside the extensions area of your web browser & install extension. To turn developer mode on, open up the drop down menu for the browser, click on extensions to go to the extension management area, and then slide the "Developer mode" button to the right so it is blue.

Regional Blocking

If you travel internationally some websites like YouTube or Twitter or news sites will have portions of their content restricted to only showing in some geographic regions. This can be especially true for new sports content and some music.

These can be bypassed by using a VPN service like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Witopia or IPVanish. Some VPN providers also sell pre-configured routers. If you buy a pre-configured router you can use an ethernet switch or wifi to switch back and forth between the regular router and the VPN router.

You can also buy web proxies & enter them into the Foxy Proxy web browser extension (Firefox or Chromium-compatible) with different browsers set to default to different country locations, making it easier to see what the search results show in different countries & cities quickly.

If you use a variety of web proxies you can configure some of them to work automatically in an open source rank tracking tool like Serposcope.

The Future of Journalism

I think the future of news is going to be a lot more sites like Ben Thompson's Stratechery or Jessica Lessin's TheInformation & far fewer broad/horizontal news organizations. Things are moving toward the 1,000 true fans or perhaps 100 true fans model:

This represents a move away from the traditional donation model—in which users pay to benefit the creator—to a value model, in which users are willing to pay more for something that benefits themselves. What was traditionally dubbed “self-help” now exists under the umbrella of “wellness.” People are willing to pay more for exclusive, ROI-positive services that are constructive in their lives, whether it’s related to health, finances, education, or work. In the offline world, people are accustomed to hiring experts across verticals

A friend of mine named Terry Godier launched a conversion-oriented email newsletter named Conversion Gold which has done quite well right out of the gate, leading him to launch IndieMailer, a community for paid newsletter creators.

The model which seems to be working well for those sorts of news sites is...

stick to a tight topic range

publish regularly at a somewhat decent frequency like daily or weekly, though have a strong preference to quality & originality over quantity

have a single author or a small core team which does most the writing and expand editorial hiring slowly

offer original insights & much more depth of coverage than you would typically find in the mainstream news

Rely on Wordpress or a low-cost CMS & billing technology partner like Substack, Memberful, sell on a marketplace like Udemy, Podia or Teachable, or if they have a bit more technical chops they can install aMember on their own server. One of the biggest mistakes I made when I opened up a membership site about a decade back was hand rolling custom code for memberhsip management. At one point we shut down the membership site for a while in order to allow us to rip out all that custom code & replace it with aMember.

Accept user comments on pieces or integrate a user forum using something like Discord on a subdomain or a custom Slack channel. Highlight or feature the best comments. Update readers to new features via email.

Invest much more into obtaining unique data & sources to deliver new insights without spending aggressively to syndicate onto other platforms using graphical content layouts which would require significant design, maintenance & updating expenses

Heavily differentiate your perspective from other sources

maintain a low technological maintenance overhead

low cost monthly subscription with a solid discount for annual pre-payment

instead of using a metered paywall, set some content to require payment to read & periodically publish full-feature free content (perhaps weekly) to keep up awareness of the offering in the broader public to help offset churn.

Some also work across multiple formats with complimentary offerings. The Ringer has done well with podcasts & Stratechery also has the Exponent podcast.

There are a number of other successful online-only news subscription sites like TheAthletic & Bill Bishop's Sinocism newsletter about China, but I haven't subscribed to them yet. Many people support a wide range of projects on platforms like Patreon & sites like MasterClass with an all-you-can-eat subscription will also make paying for online content far more common..

Categories: 

publishing & media

from Digital Marketing News http://www.seobook.com/bypass-paywall

[margaretbeagle]

9 Reasons Why WordPress Dominates For Content Success

When it comes to picking the best content management system (CMS) and website platform, you can’t ignore content marketing potential.

After all, 79% of B2C content marketers agree that content marketing increases audience engagement. And 65% report that it increases leads.

There are many options to choose from when selecting your CMS and creating a website these days. But, WordPress backs the most features out of the box for stellar content success.

WordPress powers over 32% of all websites (that’s over 60 million) on the internet and with good reason. Thanks to its powerful flexibility and adaptability, WordPress is consistently named one of the best blogging platforms on the market.

Here are eight reasons why WordPress dominates the market.

1. Endless Customization

The best CMS platform is one that is highly customizable so that you can add any feature you want and create more advanced websites. And WordPress is the most customizable platform on the market, thanks to its open source code, content collaboration tools, implementation with all kinds of hosting options, and thousands of plugins and themes.

WordPress currently offers over 54,000 plugins. In comparison, Drupal offers about 42,000 but only about 9,000 that are stable and supported. Joomla currently only has around 8,000 plugins.

Plus, these numbers are just the official extension directories and do not include any third-party offerings.

WordPress provides you the flexibility to sync it with any of your other favorite content marketing tools to enhance your content, such as:

Easy Content Templates

Edit Flow

Editorial Calendar

Scoop.it

Scribe

WP Inject

Many Chrome extensions also work with WordPress to improve your content. For example, the Grammarly Chrome extension integrates with WordPress to edit your content with ease.

2. Seamless Knowledge Base Integration

Another strength of WordPress is its smooth integration with knowledge base software, as shown above. You can use this ability to produce tons of content around your product, service, or tool.

For example, knowledge base software can support the creation and centralization of answers to the most commonly asked customer questions. It can also embed meta tags and titles, and help you structure your content for improved SEO and audience readability.  

Want to create your own knowledge base rather than integrating one? WordPress can help with that as well. There is a WP Knowledgebase plugin you can use to create and customize your knowledge base in minutes.

3. Seamless Video and Audio Integration

Video content is overtaking the market. In fact, predictions claim that 82% of all Internet traffic will be video by 2021.

While WordPress originally began as a blogging platform, its functionality has grown over time. Thanks to the WYSIWYG Visual Editor, you can easily embed video and audio content into your WordPress site.

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Plus, WordPress offers multiple plugin options to further customize and enhance its visual content editor. Whether you want to grow your blog traffic, create a million dollar ecommerce site with video development, or share your podcast with seamless integration, WordPress’ video integration capability can help you get there.

For example, using the WonderPlugin Video Embed tool, you can simply paste video links from multiple formats and sites and let the tool do the heavy lifting:

In addition, using a WordPress ecommerce plugin, you can extend your site’s functionality and sell across multiple platforms like Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Pinterest, and more. Additionally, if your ecommerce business needs a more advanced tools at checkout to close sales, simply extend your WordPress website with endless customization options.

4. Speedy Creation and Publishing Capability

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When it comes to content, there is no question that quality is more important than quantity. That being said, if your content is infrequent it’s much harder to drive repeat customers and grow a loyal following.

Thankfully, WordPress supports the creation and publishing on frequent content in the following ways:

A basic text editor. If you can create text using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you can create it using WordPress, with no knowledge of code required.

Page builders. When you want to move past simple text, page builders help you build even more complicated designs. Again without needing to know a single line of code.

A powerful editor. WordPress enables content formatting, as well as the publishing new posts and pages with its built-in editor.

Taxonomy options. As you create more content, it becomes more important to organize it in a way that is searchable by bots and humans alike. WordPress enables you to create categories, assign tags to your articles, and build hierarchies to group your content.

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WordPress also allows you to easily monetize your content by adding affiliate links. Affiliate plugins can cloak your regular text links for affiliate links so that you can make money from your blog content.

5. Enhanced User Experience

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If you don’t optimize your content for the best user experience, people will simply bounce. The good news is that better user experience (UX) design can increase your conversion rates by 4x. And WordPress offers all the tools you need to offer a topline user experience.

The thousands of themes are ideal for creating websites that support easy browsing and usability. Plus, WordPress’ easy customization allows you to add non-intrusive call-to-actions (CTAs) and subscription boxes. So that you can convert your audience without killing their experience.

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WordPress even supports accessibility for peoples with physical or sensory impairments. Plus, it offers translations for up to 180 different locales. So no matter what language your readers speak, you can provide a translated version for them.

You can also use one of the many WordPress plugins, such as Polylang or Weglot to create a multilingual site.

6. Complete Design Flexibility

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The WordPress Customizer allows you to easily tweak your site, change headings, colors, and other aspects with the click of a button or the drag of your mouse.

Considering the importance of design in content success, this is invaluable for content creators. For example, check out these design trends for 2019:

Vivid color

Typographic focal points

Futuristic influences

Light and dark color schemes

Complex gradients and duotones

Color minimalism

Hand-drawn illustrations

Genuine stock photos

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The WordPress Customizer allows you to easily embed, enhance, and change visuals to keep up with changing trends. For example, you can include the above trends in your background header, feature images, and other site widgets.

You can further optimize your design by creating a personalized experience that clearly represents what you have to offer in a clean, appealing layout, using one thousand of mobile-friendly themes.

Their responsive design ensures that whenever you change your design, it’s still completely navigable on your audiences’ phones.

 What if you need to support multiple languages?

The WordPress multisite option allows you to customize the design aspects of all sites at once, such as if you decide to upgrade or change the theme.

7. Multiple Support Options

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As we discussed above, WordPress is the largest and most popular website platform and CMS. This popularity means there is a large, active WordPress community. People are constantly updating plugins and creating new ones.

Plus, there are regular updates and patches being released to enhance the platform. WordPress blogs, tutorials, support forums and walk through videos can be found across the internet.

The bottom line is that there countless support options no matter what you’re looking for.

8. SEO Friendly Functionality

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With pages that rank at the top of Google receiving 36.4% of search traffic, your SEO strategy needs to be top notch. WordPress helps support this with an easy to crawl framework that appeals to search engines.

The platform also supports further on-page optimization with plugins such as Yoast and All in One SEO. Even if you don’t understand SEO, these plugins can offer recommendations to help you optimize your content.

Another SEO consideration is site load speed. There have been some complaints that WordPress can tank your speed if you install too many plugins. But with a little optimization, it’s possible to achieve page load times under one second.

Here are some other ways WordPress helps you modify your content for SEO:

Allows you to implement rich snippets.

Enables you to add structured data to your site.

Supports the implementation of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP.)

Has direct integration for competitive analysis tools

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9. Content Curation

Content is getting harder and harder to develop. More and more words, more and more tactics.

That’s why content curation exists and can be very viable for many businesses. And when it comes to WordPress, content curation can be your best friend.

Using Scoopt.it and WordPress, you can quickly build a profile of curated content around the topics that interest you or pertain to your business:

From there, you can directly embed your curated content onto any page of your WordPress site by copy and pasting the code:

It’s that simple.

Want to set this up today? Here are four different ways you can integrate Scoop.it with WordPress to start curating content in minutes.

Conclusion

Whether you’re using WordPress as a blogging platform, a forum, an ecommerce store, or something else, its many strengths make it the ideal solution for content creation and management.

Between WordPress’ out of the box features and thousands of plugins, it offers endless customization, personalization and design capability. Add in the thousands of theme offerings and the WordPress Customizer, and you can easily modify your content without any knowledge of code.

Knowledge base integration and video integration enhance WordPress further, enabling you to efficiently create visual and useful content your audience will value. Further options such as multisite and multiple language options allow you to reach even more people with your content without duplicating effort.

SEO friendly functionality and endless support options make WordPress even more powerful, ensuring the success of your content strategy.  

The post 9 Reasons Why WordPress Dominates For Content Success appeared first on Scoop.it Blog.

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