#will i advertise it on fb is the question since i lost most of my tumblr followers after i deleted

[theurbansquared]

Guide To Avoiding A Loser Brokerage

by James Hill | theurbansquared

Brokers can be bastards and some even get better at it while other brokers are legitimate life-changing business Sherpas

A broker is supposed to guide you through a career in real estate much like a coach or pimp - offering protection and how to understand a complicated system better and direct it to revenue  without getting your neck broke while playing the game. I created and ran the most well-reviewed, largest full-service brokerage in the fastest-growing city in America.  This gave me access to nearly ever broker and their broker's pay structure and innovations. I also got the agent's version of my same broker buddies brokerages when they eventually joined my brokerage; hovering anywhere from 20–60 agents. Trending insider chatter has blame going to real estate brokers of decades past (and current) and how they’ve managed their agents - - letting unsupervised  agents with no experience run wild on the streets practicing on the public wearing out Realtor love and making a need for all the Mountain Dew-made Zillow-y options that currently exist.

Brokers are out of touch more than ever with today’s current media load, having to understand and use social media platforms for their advertising (since the private Town & Country affair that real estate once was is forever over and the landscape is a bit more like a half Juggalo, half programmer flea market).

Let’s dive into some situations and tenets that most agents don’t consider when choosing a brokerage.

Sales Volume

This is a bit of negotiating psychology and due diligence. Simply ask how much sales they (the brokerage) did last year and how much they’re currently at. If they don’t know these numbers they’re goons. If they don’t give it, you guessed it - they’re hiding something; their lack of revenue. I’ve hired and fired hundreds of agents and in interviews so few ask this question but it’s one of the most important questions you can ask as an agent and you need the information. An agent that doesn’t ask this has already given a tell that they’re not a top producer since they’re not interested in the production capacity of the team they may join. No bueno. Creep the brokerage as well obvi -- reviews, FB & IG engagement and current running ads, and make sure the company Christmas Party isn’t catered by Chic-fil-a at a Burnet Road dive bar.

Office

40% of your learning and 350% of your work will be done at the office. Those numbers will make sense 90% of the time after a few years in real estate. The rest should be on the streets - your car, properties, driving 75 mph talking and sending out docs, gorging on breath mints. Office, home, tiny homes, motorhomes have all blended into one larger conversation where work/live ethos are all in re-definition.

But, when you do need a more savvy moment in any market when people talk about borrowing or selling something that’s over $100K they don’t want to hear some bullshit too loud pedantic conversation seated right next to them at Starbucks or the local kooky coffee shop. In real estate Murphy’s Law is always in effect. The super important listing sign off that has to go well and they want to hear you pitch again before deciding? There will be someone (at this super ‘caj’ coffee house meeting) there projectile vomiting, or throwing cats, or something else tiresome or bad that takes more calls.

Speech and body language are massive parts of sales so when the entire set is thrown because a barista is running through a whole Sublime album. You want the most inviting cool office you can ever pull off at any given moment in real estate . Was that ever a question? There's a balance  -- you can't afford that year one or three, but it’s called real estate for a reason. Sexy, exciting buildings is what the brochure said when I joined. Also, it’s about style not size.

If you haven’t lost business to coffee house back pressure you really haven’t failed at agency properly.

Social IQ

Social reach is the only conversation now. Many brokerages won’t make it as the lead generating aspects of the industry aren't powered by a private MLS anyone and the publicly-hated ‘Realtor’ designation have both brokers and agents guessing about tomorrow. Calendars, best practices and free shitty tips & templates are the du jour of the day for anyone trying to get an agent's eyes. You can Google and get all the ‘basic’ social media dance steps, but with everyone at the same happy hunting spot, you’re being covered up, which leaves all your new artistic efforts fruitless and also squandering winning time.

Traffic, leads and engagement are all separate areas that have to be fulfilled properly and even this is in flux with historic corporations and current start ups all on the same advertising playing field. Social reach and engagement is about going to the consumer direct and becoming their friend with soft bribes -- free food, gifts, prizes (trips, events tickets) or industry work tools. The great news is, real estate has always been mostly consumer direct - start up a convoy at the grocery store (bar, church, meetup) and you’re in the car that weekend looking for houses with a new client. While you, your brokerage and the world are figuring out their exact social media mix, you need to make sure a brokerage isn’t lost on social media since many won’t be able to stay in business in the next few short years. Your brokerage needs to have a plan and and at best some presence on social media. Plus, they should be running low-cost performative marketing ad campaigns to get a feel for what and if set user groups are responding to ads. Anyone can post on IG but people engage on IG when they become inspired. A brokerage should have some sort of inspiration and relationship tied in with the local allure of their city --  or heading that direction.

Mentoring

Much like a neurotic buyer chasing an interest rate for their home mortgage (and then never buying a house) agents too focused on commission may miss the essential career need for mentoring -- for their clients and career. I had a 5 deal minimum for my new agents before they were ever unsupervised and received more commission. I've had new agents with celeb clients in hand and celeb agents with no clients in hand. No one wants to do business with someone with absolutely has no, experience but they do it because they like you as a friend or fam. Your mentor is the person riding shotgun with you at the beginning of your career. On many levels you want to be this person since they embody the position and role. You're literally and figuratively are borrowing experience from them and they deserve to be paid for it. You always have to strengthen your brand outside of your brokerage but if you don’t have any experience your brand doesn’t have ‘strength’ you simply have a logo and a drag & drop website where you're possibly talking about yourself and love of unicorns or football shit but the big boat deals you dream about in bed aren’t gotten this way. Remember, no unicorn could ever throw a football good without a lot of practice and a good mentor.

Support

Support in a brokerage is really communication and solutions for small problems, and systems for managing bigger ones with people. Most of the annoying things in real estate happen outside of the deal - contracts, calls, emails, docs, signatures, more docs. You typically want a super admin, broker, or agent manager that you can call and they pick up the phone. It’s pretty simple. With a mentor, admin, or broker you’re going to have a n 8:30 PM question or deal that’s going down. You’ll need printer help. Real estate always happens now (this was one of the main mantras in my office). Printing, prequal, weekend support and constant post dinner shenanigans.

Training

Meet Frank Miller, David Mamet, the Sex Pistols, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, Hendrix, Tom Hopkins, The World’s Greatest Detective and Conan The Barbarian. We had a lot of different inspirations for the style and ethos of our urban brokerage. The World’s Greatest Detective is Batman. It was a moniker that became popular in the seventies. We used this example about how important due diligence and proper Fact Finding techniques are for serving and closing deals for clients. (It’s almost essential to be inquisitive in real estate esp about property/development to have success). Training is largely your sales meeting(s). Although I don’t come from a car background I’ve mentored many car guys transferring to real estate (they typically are out of the industry within 2 years and are there only for boom markets). Car guys have meetings every morning 6 days a week and they’re not at 9 or 10 am. They’re already working.

free module: The Burger King Phenomena: Why Agents Do Less Working For Themselves Than If They Were Working At Burger King

Many brokerages have no training/meeting schedule (monthly doesn’t count -- that’s a meet and greet company pump and catch up meeting). If a brokerage doesn’t have training on a schedule then there is no training. You’ll possibly be thrown a 3-ring binder, or given some PDF’s, or links to old bizarre training videos or a soup sandwich of all three and sometimes even a bill for the training. An agent’s training/meetings and their attendance to them are the difference between an agent making it or not when you’re 24 months or less in the role as an agent especially in the fast turbulent waters of the current 2021 market where brokerage and agent purpose and pay are under attack. From my experience, new agents that hide die.

Media

Having a background as a creative director I’m aware with great detail of agency and brokerage media needs, the cost and time they extract, and the corresponding revenue they’re projected to bring back. Brokerages are looking for their purpose now as simply having a brokerage doesn’t bring in leads like it used to. This is fitting, since the digital dumbass brokers that that didn’t understand the importance of ‘the web’ rickshawed our MLS data and sold the agent/broker centric real estate system for their benefit while current agents are left with an empty greasy enough to-go box to curl up with. Brokerages were never media houses or ad agencies but now that consumer level graphic programs and website builders are ubiquitous and any agent after being licensed for 10 days can drag & drop a website up in 4 hours and make it look like a brokerage that’s been around for years. I know I’m going wide on the subject here but stay with me because this is the crux of where the industry and consumer are renegotiating roles.

A brokerage’s value proposition has changed drastically with the telecommute revolution that was only sped and strengthened by Covid. Also, generational knowledge base gaps in technology are more apparent than ever with technology as younger agents can often be more media savvy than their broker. The market is flooded with self appointed companies or gurus that are taking on the role of the classic ad agency (Mad Men) or media production house. Also beware of real estate coaches with little or no real estate experience offering to guide you in social media. Okay media can’t be used in apex situations (such as the luxury listings you’re after) and doesn’t draw apex listings. Beware of tapioca room temperature tips and general lists from companies that can appear informative but are really boilerplate low grade data to get your attention to ultimately upsell you on a paid service.

As an agent or a brokerage, consumer level graphic and website building programs can be a death ticket to your business as your competitors have the same tools and are cranking out the same type of style of messaging you are now. Now agents, principals, admins and in art class creating flyers. This has been done since the nineties as the valleys of dead agent careers is full of 2-day Microsoft Word (or any of their shitty office offerings) seshes to produce nasty flyers and presentations. These programs are fun and making bad flyers absolutely work related - the kind of work you don’t want’ related to your business because it’s adult crayon coloring. Activity does not equal production. Staying busy doing the wrong things doesn’t make money in real estate. Rather than spending agent winning time staying in the wrong lanes for way too long, get with a team or brokerage that are providing the most exceptional visual media you can find in your market. It used to be cool 2 years ago, now it’s the only thing that matters. Visual content.

free module: Better Agent Media, Less Agent Money (media tips and hacks).

Access

This is access to your broker. Brokers with families are typically less available. Your best bet as an agent is looking for a grinder broker who sleeps on the couch at their office. This person doesn’t have kids to build into so they’ll build into your career and you’ll get the most out of these brokers. Beware of cheesedick, apathetic, rich boy, bored brokers not around and more concerned with projects like a shitty vanity wine brand that their wife’s forced them to launch since she’s not living her best life anymore as an agent.

Style

What kind of style is your brokerage? Is there an opportunity to bring more style sophistication to the market -- standout in a smaller market? Or, are you in an ultra stylish market currently and butt hurt because you already have a little story about how you’re going to keep it real and be a Dockers wearing slob for eternity? The thing about style in agency is you always need to look like you can list a million dollar house. Oh, is it really that simple? Yes it is. You complicated it. Clients always care about their housing a little bit more than they care about your real estate career. They don’t have time to figure out why you’re wearing shoe styles from 7 years ago. Don’t make it hard for people to do business with you. If you’re ugly, even better. It can be a massive advantage. Everyone on the planet loves when someone who doesn’t fall into our general current ‘attractive’ spectrum doesn’t give af, looks great and puts themselves together in a stylish way that the viewer can understand (can I get away with Teen Wolf?). A great side benefit from this step in the right direction is it’s a great way to make someone who is conventionally attractive insecure.

You want to be in the same style as the people in your area but the secret is you need to lead that style pack if you can -- you always lead and dress apex. Years ago this was anecdotal but after over 100K hours in real estate a good suite (tailored) saved my ass and literally got me business. I listed the largest house in east Austin because of a suit (and got a front page story on the newspaper real estate section for free because the owner saw me walking into the next door neighbor’s house).

Offices, dress, logo, email signature are all elements of you and your brokerage’s style. Style in and of itself isn’t enough to be a top producer in real estate. I’ve had stylish and even celebrity agents that didn't do zilch, but style often is a fingerprint to something more.

Picking the right elements for your agent style is an art because you have to offer something from yourself that’s unique enough as well as something familiar (a bridge to your uniqueness). I have a background as a musician and also as a merchant sailor. Fortunately those are easy convo starters. You could be a philatelist and have some challenges, but regardless it absolutely will take a year or three to develop your own angle and style towards the market as you learn it and the agent role more.

Things that look attractive and familiar puts client’s psychologies at ease. So, if skinny jeans are in you better get in them (that’s like five years old now). You’re on stage. You don’t wear what the worker people behind the camera wear. If you want to wear boring shit get on the other side of the camera. If you want less leads saddle up to a forgettable brokerage. People have hard days. They want you to put an effort into your real estate agency role. Currently it’s a fried role so you’re dealing with that too. People love to be smiled at and sold and especially from someone who smells good. It doesn't ever get old. Don’t make them beg for your charm. Be a nice charming person with a shirt that fits good, it’s a powerful combo.

Get My Damn Paper

If you’ve never seen a werewolf in daylight mess with an agent’s commission after the deal’s done and funded. Admin? Who is the damn person who does the admin? (accounts payable is the icey pro word if you like). That person that you contact to get your commission check cut? If that person is a weirdo, or there’s an unfriendly or sketchy quality to the office or admin staff, do not go forward (don’t confuse this with new people or industry jitters). Grab some free coffee, leave the smarm and jet to the next brokerage blind date.

Software

CRM is an annoying conversation. Here’s the things with CRM’s - for all the work CRMs curtail, because of their complexity and existence and the work(time) they take to interact with you need to consider how much work you’re putting into operating the CRM software verses how much time it’s saving. Many times brokerages have expensive yearly subscriptions with per agent fees for their CRM which can make the brokerage have a zealot meth thing for the ‘team’ software and promise you can’t have a career without taking a bump too. To understand CRM better before it was a name, Client Relationship Management is what analog Proximity became. Let me explain -  being close to people in Church, bar, school, same building -- all give proximity. This becomes familiarity, then ease, then trust. People do business with people they trust & like. Once people disconnected physically and started using other means more contact attempts have to be made to work for or ‘prove’ worth.

Follow Up is a large component of most CRM’s and there are gobs of money for agents who follow up meticulously. Simply ask the broker what CRM they use and research it. Something to remember - unless you’re extremely busy with your career you don’t need a CRM. You can manage & database your clients & leads ‘by hand’ and strap it to the cloud with G-Suite/Google Sheets.

Brokerage Name

A small but important aside, if a brokerage have named themselves after a precious metal or a gem, or if it says elite in the name then it’s not elite. If it has the words prestige or worldwide or international it may not be any of those either. I know a handful of exceptions to this rule but this is a great dirty primer to use when choosing a brokerage that’s going to propel your career and have shrimp options at the Christmas Party.

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, June 2019

Welcome to my latest summary of recent news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & ecommerce! This covers articles I came across from May 31 to June 21, although some may be older than that.

(Unfortunately, a few of this edition’s entries were lost somehow, & I could only remember one of the missing, so if you know of an article/post that should be included, please let me know, & the piece will be added here as well as to the next post.)

My busy few months are now mostly over, so I will have more time to get working on this Tumblr, new blog posts & the new forum I want to start; expect more frequent updates starting in July. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Shopify is going to run fulfillment centres for its US customers within the next 2 years. “Right now Shopify will offer early access for merchants who ship between 10 and 10,000 items per day, and by the end of the year the company aims to offer two-day shipping to 99 per cent of the United States.” They announced other plans at the same time, including better shop tools. 

If you have your own website, conversion rate optimization is something you should be looking at. Why? Because “[a] simple tweak on a landing page can double or even 10x that page’s conversion rate” which can be much easier to do than doubling your traffic. [Note that this is not a short article; it’s a full guide.]

Matching searcher intent is a crucial part of great rankings. This long article tells you pretty much everything you need to know on making that happen with your content, with real examples for their site. 

Mary Meeker released her annual internet trends report; shorter summary here. “If you're looking to connect with the next generation, you should be maintaining at least some awareness of gaming culture, which is where attention is increasingly shifting.” “Some 51 percent of the world — 3.8 billion people — were internet users last year, up from 49 percent (3.6 billion) in 2017...E-commerce is now 15 percent of retail sales. Its growth has slowed — up 12.4 percent in Q1 compared with a year earlier — but still towers over growth in regular retail, which was just 2 percent in Q1...Customer acquisition costs — the marketing spending necessary to attract each new customer — is going up.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy retired several of its Support/Help email addresses, including support@etsy.com, all without any official announcement. 

You can now link photos to variations - but only with one variation, not both. 

Etsy’s annual report for 2018 is out; I didn’t see much new here, but if you catch something, please leave a comment or send me an email so I can add it to this summary. [They actually mentioned “abilities” in their list of things they accept diverse ranges of, but as usual, they only give any details about gender, race/ethnicity and sexual orientation. Disability is invisible for them.]

A new bunch of US states will have state taxes charged for online sales as of July 1. 

Ryan Scott will be Etsy’s new Chief Marketing Officer as of June 24. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google broke with tradition & decided to warn SEOs about the core search algorithm update that started rolling out on Monday June 3 and ended on the 8th. There are multiple reports of some UK news companies taking a hard hit while others picked up visibility. It’s still too early for much comprehensive analysis, but here is a summary and another more recent one. 

At the same time, Google also rolled out an update that increases site diversity in search results, often limiting each website to 2 entries in Google’s top pages. Think of it as Google's approach to “clumping”. They insist it is separate from the core algorithm update. Early analysis finds that it didn't change much for most searches. 

Websites sometimes rely too much on Google traffic, which is dangerous whenever they change something (i.e., daily). Here are 5 ways to make your site/pages more resistant to algorithm updates. 

Most decent SEO tools cost some money to get the full value, but here is a list of 55 free tools including keyword research, stats, linking, and technical tools. (Some have paid versions as well, but just ignore what you don’t need.)

SEO sometimes requires stating the obvious; check out this tweet with a graphic from an SEO conference. 

Rand Fishkin did a major review of clicks from Google search, & found that nearly 50% of US google searches result in a click (often questions such as weather, or spelling). Only 45% led to clicks on non-paid links, & non-Google companies. But “for every click on a paid result in Google, there are 11.6 clicks to organic results. SEO is far from dead.” Search Engine Land did a TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) summary here. 

Fishkin also has some good insights on making a profit through SEO. [video and full transcript] I think the point about having a strong profit margin is really important - it is going to get more expensive to sell online as time goes on. Etsy is not the only provider trying to squeeze more pennies out of its customers. (Fishkin’s whole push lately is that you must be a known brand to survive; I am reserving judgement on that for the moment.)

Most blogs haven’t done their SEO correctly, but you can fix that. [video & full transcript]

Hate it when your site/business gets mentioned online, but they don’t link to you? There are ways to get other companies to link to you. 

The latest Google mobile search redesign has folks pitching fits about how ads now look like organic search results. For your own website & other sites where it is possible, make sure you have a favicon that stands out from paid ads. [If you Google “CindyLouWho2″ on mobile, my blue fossil coral avi shows for my website & this Tumblr blog.]

Voice search isn’t taking off like people thought it would, although around 30% of Americans use virtual assistants regularly. 

Is audio SEO going to be a thing? Dr. Pete looks at Google’s decision to post podcasts in search results. 

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

Facebook announced its move into cryptocurrency with Libra, which will launch in 2020. 

Contrary to some reports, it seems that fewer people are using Facebook regularly. While time spent on FB drops, Instagram in particular is seeing more interaction. 

Getting the right image sizes and dimensions is really important for each platform; here is an infographic on all image sizes for Facebook. 

“[T]he right time for you to post on Facebook will be different than the right time for someone else to post on Facebook.” A summary of multiple studies on the topic, with tips on using your Facebook Analytics to narrow this down for your business. 

After banning mass messaging earlier this year, WhatsApp is prohibiting sending newsletters through the app as of December. 

A decent guide on using Twitter for your business. “...tweets with images get 150% more retweets”.

Thinking of running a Twitter chat? Here’s a complete guide, including Hootsuite templates. 

You can get new content ideas from Reddit. “Reddit.com saw 542 million visitors in March 2019 alone.”

Pinterest is expanding its shopping program, now called Pinterest Partners, to provide more shopping opportunities on the site. 

A study of the 500 top-followed Pinterest accounts shows that home decor is most popular among influencer topics. [infographic with text.]

Short video platform TikTok is still showing rapid growth. “Digital wellbeing is more important than it has ever been. Since tech companies started optimising for user engagement, the user is unable to escape the app. You will always feel dissatisfied when you close the app, because the notifications keep on coming and the content never seems to end. To us it seems, TikTok has taken this idea to another level and built the user experience to deliberately create addiction.“

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Using Google Ads for your website? Make sure you avoid these 7 common mistakes. 

Google now allows you to target people who are “regularly in your target locations” - but it doesn’t really define how they calculate that.

Instagram Shopping is most popular with younger people (at least in the UK).

Good tips on improving your Amazon ad effectiveness, especially cost-effectiveness.   

Some tips on Microsoft Audience ads, and how to get the most out of them. It includes some good general tips, like looking at your profit margin. 

Facebook produced an infographic on how to best create FB ads, especially, for mobile. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Google has purchased analytics company Looker; Etsy uses the platform already. 

The Google Search Console is now giving users 90 days of data for some reports. 

Here’s a new WordPress plugin that tracks clicks on pdfs on your site through Google Analytics. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Paypal has developed “a customizable e-commerce platform”. 

Amazon has extended 1-day Prime delivery. Their ability to do that largely depends on how they are taking control of the shipping methods used, moving away from using other big companies. 

Amazon closed Spark, its social media competitor, and it redirects to a page of customer-curated collections. 

Some Goodwill stores are now selling thrift items on online platform OfferUp.

Opinion article: is feature-driven retail preventing people from buying?

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Human brains like stories, which is why you should use them in your marketing. “Stories do another thing: They trigger the release of this neurochemical called oxytocin, which is known in some circles as the love drug. About 10 years ago, all we really knew about oxytocin is that it’s released when, say, a mother is with her baby. But what we’ve discovered since then, through the work of neuroscientists like Dr. Paul Zak, is that stories trigger the release of oxytocin in much the same way.” 

Sell luxury goods? The market is changing as younger people make up a larger chunk of the core. Millennials will make up 50% of the market by 2025. The article has some interesting stats on the luxury resale market: “Overall 45% of true-luxury consumers participated in the second-hand luxury market, and more than one-fourth (26%) have bought pre-owned goods”  which is a trend some luxury vintage sellers might want to watch.

Generation Z prefers personalized content & isn’t as worried about privacy as older generations. 

US adults now spend more time on mobile devices than they do watching tv. Much of that time is spent on mobile apps instead of browsers, & audio (podcasts & music streaming, mostly) accounts for a large chunk of time spent. 

US retail sales grew by half a percent in May, less than predicted. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

As the US looks at starting an antitrust case against Google, articles are reminding the government what other countries found, and what they should be looking at now. Businesses big & small have filed complaints. 

The Google Cloud outage on June 2 that took down YouTube, Snapchat and Shopify among other sites points to the need for everyone to have a backup system. [Remember, Etsy is also moving all functions to Google’s cloud.]

Sick of writing product descriptions? Imagine if it was your full-time job, and you didn’t have any hand in making or curating the products.

[rhodesmystery]

tagged by @toads-in-my-pockets!! thank you!!

Nickname: a few personal ones, but most people call me ellen

Gender: Female

Astrological Sign: i think I'm like. cusp of libra and virgo technically? but libra

Height: i.... do not know. somewhere around 160? 150? idk

Sexuality: bi

Hogwarts House: slytherin BUT i have gotten hufflepuff nearly on average. a sprinkling of ravenclaw though and like. gryffindor once.

Favourite Animal: i can’t choose i love animals. idk maybe native ones then like quokkas or sugar gliders or wallabies and bilbies then haha native australian animals are adorable 

# of Blankets: sheet, quilt, bedspread, blanket x 3 of varying weight and softness. so like. 6 layers. especially in winter. i love being all comfy and covered and warm and idk this introspection is telling me that maybe i just need to invest in a weighted blanket hmm

Dream Trip: just to keep on keeping on. i dont have a huge mind as to where, just being able to sightsee would be awesome. maybe somewhere cold though, because i can’t deal with heat. i did see smth fancy from switzerland i think advertised on my fb the other day soooo

Account Created: this one was created ... last yr? my main back iiiiiinnnnn 20...13? MAYBE but i’ve been on tumblr since 09 lol 

Why: as in why this one was created or? idk like it gets to a point where even ya main is just too jumbled to handle questions for stuff yknow. not that i wanna stop harry potter stuff on main, but stuff gets lost. can’t keep track. so its just easier to sideblog some stuff so you have a reference point BUT also just easier to interact w groups of ppl over yknow? yeah

[bookstoreadbtr]

Karen J. Hicks, according to her website, was raised on a Wisconsin dairy farm. In her own words, she “began her storytelling career spinning fantasies for her dog and creating plots while she mowed the huge country lawn.” She has written books, films, and ghostwritten. Karen, took the time to answer a few questions I had for her.

1. When did you discover you needed to be an author?

I’ve always liked thinking up poems and stories, but in high school our AP English class was required to write a novella one semester and the teacher frequently read and posted from mine. She encouraged me to write even after I graduated. I kept writing over the years as a single parent, but more for fun than money. I didn’t get serious about writing as a career until my son graduated from high school and joined the military.

2. What inspired you to publish your first book?

I was fortunate to take a hiatus from working and live for several months in a cabin in the North Georgia mountains. It was there I finished my first book, THE TAO OF AN UNCLUTTERED LIFE, a short self-help book about being organized body, mind, and spirit. I submitted it to a publisher in Atlanta and they just happened to need another TAO title in their next catalog so I didn’t have to wait forever for the book to be released.

3. Did you have any fears of publishing before you started?

Other than worrying it would never happen, no. haha

4. What were three things your learned about the publishing process?

a. You can get published without an agent. I’ve done it twice before I switched to self-publishing.

b. Self-publishing is easy, but you do need some good editors to help you.

c. Cover design and catchy titles are important.

5. What was the most surprising thing your learned in the process?

Don’t expect your friends and relatives to buy your books.

6. Have you done any unique marketing that other authors can borrow?

I confess I’ve not been that good at marketing. I’ve done some shows, some readings, podcasts. Have a Facebook author page, Amazon author page, as well as postings on sites like Goodreads. I send group emails to my high school graduating class to announce my books. I’ve spent some money on Facebook advertising, with a little return. I hired a publicist for one book, and found it to be a waste of money.

7. What is the title of your latest book?

I have three books I am promoting right now. The first is a book of short stories called THE TWELFTH OF NEVER: AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

But, during the pandemic, I also completed two of the three books in my romance series: AMETHYST DREAMS and JADED DREAMS. The first book in the series was CRYSTAL DREAMS.

8. What is a brief summary/synopsis of the book?

THE TWELFTH OF NEVER is a collection of 15 stories that range from mysteries to lost loves to domestic challenges and humor. Many utilize O-Henry-style irony and surprise endings, as well as a sprinkling of fantasy to jolt the senses.

The three books in the Dream Series follow the love story of Brynn and Canaan, who meet in Nashville in CRYSTAL DREAMS, go on a honeymoon road trip to Hollywood in AMETHYST DREAMS, and struggle to keep romance alive through the daily grind and dashed dreams.

9. What inspired/encouraged you to research the information gained in your latest book?

Since the short story book is all from my imagination, little research was necessary. For the Dream Series, however, I researched Native American culture, as well as plotting a believable road trip from Tennessee to Hollywood. My time working in Hollywood gave me good insight for JADED DREAMS. Using shaman rituals and herbal healings in the series also required research.

10. What advice would you give an aspiring writer?

It’s simple: Believe in yourself and don’t give up. Passion for your subject matter is required for a successful book.

11. What inspired you to become a screenwriter?

After my son graduated, I had my own business and was hired to type a screenplay for a client. I had to figure out the formatting so got Syd Fields’ book on the subject and used it like a Bible. I also very smartly bought a script-formatting program.

Then I attended a seminar in Nashville given by Emmy and Golden Globe winner Marsha Posner Williams, producer on THE GOLDEN GIRLS. She talked above moving to Los Angeles even though she had to live in her car for a while. The next day I started planning my own migration west.

I wrote several scripts with others and for others over the years, that made me a few bucks although none made it to the screen. The closest was one on which I was a writer-for-hire on a script that sold to Nickelodeon

12. What did you find was different from writing books verses screenplays?

Screenplays are all about the visual, and you can’t go in the same depth of story you can in a book. In truth, two of my books were first written as screenplays: THE COMING WOMAN and CRYSTAL DREAMS.

13. You have also been a ghost-writer? How did you get into this field?

I went to work for author/comedian Steve Allen as his manuscript assistant, which originally meant typing up his dictated stories and notes and coordinating with the agent and publishers on his books. When Steve got backed up on a deadline to finish his books about the Bible, I ghost-wrote a few sections for him. Then I started going through his dozens of ring-binders of typed thoughts and ideas he had dictated over the years. Culling and organizing these became his book title REFLECTIONS. I also took a children’s poem he had written and formatted it as a book with illustrations: THE BUG AND THE SLUG IN THE RUG.

Around this same time, a friend was hired to write a California travel guide for the Automobile Association of Great Britain and was having problems completing it so I wrote several sections of that for him.

14. What advice would you give someone thinking about ghost-writing?

You can’t have an ego, because you get no credit. You have to do it for the love of the project. Then it can be great fun. If you’re lucky, there’s money to be made as well.

15. Where can your future fans follow you on social media?

My FB author page: https://www.facebook.com/Karen-J-Hicks-109539650865598/

My Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B00NG6KWJ4?_encoding=UTF8&node=2656022011&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader

16. Do you have a website?

Yes. http://www.karenjhicks.com/

17. If you could co-author a book with any author, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Shel Silverstein as his books are brilliant and creative, with powerful messages underlying the simple stories!

[thedementedpoet]

And I regret...(story)

Hey dear reader,

Do you want to read a story? No right. I know that you guys are so impatient that you don't have a little time for a story. And I guess you are busy with your cell phones, tagging friends on memes, I also can guess that in another window you have your WhatsApp, Instagram,snapchat running. So busy, I see.

One day he was too busy like this. He was randomly liking posts from his Facebook feed, scrolling fearlessly as there is nothing to fear about facebook stories posted by different people, some known, some unknown.

In the background, WhatsApp was running and several messages were popping out like jelly beans from a packet in the notification bar.

But there he was, scrolling the FB feed carelessly ignoring the messages. But suddenly in an instant of time, his fingers went numb and they were unable to swipe up. He was terrified, more than terrified he was shocked.

He saw a post from a group. It was a group of some old college friends. The post he saw was posted 3 days before. He couldn't believe that something like this can happen.

“Sweta Roy is no more, she committed suicide yesterday. May her soul rests in peace.” was the post with a beautiful picture of the girl SWETA.

He felt like time slowed down a little bit and then suddenly moved backwards. He was pulled by memories of the day they met each other for the last time.

“You can't do this to me,” he yelled with a requesting tone.

“I am sorry Adarsh.”. She said with a ease like nothing happened.

“But why? Why with me? It's 4 years since we are together and today you are leaving me for someone you just met a month before. Don't you love me? All those promises were fake?” he was now freaking out. How can someone be normal when his 4-year relationship is in danger. He was attached to her not only physically but also mentally.

“Don't make a scene Adarsh, people are staring at us. And see we were in a relationship and that doesn't mean that we have to be together for always. Just let me live and make my own decision by myself.” She said looking at his eyes, straight.

Sweta was the most beautiful girl in their university. Probably all the guys wanted to make out with her. But being an average looking stud Adarsh was the luckiest guy to have her in his life. He never loved her because she was beautiful. He loved her because of the way she used to see the world. She taught him to live life with excitement. She taught him to be carefree. She taught him to see dreams.She was the girl with whom he lost his virginity, maybe she too lost it with him. In short, she was his world.

“See Adarsh, he is a settled person and a successful businessman. I will be happy with him. You even can't think how much he earns in a day. I can fulfil every dream of mine with him. And just think once, can you provide me with the things he can?. And you are still struggling to get a job. I don't see any future with you.” while she was saying all these things, he was just trying to digest them. He never thought that she is like this only. Bitch* He had many questions but he was afraid to ask them as he knew, all the answers that will come from her only can smash his heart. Probably she was right, no parents would deny a businessman against a struggling graduate. After that, what she said, what she explained was no more his concern. It was going like a sad, dramatic Bollywood film.

“Hey, Adarsh?” he heard the familiar female voice from the other side of the phone, it was familiar because there were only two female voices he was addicted to, his mom and sweat. This time it was Sweta.

“How are you?” she asked again.

“Is that your concern? No right?”

“What do you think after getting dumped from a 4-year relation I would be partying?”

“Adarsh, its been 4-month, move on with your life. I called you to invite you to my marriage. It's two weeks later, I will text you the venue and time. Do come ok?” she said and beep beep...he just disconnected the call and smashed the phone out of anger. It was not like he became a Devdas after being dumped but he loved her and felt like he lost a part of his soul. He never got any call or message from her after that.Maybe because he changed his number.

But that day, like 5 years later after her last call, and some weeks ago from today, his phone beeped and he got a message. “Sorry” the message read. Out of curiosity he dialled the number and when the call was picked from the other side, he heard the familiar voice after ages, it was her, Sweta,

“Adarsh? How are you?” she started from her best question.

“I am fine, what about you?” this time he was normal, as it's been 5 years and he somewhere forgot her too. I am successful now, I own a company and earn a lot too. He himself told himself.

“I am good. Got to know about you from an old friend of ours from Facebook,” she said.

“Oh ?”

“Are you still mad at me, at that time I just did what seemed right.and now I regret ….” she tried to clarify. Does she want to clarify things now? after ages, Huh, he blabbed in his mind.

“Not at all. I moved on with my life as you asked me to, and yes, I am engaged now. Not planned marriage yet but soon I am gonna get married.” he cut her line and said. He disconnected the call. He didn't know why he did that, nor he was angry with her now neither he was sad.

Suddenly, time slowed down a bit again and moved forward...

Again he was in reality then, out of the box of memories.

He again looked at the post, going through the comments he got nothing.So he just turned off the phone and closed his eyes wondering what happened to her that made her commit suicide.

Next day morning when he was going through some old newspaper looking for some advertising of his company in his office, but he found another article.

“A lady, Sweta Agarwal, wife of Rajesh Agarwal committed suicide yesterday. She left a suicide note where she mentioned how she was abused physically and mentally by her husband for years.....”

He couldn't read further, he felt like he had made a huge mistake. Her last line started to make a noise in his mind,

“And I regret……

and I regret……

and I regret…..”

maybe she tried to spill her pain out, if he had listened to her he could do something. Now all he has to do is regret.

Hey fellas, look your notification bar is full of notifications again. I told you before, how much busy you are. but what do you think about Adarsh? Should he regret it or not? What Sweta did was right?

Ohhh sorry sorry. I forgot that you are busy. You don't have time to answer all these shit.. Go and continue doing what you were doing. But beware of the fact that you can find anything scrolling the feed up an up and up… *sigh *sigh.👍🕴

[hinatashoyyo]

i’ve now written 19 out of the 20 minimum poems i wanted to write for my chapbook driftlight yay ^_^ 

[totidem-verbis]

Tag Game

Thank you @eden-winchester for the tag!

The questions are a bit unusual, but I had so much fun answering them! So here it goes!

LAST

1) Drink: Coca-Cola (Because I’m a caffeine addict)

2) Phone Call: My mom

3) Text Message: “Just send gibberish. I’ll know what it means lol” (sent to a friend because she was going to see Logan)

4) Song Listened To: And The World Was Gone by Snow Ghosts

5) Time I Cried: Two nights ago while watching Season 2 of Daredevil again (it was the graveyard scene with The Punisher, and I just couldn’t stop crying)

HAVE YOU EVER

6) Dated Somebody Twice: No, because the relationship usually ended for a reason (I have remained friends with most of my exes though)

7) Been Cheated On: Not to my knowledge

8) Been Kissed By Someone And Regretted It: No

9) Lost Someone Special: Yes (close friends and several family members)

10) Been Depressed: Yes (see above answer to help understand why)

11) Gotten Drunk And Puked: Yes (say no to jaeger-bombs, kids)

THREE FAVORITE COLORS

12) Green (pretty much all shades except for pea soup green)

13) Pink (except for that shade that makes my eyes hurt)

14) Purple (I prefer pale purple but love all shades)

IN THE LAST YEAR

15) Made New Friends: Yes

16) Fallen Out Of Love: No

17) Laughed Until You Cried: Yes

18) Found Out Someone Was Gossiping About You: No

19) Met Someone Who Changed Your Life: Yes

20) Found Out Who Your True Friends Are: Yes

21) Kissed Someone On Your Facebook List: No

HOW MANY/MUCH

22) Facebook Friends: 175 (which I’m calling impressive since I avoid FB as much as literally possible)

23) Pets: 1 (Chihuahua)

24) Want To Change Your Name: Nah, I like my name

WHAT

25) Did I Get For My Birthday: My birthday is Christmas Eve, so all of my (few) presents kind of blend together. My favorite presents were an owl sweater with my initials and a pair of giant fuzzy dice for my car

26) Time I Woke Up: Around 7-ish

27) Were You Doing At Midnight: Writing (fanfiction)

28) Can’t You Wait For: Guardians of the Galaxy 2

29) Was The Last Time You Saw Your Mom: About an hour ago

30) Was Something You Wish You Could Change About Your Life: Not worrying about how to pay the bills each month

31) Are You Listening To Right Now: An Unhealthy Obsession by The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra

32) Gets On Your Nerves: Not all that much, actually. I’m a very laidback and non-controversial personal, unless I’m driving. Then I get really bad road rage.

33) Talked To A Person Named Tom: Nope

34) Is Your Most Visited Website: Probably YouTube

35) Elementary School: Some small school in the middle of nowhere

36) High School: An even smaller school in the middle of nowhere

37) College: A four-year university that keeps advertising about the “warrior spirit”

38) Hair Color: Brown (kinda dark at the moment)

39) Long/Short Hair: Short, just past my chin now

40) Crush: Like on a real-life person? Not at the moment

41) Do You Like About Yourself: My ability to stay calm during the weirdest of times

42) Piercings: My tongue and nothing else

43) Blood Type: O-Negative

44) Nickname: No nicknames (my name is too short to be shortened into a nickname)

45) Relationship Status: Single

46) Zodiac: Capricorn

47) Pronouns: She/Her

48) Favorite Show: Let’s just now go down this road, okay? It’d be like choosing my favorite child

49) Tattoos: Eight, currently, with more planned

50) Left/Right Handed: Right

FIRST

51) Surgery: I don’t personally think I’ve had surgery, but I went through three laser surgeries to bust up some kidney stones

52) Piercing: My ears at 13 (which then got infected and closed up so I got my tongue pierced at 14)

53) Best Friend: I’m going to say my bestest tumblr friend, @deathscytheevee

54) Sport: Cheerleading

55) Vacation: Texas (but I was so young that I don’t really remember the roadtrip)

56) Pair Of Shoes: These cute little white leather shoes that my mom held onto for years (there were buckles and tassles)

RIGHT NOW

57) Eating: Candycane

58) Drinking: Water

59) I Am About To: Go to sleep

60) Listening To: The Pugilist by Keaton Henson

61) Waiting For: Someone to swoop in and save me (kidding, I’m just waiting to get my own life together)

62) Want To See: The Batman Lego Movie

63) Want To Get Married: Yeah, eventually

64) Career: I’ve got a degree in psychology and minored in criminal justice, so I’d like to be a juvenile counselor at some point

WHICH IS BETTER

65) Hugs/Kisses: Hugs (they usually lead to cuddles)

66) Lips/Eyes: Eyes (windows to the soul and all that)

67) Taller/Shorter: I like being short, but I like being around taller people so that they can reach the high shelves

68) Younger/Older: Uh, neither? It doesn’t really matter to me. Old people can act like children, and the younger generation can sometimes be much more mature

69) Romantic/Spontaneous: I’m a hopeless romantic at heart, but bring on the spontaneity!

70) Nice Arms/Nice Stomach: Arms, definitely

71) Sensitive/Loud: A good balance of the two is better, in my opinion

72) Hookup/Relationship: Hookups are fun but the connection is empty, so I’m gonna go with Relationship on this one

73) Troublemaker/Hesitant: Either/Both have their pros and cons

HAVE YOU EVER

74) Kissed A Stranger: Yes (I was young and dumb, please don’t judge me)

75) Drank Hard Liquor: I’m from the Deep South, we make our own Hard Liquor and give it out for Christmas

76) Lost Glasses/Contact Lenses: Yes, I’m constantly losing my glasses

77) Turned Someone Down: Yes

78) Canoodling On A First Date: Yes

79) Broken Someone’s Heart: Unfortunately, yes

80) Had Your Own Heart Broken: Yes

81) Been Arrested: No

82) Cried When Someone Died: Yes

83) Fallen For A Friend: Yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN

84) Yourself: Yeah, most days

85) Miracles: I try to

86) Santa Claus: No

87) Kisses On A First Date: Yes

88) Angels: Yes (even though most people are surprised that I’m religious…maybe it’s the pentagram tattoo on my foot?)

89) Love At First Sight: No (I believe in LUST at first sight, but I think it takes time for something as deep as love to develop)

OTHER

90) Best Friend’s Name: Eevee!

91) Eye Color: Hazel (sometimes a little blue, sometimes partly brown, but my eyes usually prefer green)

92) Favorite Movie: Mulan (I love so many movies, Marvel has its own category and rating system, but Mulan is my go-to movie whenever I need cheering up)

TAGGING

@deathscytheeevee

@br3ak-my-fall

@thecheyisalie

@and-we-can-be-heroes

@thoughtsaremydrug

@rose-for-dead-alice

@spoondragon

@ruinsrebuilt

@aces-low

@loufworld

 And, of course, any of my mutual that want to do this! I know it’s long, but it’s a lot of fun!

[johnmuffus]

eCom Challenges Review

eCom Challenges Review (Thaddeus Strickland Course)

Today, we’ll be reviewing Thaddeus Strickland’s eCom Challenges course on dropshipping. It sells as a single stop to learn all the knowledge you need to start and scale your own eCommerce venture.

After reading this review, you’ll be able to tell if that’s statement is true or not. As always, you can jump right into my conclusion, but I’d recommend you read the entire review to make a more informed choice.

Who’s the author?

According to Thaddy, he’s a “serial entrepreneur”, and he’s from the US. He creates content and store as well as software he sells as is source of income. This course works as an in-depth extension of the content provided by his videos on YouTube.

His popularity has grown quite a bit in recent months, and if you’re used to watching dropshipping content, you’ve probably seen his channel among your recommendations. He’s nearing the 40,000 subscribers mark, and his content focuses on tutorials and strategies for making money through dropshipping.

His Instagram account @thaddy is also quite active, and he passed the 43,000 subscribers milestone months ago. His content there is somewhat more personal in that he mostly shares the luxurious lifestyle he’s been able to afford with his ventures.

You can see different advertisements and posts promoting his course on Instagram if you’re used to following this business style.

Reviewing eCom Challenges

eCom Challenges features 92 different videos among 23 modules, so it’s a bit on the longer side of dropshipping courses. You can pay and access the course on Teachables, so the videos are high quality and responsive.

The course itself presents as a challenge, and the idea is to provide you with a more entertaining approach to learning the business model.

Intro

Module 1 introduces you to the program. It’s your basic overview of what you can expect and the invitation to join the FB group, where you can post any doubts you might have for other students to help you.

Thaddy’s approach

This module offers 3 videos showing you how Thaddy creates his ventures. You learn different methods for creating your store, how to pick your theme, which widgets Thaddy recommends, among other things.

Recommended programs

In the 3rd module, you’re recommended several tools you can use to make your store more effective. Included here, we have Facebook and its advertisements to attract more customers. You have a lesson on how to test your ads (run several at the same time) and how you can catch visitor leads to reduce your workload automating and driving your sales.

Finding and validating products

This is your product research module, and Thaddy explains here how you can find products with certainty that they’ll sell. You also learn how to move said products into your store from online marketplaces (i.e. AliExpress), and he also goes into tools to facilitate this task, like Oberlo.

There’s also a lesson on using data from AliExpress to validate your ideas, one on how to look for new chances with Google Trends, and a last one on how to use Facebook’s search bar to look for the items that other stores are selling with success.

Marketing

Module 5 is just 2 videos on how you can market your store through Instagram.

It goes into how to use influencers on the platform to sell to their already-built audiences. There are also lessons now other Instagram-related strategies to expose your products to potential customers.

Optimizing your pages

You have 2 videos with a strategy on each to improve the pages for your products. The first one teaches you how you can find the best stock images using AliExpress.

The second one is about the lifecycle of your products. That’s basically what you can expect from your products when you list and sell them through a store.

Launch preparations

This module’s purpose is to go through what to do regarding orders, before and after they start coming in.

The lessons cover how to fulfill your orders, how your Instagram funnel should be (it’s essentially just the entire process your customers go through from your ad to buying your offer), the proper way to price your listings, and when/how to scale your store.

Important considerations

Modules 8 and 9 go into different scenarios and considerations you should keep in mind while running your business. It’s a very interesting section, but it’s more theory than anything you can actually put into practice.

You have lessons on what you should do if your store doesn’t get conversions, how using influencers has evolved through time, how to spot good influencers, a simplification of the dropshipping business model, and comparison between low, mid, and high ticket items.

You also have a lesson on how to make your store look clean and flawless, and a few theoretical videos responding questions like why you should use free+shiping, why working with large influencers, and why the most important sales quarter of the year is Q4 (October, November, December)

Facebook strategies

This module introduces us to Noah, who’s been invited to provide the Facebook training with a few advertising tactics.

The first approach you learn is how to use lookalike purchases to increase your conversions. There are also 3 videos explaining the process of setting up a funnel on Facebook to ensure sales for the products you promote through Facebook.

Product photos

This is a short module on how to take great-looking photos for under $10. You learn why the white background matters and how to speed up your photos.

Designing

This is kind of the continuation of the previous module, and it goes into editing and altering your photos as well as your store’s logo and design in general.

You have lessons on presets, manually editing your photos, how Thaddy designed his first logo, and why you want to pay attention to dimensions if you want to display your images properly.

Payments

Module 13 talks about payments in 2 videos. You have one about Shopify’s issue of holding payments (when Shopify keeps your money on hold after customers buy from you) and how to solve it, and the other one is about setting up your payments properly to get your funds faster.

Facebook Ads types

This lesson goes into the different types of Facebook ads you have at your disposure for marketing your products.

You learn about how to set up your Facebook Pixel, carousel and dynamic ads, retargeting ads, and custom and lookalike audiences.

I get why this content wasn’t included in the previous Facebook Ads module, but it definitely feels off to have them separated by 3 modules with nothing to do with the topic.

Facebook Ads strategies (again, it seems)

And it gets worse since then you have another module discussing strategies you can employ with the different types of Facebook ads you already learned. I was really distracted by this, but I doubt this will be a problem for everyone.

I just don’t like when courses’ structures look random.

Anyways, here you learn about a “3-ad objective” strategy, how you can stop spending money marketing to individuals who aren’t likely to buy, and how to get ideas for your images and captions.

Bull-rush

This module goes into a strategy used by Thaddy to boost his conversions. It revolves around analyzing your data, and the lessons explain to you what the strategy actually is and what requisites you need to meet if you want to use it.

Scaling

Module 16 is about why you want to outsource your work and how to do it. It’s essentially how you get to scale your store and spend less time on it while generating more money.

You learn how to test, self-scale, and some software that you can use to run your ads with less time and effort when testing. You can apply this knowledge yourself, but there’s also content on how to hire others to do this for you so you can focus on other tasks.

Influencers

This is the most substantial module in the course, and it focuses on Facebook and Instagram, as you might have seen coming throughout the course. However, FB influencers are a lot more underestimated than Instagram’s.

You’re introduced to another friend of Thaddy, whom he calls JT. The claim is that he made $45,000 in just one day, and this module gives you a motivational message from JT, but it also gives you a summary of how he did it. He focused on influencers.

You basically learn what they are and how you can find the most effective, both paid and free. You also learn how to reach out to them and get them to shout out your products.

The final videos are about how to work into a long-term partnership and how you can use the 2 platforms discussed efficiently.

Again, I don’t see why this section was separated from the other two. The Instagram marketing section was around 3 modules before the first Facebook strategies, and some of you might get lost with all the content in-between.

And there’s a final hit.

How to use Instagram

The closing 2 modules of the course are about how to use Instagram effectively, right after you learn how to use it with influencers, and 14 modules after the one about Instagram marketing.

You learn how to decide if you should automate your process and how to do so, using automated direct messaging, “Shadowbans” and how to avoid them, using hashtags efficiently, how to manage your growth, leveraging Instagram highlights and making logos or covers for them, how other brands are using highlights effectively, how to set up autocomment, and getting free traffic.

Bonuses

The bonuses come with a handful of guides and files you can use to make your entrepreneurship easier.

You have a directory with over 150 dropshipping companies in the US, a checklist, a list of the best 500 stores on Shopify, Thaddy’s favorite 30 influencers on Instagram, and some presets for both mobile and desktop you can use on your site.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

This course falls where most courses do so: providing enough depth. It definitely covers more ground than your standard dropshipping guru, but it’s still weak when it comes to providing actual depth instead of an overview.

It also fails to provide examples of the concepts being applied instead of just telling defining them and telling you how they should work.

However, the worst offence is the course structure. It feels like Thaddy didn’t really think about the appropriate order of the modules, and if you want to understand everything, you’ll probably find yourself jumping through the different modules, back and forth, not to forget anything between related modules.

Finally, it’s too expensive. You have courses like eCom Elites you can buy for as low as $197, and it offers a bit over twice the amount of content here, and it provides a lot more depth that’s well-structured.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my eCom Challenges Review and I wish you the best of luck.

The post eCom Challenges Review appeared first on Only Genuine Reviews.

source https://www.onlygenuinereviews.com/ecom-challenges-review/ source https://onlygenuinereviews.tumblr.com/post/190321868937

[topicprinter]

BackstoryI'm a college dropout who had mountains of student debt after realizing that you don't need a "photography degree" to get a good job. I landed a high paying photography position while I was at school and got all my equipment sponsored by the company. 4 years later I got into a depression and started to look for an outlet and found out about drop-shipping using shopify through a random teenager I happened to room next to on an Airbnb. I then quit my job, got into drops-shipping and a few years later I joined up with a friend to create my very first online toy brand.Drop-Shipping And My Transition To Branding.Going into it, my mindset was of a drop-shipper which kind of helped me…. But it kind of didn’t.As a drop-shipper, there were only a few things I cared about. How much money can I squeeze out of a product and how long will it last until I need to find a different product.In another words, I didn't care about longevity. After joining my friend in creating this toy business, I slowly changed my approach and have recently become a full pledge brand activist. Below was my immediate challenges and my approach as we make progress into creating our brand.+Challenge: High Product CostAmazing product but the cost was 7.50 and it was sold for 15.Expensive shippingLow conversion ratePositioning using social media.+High Product Cost ApproachWe simply can’t buy a million units to drive the cost down so we have to get creative when determining our price. As much as we wanted to increase the price, the perceived value was pretty low. So…. We got creative!Price Testing: We slowly increased the product cost that gave us a break-even point when advertising on fb. Settled at 18.Using Upsell: We then implemented upsell app by bold to help increase our average order value. We tried out multiple bundles. From buy one get the other for 30% off all the way to free shipping. The average order value did increase but we lost out in the end.Bundling: We then Bundled our toys into one package to also help with AOV.Effect: The bundle became one of the best selling items on our website.Average order value increased from $20 to $50 giving us a lot more legroom to reuse our money for advertisingUnintended ConsequencesAlthough our average order value went up, our customer lifetime value went down. As a new brand we realized the importance of long term relationship. Sending email marketing proved that by showing low conversion rate on people who bought all our products already. We did a few months in and we started to see positive results on our email marketing campaigns.+Expensive Shipping RateNot only was the shipping rate was expensive, it ensured lower conversion rate from new customers and increased advertising costs. Imagine buying an 18 dollar product to find out that your shipping cost is half of that price. Shopped around for the best rates and ended up linking with ezeeship.com. Not only did it have one of the best rates out there, the customer service was phenomenal. What cost us 7 dollars to ship before went as low as 4. Of course it all depends on the both locations and size of your packages but this is just to give you an idea.ProsIf you’re a small business, this is one of the best ways to get the cheapest shipping rate.You can use this service to ship products to virtually anything. (Amazon warehouse, Retailers, Mom and Pops, Etc.)Up to 80% off when shipping overseasUp to 65% off domestically and works with Fedex or UPS2% Off All USPS servicesYou can renegotiate your price once you start shipping larger volume.They are available outside U.S. (I know they do China and Philippines) Checkup on them.ConsOnly applies to people shipping their own products. Not for Ali dropshippers+Low Conversion Rate Solutions for Facebook/InstagramIf you’ve ever dealt with any sort of advertising, you’ll soon find out that this is very common. Your approach will determine how well your campaign does. There’s only 4 things I look at once the ads start running ( The Ad Creative, Target Audience, Landing Pages- View page, fall out).Low CTR on advertising: With this approach, I broke it down into different pieces.Ad Creative: Having only 6 products, we tried multiple ways to attract our audience, from fancy videos to carousel images. What worked best for us are video ads that point out benefits rather than features. Just imagine yourself scrolling down your feed and ask, would I want to buy this product? If this doesn’t get you thinking, just look at other ads that are doing well online and read books by Seth Godin.Audience: Using Facebook/Insta ads, we quickly learned that my ads matter most but choosing the right audience gives you a boost. I’ve seen many people boast about not using an audience at all but this approach have worked best for us until you start creating your lookalikes. I don’t have a general rule when to start. I test every 1000 milestones I reach (visits, purchase, add to cart, etc). If it doesn’t work, I’ll wait til 2000, 3, 4, etc.High Traffic But Low Conversion Rate: It’s not enough to just think about the ad. You also have to think about your customer experience online.Product Images: I keep this one simple. Best quality images that answers all your customers question about the product. BOOM! It’s simple but you’ll be surprised how many revisions we made to increase conversion rates.Product Descriptions: Personally, I have an okay foundation on what to write but I always check back to fellow copywriters. Best approach is to use an already successful model and modify it to your brand. I say brand because that’s important too! A consistent message across all your pages will help increase trust of your customers.Distractions: Sometimes your website’s bells and whistle actually distract your customers and make them not want to buy. One tool I use is an app called Hotjar. I believe google has something similar as well but what I like about hotjar is being able to see your customer’s full experience on your website. You’ll find out which ones are becoming a distraction and which one they like checking out on your web. What better way to optimize than to actually see what’s going on.+Positioning: What makes you special? 1 year in and we’re only started to realize the importance of this question. This actually inspired me to write this blog. It’s because now we’re a couple months in testing and the results are slowly starting to show. The main thing to think about is figuring out where you stand and how to make sure it’s consistent to all your social media channels. Here are the things we’re working on to help support our brand message.​Creative Strategy: An intentional effort to build creatives that are consistent with your brand for social media. I still struggle with this because you have to figure out your message and post daily and I mean Daily!!! Best way is to carve out 48 hours where you think about the type of posts, actually create them and put them up on Hootsuite. Great for Facebook, Instagram, twitter, etc. The only drawback is you can’t post 10 images on Instagram Hootsuite even though that’s the maximum limit for Instagram. Plan 1 month in advance.Blogs: Similarly, we use this to help support our brand. Looking at our numbers, we have had some purchases through our blogs. Not a significant amount at the moment but I imagine that if we start to create more content, it will be able to eventually support itself.Work in Progress: Since we just started to implement this, I feel as if we’re starting to head in the right direction but it is a work in progress. Once we get more results, I’d love to share our experiences with you!+Final thoughts: It’s our first year and what I’ve provided is no way the exact way you should run your business. Every brand is different and they will all face their unique challenges. What I aspire to do is share the process that have helped us along the way and hopefully help you on the e-commerce world. Would love to know your unique challenges and tribulations. I’d love to learn from you as well!

[tyreeloureiro31-blog]

Fb Messenger Personal.

Hiring a Virtalent VA is totally different from working with an impartial Virtual PA or Executive Assistant. Your VA is accessible if you need them to be. As a result of the cost of dwelling within the Philippines is relatively lower than that of Australia, outsourcing can assist with price reducing. Our service works in line with you - whether you're working from house, away on enterprise or with your family. By outsourcing from the Philippines, Australian companies can benefit from our low standard of living. Though, Filipino talents value much less, their work output and performance are still on par with worldwide standards. One of many primary the reason why an organization outsource is to chop price. Position‐play Re‐creates The Expertise Of Being Out Of The Loop" THE PHILIPPINES' LEADING ARTISTIC COURSE OF OUTSOURCING COMPANY SUPPORTING CLIENTS WITHIN THE US, UK, AUSTRALIA & MANY DIFFERENT NATIONS. Due to this trait, Filipinos attract many overseas corporations to outsource Filipino abilities. Labor prices in the Philippines are much cheaper as in comparison with other Asian nations, due to this, Filipinos are good candidates for offshoring. Effectively, here lies some great benefits of hiring a virtual assistant. Recognized for producing effective and efficient work output, Filipinos are meticulous and high quality driven. Along with fundamental administrative support, we provide specialty providers to our clients to get focused companies for his or her business process outsourcing pdf and personal wants. With a variety of accessible plans, we will cater our services to suit most business wants. There are a number of cost strategies to get cash to your VA. Yet, we additionally know many people need a information to get them started, for them we provide our company service. Touco Company is a virtual assistant agency offering help to shoppers worldwide. We hate hidden fees and firms that aren't transparent, so we provide full entry to our digital directory - no funky fees or markups. Doc collaboration is important for many distant teams. is a thriving virtual assistant company with mentions in 30Under30, CNN, empact 100, and more. Google Docs and Google Drive provide multiple shareable tools that make paperwork, spreadsheets, and other file sorts easily shareable, with user identification to establish messages and edit notes to a particular participant. Whether or not a nonprofit is writing a grant with enter and data from multiple departments, or an an agency is submitting a proposal for shopper work, finding platforms the place a number of users can contribute concurrently or by taking turns is important. Hackpad (owned by Dropbox) is one other well-liked platform. Hiring people to delegate duties to frees up your time to concentrate on actions that you enjoy and also you're good at. Perspective is every little thing — and with regards to remote groups, there's excellent news for managers: Most staff relish the chance to work remotely for dozens of causes, starting from decreased commute occasions to the chance to hack their schedule into day-parts that allow for better work-life balance. They offer assist from highly skilled assistants focusing on administrative and clerical work for several industries. Find out how to set the appropriate expectations together with your remote staff that lead to successful tasks and long-time period stability. For each job and process that is required to run your enterprise (together with the ones you do not like or are horrible at doing!), there are other individuals who specialize in those duties and truly get pleasure from them. Skilled leaders will set applicable objectives, help their team members and inspire the workforce to do their finest work wherever they could be located. You possibly can't be a master of everything, nor do you have to attempt to be. In different words, staff want the privilege of working remotely, and they're thus usually keen to fulfill the principles, necessities, expectations, and contingencies set forth by management to be able to retain their proper to distant. They actually depend upon where your business is predicated and the place your VA relies. Lesson discovered: In a remote staff, the primary precedence needs to be on building a strong management culture. The Philippines is among the quickest growing economies on the planet, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg. You don't need to hire somebody full time right off the bat. You've two decisions on where to search out virtual assistants, you may both find a freelance digital assistant or you possibly can hire one by way of an outsourcing company. It has a huge Information Technology and Enterprise Course of Outsourcing (IT-BPO) trade that is now its second largest source of earnings. It's necessary that you do move on to full time work because if in case you have somebody on part time or on a brief venture, their consideration shall be divided. It's quite attainable they'll now not be accessible simply while you want them most. Full time people are relying on your firm for his or her livelihood and usually tend to persist with you long run. Managing your schedule to dealing with your emails, social media and web site our group will supply high quality companies so you can give attention to a very powerful task of preaching. I've been entertaining the idea of opening up positions for distant staff. My experience is that staff who are working part time ultimately drop off and cease working altogether. After studying this, I believe we have now LOTS of inside processes to ascertain first, but I have confidence it can be achieved. You may get a style of working with somebody by hiring them for a small mission, after which when it is completed should you're glad transfer on to full time work. They're in search of an experienced Private Assistant with strong Mission Coordination skills for an ASAP start. Communication within a distant WordPress group is key. It is a approach for unethical items of SHT to hire individuals for jobs and paying them, nothing. And with email, internet and Skype expertise at their disposal, there may be little that they did in the workplace that they can not do remotely, besides, maybe, make the coffee. I labored with a largely remote staff when I ran product at KISSmetrics and ran a distant group in Boston for the two.5 years for my past enterprise, Greenhorn Connect. You should clearly define what you expect out of your staff and why, and share the results so group members can be taught from each other's initiatives. This transfer has created alternatives for many who love being a PA, but not the lengthy commute or the long office hours, to do the same work as a digital assistant, or VA, on a self employed foundation, from the comfort of their residence. If remote is the way in which in your workforce to go, it is essential that you are transparent regarding objectives, duties, and results. With a younger, educated, and technologically-savvy workforce that speaks English fluently, the Philippines has turn out to be a hub of expertise for tech corporations. Worse, when I googled about Mechanical Flip I noticed that it is simply exploitation of the poor and determined. Nevertheless, with the fitting software program, distant group collaboration can proceed to thrive, no matter where your people are situated. Since the staff can't meet face to face and talk about the workflow, the whole lot must be on-line and arrange in such a way that even when somebody misses a day of work, they will quickly be up to date. Ardor WEB OPTIMIZATION is an web advertising and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION outsourcing firm with offices in Australia, Cambodia and the Philippines. Customer Service and Support: In all probability the more traditional use of distant employees is for customer service, the place the employee gives phone or internet assist for customer questions or inquiries. Digital Assistants can do. When you've got a doc that simply must be shared, and won't be edited simultaneously, then you can place your documents (equivalent to an excel file) in a shared Google Drive or in Dropbox Many challenge management tools also have file sharing and collaboration features, in order that's one other alternative for collaborating on paperwork. Further, not certainly one of these giant employers has seen an uptick in creativity or innovation since they introduced their employees again into the workplace. Unlike other Asian and Indonesian countries, the Philippines has a distinctly Western culture. If in case you have a document that's being edited by many individuals, Google Drive is the best option. English is the primary language for business and education. Lack of coordination in any workforce usually leads to confusion and lost productiveness. Our teams stay up-to-date with the Search Engine Optimization techniques and strategies that work for numerous shoppers and in varied situations. Salaries, overhead prices, and the overall price of dwelling are significantly decrease within the Philippines than within the United States and different Western nations. It was initially settled by the Spanish earlier than being ruled by the United States up till 1946. We employ a mixture of in-home and distant staff and offer full-service digital advertising merchandise, Search Engine Optimization companies and support Also, we run ongoing coaching applications.

[onlinemarketingcourses]

How important are featured snippets and how can you get them? Search Engine Watch

Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.

Despite the fact that featured snippets are a vital part of contemporary marketing and SEO success, however, many still struggle when it comes to properly leveraging featured snippets to the greatest extent possible, with some unlucky few having no idea where to begin at all.

Just how important are featured snippets, and how can you go about getting them?

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of featured snippets and how you can bolster your SEO.

Today’s searchers are dominated by featured snippets

If you’re familiar with just about any popular search engine, from Google to Bing, you’ve likely already encountered featured snippets many times, even if you’re unsure of what they are.

To put it simply, featured snippets are those tidbits of information and links to websites that appear the highest in search results. When customers plug a question into Google, the first link and answer that comes up is known as the “zero position.”

It’s this option that gets the most clicks and pageviews.

It’s thus naturally desirable to have featured snippets in as much search queries as possible, as it necessarily directs customers towards your page and information rather than that of your competitors.

So how do I get a featured snippet?

The easiest way for you to ensure that your business or website can cash in on featured snippets? Make your content search engine optimized. This helps the algorithms which power sites like Google direct curious web-surfers towards your content.

There are many ways to make your content SEO, though some dated methods are still in use when they’ve long-since grown out of fashion.

Focusing your content on a single word or search term, for instance, used to be a staple strategy for getting featured snippets. However, it’s no longer ideal as the way algorithms operate has changed with time.

To avoid relying on these outdated methods of getting featured snippets, you should take some time and study up on the common SEO mistakes that too many small businesses make when trying to stand out in the digital realm.

You need more than digital expertise to make your content stand out – sometimes, you just have to make sure it’s not ladled with common errors and simple mistakes that a little homework ahead of time could have prevented.

As brutal as it may sound, the next step is scouting out your competition to steal their techniques and swipe away their snippets to make them your own.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and your business needs to do whatever’s necessary in order to stand out from the crowd. Finding and stealing major snippets that drive traffic to your rival sites is thus an imperative part of success in the 21st century economy. 

The exception being, of course, that you have zero intention of cashing in on the ongoing digital boom.

By targeting the snippets your competitors rely upon the most, you’re building your market share by swiping away their consumers and luring them to your superior products or services.

Stealing snippets from your competitors

Don’t be uncomfortable with the notion of “stealing snippets” from your competitors. First of all, you’re not actually “stealing” anything in the illegal sense.

Furthermore it’s a necessary part of success in today’s market that everyone is aware of. You should rather view this as a natural consequence of the cut-throat nature of modern marketing, where only those on the top get any page views at all.

The first thing you should do is head to a service like SEMrush and type in the URL of your competitors so that you can get a glimpse at their site analytics.

By heading into the “organic research” tab and clicking on “position,” you’ll be able to view the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their site.

Be sure to mirror this language as closely as possible if you’re trying to mimic the success of a thriving competitor.

Other low-hanging fruit that you can focus on includes the social media posts of others in your industry. These are likely jam-packed with viral content which you can study so as to embrace the better parts of their ad campaigns.

Recovering snippets that have been stolen from you

You should also take some time to learn about how to recover snippets which have been stolen from you. After all, your competitors aren’t going to stand idly by as you swipe their customer base out from under them.

Mastering the art of tracking down and reclaiming your lost featured snippets can seriously bolster the traffic you enjoy on a monthly basis, and it can even become a sense of pride for entrepreneurs when they reclaim their lost mantle at the top of the search results in their economic niche.

Take a deep dive into the art of recovering stolen snippets and don’t be afraid to run an audit to see if your competitors have been sniping away at your customer base.

This brutal aspect of running a business should serve as a constant reminder of how fierce competition can be, which is why it’s so important to distinguish yourself from the crowd and establish your links as credible and click-worthy.

Making your featured snippets last

Many small business owners are enthused when they get their first featured snippet, as they rightfully recognize this moment as the turning point in their digital careers. Sustaining the momentum you’ve started to develop is easier said than done, however, and making your featured snippets last once you have them should be at the top of your to-do list.

By tapping into ever-spirited nature of social media, you can guarantee that your brand and links are always generating a buzz.

Making your featured snippets last isn’t always possible; sooner rather than later, someone may kick you out of your spot, or worse yet your content might just become dated and thus unable to attract viewers at all because it’s simply stale. Producing engaging content on a regular basis is thus an essential part of staying at the top of the featured snippet scoreboard, and to do that you should be mastering today’s leading social media platforms.

SEO-content and social media boards go together hand in hand, so you need to integrate your strategies for the two if you want your digital brand to endure. Content promotion and link-building aren’t easy and investing in advertisements and SEO-content that helps you bolster the potential of securing a featured snipped doesn’t always come cheap. Getting a featured snippet to prominently display your brand or services online can be a godsend, however, and generate tons of business for even the smallest of companies.

Consider enlisting the help of some social media talent to help you generate a digital buzz, and never stop on your quest to produce engaging, SEO content that will cut through the noise and reach out directly to users when they search.

Chris Porteous is the CEO of Framestr / My SEO Sucks, building high performing sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

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Websites suffer an average of 58 attacks every day. Here is a very thorough, careful overview of how these attacks can seriously impact on your SEO.

What do we need to know about technical SEO in 2019? Here’s an overview to keep in mind, based on a presentation by Mike King of iPullRank at TechSEOBoost.

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No one thinks this is 'the end of Facebook' ... yet investors sense blood in the water

There is no law that requires Facebook continue to be the dominant social media app in our lives.

The history of social media is a history of apps that have eventually stagnated and mostly disappeared.

The environment is sending negative signals about engagement, users, advertising, the stock, and regulation.

Investors sense blood in the water. “We are admittedly struggling to identify a catalyst to change the narrative,” Barclays analyst Ross Sandler said recently.

I opened up Facebook the other day and the top post in my news feed was from a friend I haven’t seen in more than 10 years. She was asking if anyone could recommend a doctor in a Southern seaside town 80 miles from where I live. “Does anyone know a good osteopath?” she wrote, “I'm in agony and mine has left the area! Thanks x”

My friend got lots of advice on a new physician, but I breathed a heavy sigh: This isn’t fun. This isn’t what I come here for. This isn’t the vital, exciting, surprising - often enraging - experience that Facebook used to be, when news and people’s reactions to news dominated the news feed.

It was boring.

Yet, this is exactly how Mark Zuckerberg’s wants Facebook to work now. Since he decided at the beginning of this year to dial down posts from news organizations and boost content from friends and family, the content that is increasingly dominating my Facebook - and yours - is hyperlocal, personal, and … trivial.

On his most recent earnings call, Zuckerberg acknowledged the change would have a negative effect on the amount of time people spend with the app. “I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down as a result,” he said. “We estimate that these updates decrease time spent on Facebook by roughly 5% in the fourth quarter.”

Since he uttered those words on January 31, Facebook stock has been in a jagged decline, from $187 per share to $160, down 14%.

It’s premature to talk about “the end of Facebook,” of course. The company has 2 billion users. It is not MySpace.

But there is no law of physics that requires Facebook continue to be the dominant social media app in our lives. In fact, the history of social media is that all these apps eventually experience some sort of decline or stagnation, often as new ones come along but sometimes simply because the masses decide one platform is suddenly uncool, and they move away. TheGlobe.com, Friendster, Path, Livejournal, YikYak, Secret, Tumblr. Twitter and Snapchat have both seen their user-base growth slow.

Is that what we’re looking at now, the end of Facebook, at least as a dominant force in our lives?

Wall Street now expects Facebook to be regulated

The environment contains some severe negatives:

Negative signal on advertisers: In an attempt to rein in some of the outrage around the way Facebook harvests data from users and sells it, Zuckerberg also announced he would end the “Partner Categories” program that allows advertisers to target users based on their own third-party data. It’s likely that Partner Categories was not a big business for Facebook, but nonetheless it still represents a pulling-in of the horns.

Negative signal on engagement: If Zuck’s turn away from news in the news feed does reduce engagement, look for the stock to be punished after the next earning call.

Negative signal on GDPR and ePrivacy: The EU is about to inflict a huge surprise on Facebook as all its European users will be required to re-give permission for all the data Facebook takes from them. 20% of all Facebook users are European. There are more Europeans on Facebook than Americans. These users are likely to reduce what they share with Facebook, and thus their engagement with it, once Facebook is forced to comply with the new laws.

Negative signal on US regulation: Zuckerberg now says he expects to be regulated. “I actually am not sure we shouldn’t be regulated. I think in general technology is an increasingly important trend in the world. I think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than ‘yes or no should we be regulated?’” Wall Street also expects that to happen.

Negative signal on the stock: Zuckerberg's voting control of the stock - even as he personally sells down his stake in the company - means Facebook is his personal kingdom. It is not a company primarily interested in performing for its investors. And Zuckerberg makes mistakes.

Negative signal on users: #DeleteFacebook became a trend a few days ago. When that trend hit Uber a while back it lost 5% of its market share in weeks.

Again, none of these moves are likely to “kill” Facebook, but they could certainly take the shine off it to an extent that it becomes like email. Something that everyone has, but you try to limit your use of it.

This is the defining issue among stock analysts right now. “We are admittedly struggling to identify a catalyst to change the narrative from regulatory back to innovation,” Barclays analyst Ross Sandler and his team told their clients recently.

Most analysts rate the stock a “buy.” But they hate the story.

“It’s unlikely many users fully comprehend the magnitude of personal data Facebook and others have aggregated"

“A recent survey indicated 79% of consumers in the EU didn't know that GDPR was coming, but once informed, 82% of them said they plan to take advantage of their new rights (i.e. to see, limit, or erase their data). This, combined with the continued public scrutiny around data privacy speaks to how there is a negative feedback risk that users will choose to materially reduce FB’s access to their data,” Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowack and team told their clients.

Worse may yet be to come. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a big deal not because anyone did anything illegal but because most consumers are clueless as to how much data - and therefore power - Facebook has on them. And when they find out they do not like it.

“What users chose to share with Facebook is only a small portion of what the company knows about its users. The company aggregates tons of data, from third-party brokers and ad tech companies (e.g Liveramp), to put together a startlingly deep picture of users,” says Lloyd Walmsley and his Deutsche Bank team. “It’s unlikely many users fully comprehend the magnitude of personal data Facebook and others have aggregated.”

That could drive further regulation - another negative - against Facebook.

“It is clear that the extent to which data has been collected and the way it has been used is a big surprise to consumers. If anything, this has the potential to be more pernicious either because (a) it drives a consumer backlash against the online players or, worse, (b) it is a catalyst for tighter regulation in the US (perhaps along the lines already on the cusp of being implemented in the EU),” Thomas Singelhurst and the team at Citi told their clients.

MORE ON THE PROBLEMS FACING FACEBOOK:

Wall Street analysts have dramatically changed their tone on Facebook, and are now speculating about 'fundamental risk' and a 'negative feedback loop'

Facebook will need to re-register consent from all its users in Europe under the EU's new privacy laws

Wall Street is beginning to worry about the effect of GDPR on Facebook

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Google, Apple, and Amazon are in a war that no one will win

[sublimedeal]

Justin Cenner – Ecommerce Bootcamp 2018 ( TShirt Bootcamp )

The Bootcamp is NOT just another eCommerce Course.

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This insane deal expires soon so don’t miss out! You ALSO get the entire Bonus Package listed at the bottom of this page!

The Bootcamp Mentor Program is a six week online video coaching and direct mentorship program that teaches you every single step needed to create and grow a massively profitable Shopify eCommerce business.

On top of the world class training videos, Bootcamp Members get direct access to me as a mentor. This combination of coaching and course videos has resulted in over 400+ student success stories and makes The Bootcamp Mentor Program the most unique, fully featured Shopify training program on the market today.

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But now… Business is Booming!! I set out to re-learn what I thought I knew. I invested in the top programs and masterminds. I networked with everyone who would talk to me – and I finally had my breakthrough moment.

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– Multiple 7 figures in Shopify sales – Mentored 100s of Students To 6/7 Figure Businesses – Featured eCom Expert in Tai Lopez’s Programs – Featured Speaker At Multiple eCom Events – ClickFunnels 2 Comma Club Award

4 Crucial Reasons The eCommerce Bootcamp Is The Easiest Way To Always Turn A Profit From Shopify: 01 Hours of Updated Video Training Hours upon hours of in-depth coaching videos walking you through every facet of the Shopify business. I cover everything including Shopify, Print on Demand, Facebook Advertising, Scaling, Product Research, and way more.

02 Justin As Your eCom Mentor It’s more than just a course! You get me as your eCom mentor. You’ll get coaching and support in the private member’s only group where I answer EVERY SINGLE QUESTION that gets posted. I personally take the time to answer each and every one that you post.

03 Access To World Class Print on Demand Designers Finding a good designer is not only time consuming… it’s expensive. All of my bootcamp members get access to my designers. Not only do you get access, but they’ve agreed to some crazy low prices since I can get them so much work.

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[letterstoandrew]

The day after your funeral

Idk how we move on from this. From what you left us with. I feel like this is some how you getting one over on us again. That you're gone and here we are at a loss for your big presence. Listen, alright, you were right. You ARE the smartest, funniest, most handsome dude who we should know and assume just knows everything. You ultimately weren't wrong. And while I never knew you to feel bad or regretful about much of anything, I don't think you'd feel good about what you left us with. What I do think you'd get a laugh over is how you always claimed you were "the worst" but in the end you were in fact the best. So you win on that one broski. You also got another one over on me by leaving before I had the chance to properly give you the business for all these other things you did right before you were taken and I found out after. I feel like you'd get a good chuckle out of that too and say something along the lines of, well ya bro we both know I generally am the worst and always get what I want.

Almost always anyways broseph. I now know a lot more about the things that you wanted. This is where my heart breaks the most. I am not sure why you didnt share those things with me. I had always prided in that our friendship was always open and honest but at the end there were quite a few things that came forward that ultimately question that.

Idk why you didnt tell me more about how happy you were with your gf and the kids. Or for that matter that she had kids. And on top of that, that you were moving in with her. You were one of my best friends and I was already so happy for you that you were dating her. And I feel like I was robbed the opportunity to be even happier for you. One of the last conversations we had in person was I hugged you and told you how happy I was for you. And you said, I know bro. You said that you felt like when people really mean that, it doesn't need to be said but that you respected that I'm the type of person that needs to say it. I am not sure why you didn't feel the need or want to really share with me how happy you indeed were.

I also don't know why you reopened my feelings door for you after I had closed it and moved on and it was so unfortunately timed. Idk why you told me what you did, maybe I should feel thankful?? And I had trusted in what you said and then that ended up being taken back or buried or idk. Idk what you did with it and why you even brought it the fuck up. I wish you hadn't. Because I had all of these feelings and then when I learned all of the other things that have been going on for months, i realized you were never really mine to love.

I felt so alone and on the outside at your services. No one knew me before that moment. I felt like you kept me, our feelings for each other, and ultimately our friendship in this private little bubble. That no one really knew. I never advertised anything with you because I knew you were a private a person (at least with me anyways I am finding) and so no one but my closest friends even knew what we were. And even now I feel like I have to hide whatever it was that we existed as truly. I don't even really know what it was truly anymore anyways. And any hurt feelings I have ultimately do not matter because you're gone. I don't even have it in me to rise enough to get mad at you. I just feel confused. Sad. Mourning. And mostly I am overwhelmed with sadness about the feelings of loss your gf feels and your family feels. Again, none of whom you ever shared with me while you were living.

You and I had multiple conversations about how disconnected I was with other ppl in your life and if anything bad happened how would I ever find out? I asked you multiple times to keep an in case of emergency contact list with my number on it so someone would know to call me. Literally a week before you died I had this convo again with you. I told you I'd probably find out in passing on the rugby facebook chat I'm in because someone somewhere saw it on FB. And you know fucking what? That's exactly how it happened you asshole. I found out in a facebookchat from people who didn't even know I knew you as intimately as I did. And thank God I did. Otherwise, how would I have ever known?

Idk why you said you had so much love and respect for me and then kept me so distant from everything. You didnt even tell me you had younger siblings. I also found that out on fb. Oh or that you were engaged before you and I dated. I met her at your viewing. And I was overwhelmed with her hurt too. I knew she had to have been who you were living with when we had our 1st date. But I didnt know it was as serious as that.

I have been lucky enough that your family and gf has been overwhelming kind to me. That they have welcomed me and gave me love as best they can but ultimately they are grieving the most and only have so much they are able to give. How can I ask of them to have to be there for me too? I feel selfish. So really, I have been grieving by myself. This makes me angry too. You alienated me so much from all these important things in your life which left me alone and outside in the end. I cannot tell you how shitty that has felt. And then yeah literally, I cannot tell you, so it then too just seems pointless. It all seems so pointless. The only real steady emotions I have is how much I miss you. How much I love you. How much I love the people who loved you like your gf and your family and friends. Man this sucks. And man you suck for some of this.

Idk dudeski. I still can't believe it, don't understand why, and am so at a lost for you. Anything that reminds me of you, which is a fucking lot, makes me nauseous with grief. I hate eating because food was such a big part of you. I hate having coffee. I hate seeing something funny and all I want to do is send it to you. I make myself listen to the podcasts you suggested and I hate that too. I've been listening to ones on grief. One girl said she would scroll through her contacts just searching for someone who would appreciate the joke as much as the person she lost would. That's how I feel with you. That no one will appreciate it as much as you would have. It's "intents"....like camping. I know you hated that shitty ass joke that I shared with you constantly.

I hate having to hold myself back from contacting you bc there's nothing to contact. You were there in that room but you weren't. It looked like you but didn't. Your body didn't feel like your body. Only your hair felt right. Only your hair felt like you. It broke my heart to hear your gf share the small things I overheard about you. About your mustache, about the goals you had with each other. I am most mad about this. That this was taken away. I wanted those things for you. I always told you that your happiness was important to me and that's all I wanted for you like any true broski. Looking at how you were with them, I felt like I was looking at your true self. Like you had found happiness. And I so wanted that for you and now its been taken away from not just you but them. And that makes me so mad. It is such an injustice to them and to you. I don't understand.

And you know I am a polite person, so I would never take it away from someone who believed it, but I know you're just gone. That's it. Just like that. You were not one to believe in god or anything of the sort. So it felt so odd at your service. Your brother said it best, you would have been pissed. But like I told you bro ( and you jokingly said the same thing back to me) not everything is about you. And that service wasn't for you really, it was for everyone else. So maybe really in the end we got one over on you. That doesn't feel good though. I'd rather you were here. I wish I would have shared at your service. I didn't feel it was my place since no one knew me. I felt like we weren't saying enough but at the same time we never will be able to. All of this was so unexpected. I have never met someone so full of vigor and life before. You were unstoppable, immovable, unshakable. It shouldn't have been you. It wasn't your time. It just wasn't yet. Life did such an injustice in doing that to you. In doing that everyone who loved you. I fucking hate it. I absolutely fucking hate everything about it and there isn't anything I can do about it. But write these letters to you who will never read them. Damnit you're #theworst and yet not at all. Such a beautiful complicated SOB and I know you're pleased by that. Miss you bro. Forever. Everyday.

[martechadvisor-blog]

The Net Neutrality Vote: 10 Ways it will Impact Marketers and Advertisers

Will the end of neutrality change digital marketing forever? Will innovation be the victim and the saviour? Two MTA Category Advisors - Mike Kelly, Category Expert for AdTech and Christine Crandell, Category Expert for Customer Experience weigh in, and we examine 10 possible impact areas of the end of net neutrality

What comes to mind when you think of the internet? Freedom. Open. Information Superhighway. A place where even little players can punch above their weight. No doubt every individual will feel the impact when plans and monthly ISP bills become complicated and higher. But what about marketers and advertisers? What are the possible impact areas for us? Let’s find out.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down or charge money for specific websites and online content. - Wikipedia

What is Net Neutrality?

The FCC just voted to repeal laws that protected the principle of net neutrality. But what is net neutrality? It’s the principle that all content, publishers, websites, platforms, applications, users - basically all stakeholders of the internet - must be treated equally by ISPs and government regulations (see box).

What lane are you riding? Alas, as with many things under this administration, those days are well over. Now, **the ISPs pretty much have the power to decide what online content is delivered at what speed to whom. Think they will exercise that power? Is the sky blue?**

Imagine that you are Amazon and I am small-time-local-artisan- both of us are trying to get our artisanal cheese to you. But Amazon’s delivery vans have access to the fast lane to your house and I have to take the long, pot-holed, toll-free route: who do you think will go out of business?

So, what does it mean for marketers and advertisers?

For starters, SEO, online advertising, content marketing- all the cornerstones of your digital marketing and customer engagement strategy will be high impact areas.

Here are **10 areas of marketing that could be impacted by the end of net neutrality**

1. SEO: Organic reach will become more difficult. Even more difficult. It wont matter how skilled you are at SEO best practices- if you aren’t on the fast lane, you may not get found that fast or easily. Or ever.

2. Offers: the nature of incentivisation may change. Instead of offering free trials, marketers may need to offer free bandwidth + free trial offers!

3. Online advertising: is going to get more expensive. Because the adexchanges – small and large – that offer us the freedom to pick and choose our spends will be forced to pay higher rates to have content served up in the fast lane. Which means they will either pay and pass the cost onto advertisers (you) - making it more expensive to advertise - or - they will potentially go out of business. In the latter case, the market will consolidate, leaving only a few big players, who anyway will charge more. Either way - get set for online advertising in all forms getting either slower or more expensive.

4. Content marketing credibility: the reason content marketing wins as a strategy is because it enjoys credibility. Prospects seeking information will find lots of it- sponsored or otherwise- and will be able to make more informed decisions by gathering their own portfolio of intelligence. Unfortunately, once they know that large swathes of content are not even showing up to them and most of what they see is only because someone paid the money to be visible – content marketing will start to lose its value.

5. Content distribution: Dependence on ‘free’ platforms like Twitter, FB, Linkedin and other social media may increase for smaller players, who will probably be pushed to publish on these sites where the traffic already is. Good content may become the new currency – as marketers are forced to give away good content for free (ungated) in order to remain visible. Content marketing may become more about creating great content but leaving the distribution to large social media brands that can afford the toll to reach wider audiences.

6. User experience will suffer. all the SEO in the world won’t help if people are having varying net experiences, seeing varying search results and experiencing differing load time and speed for some bands versus others. The players in the ‘slow-lane’ will be hoping audiences don’t abandon us while the page buffers (in spite of our IT team’s best efforts). Websites will take longer to load up, videos will start ‘buffering’ again - as a result, marketers will pay the price of higher bounce rates.

7. Online lead generation will suffer. A biased playing field, disgruntled customers, lower credibility of content, and skewed advertising options will add up to poorer intent signals. The entire online lead gen industry may be at some risk.

8. Back to commissions? Advertising may or may not become more expensive but it will certainly become more obtuse than ever- confusing packages with differential pricing for every single add-on will mean that Agencies will become relevant again (end of the self-serve model) and be able to charge more to help make sense of it all for you. The hard-won battle to move away from standard agency commissions to a performance based model may just have been lost!

9. Analytics and metrics will get distorted: since the playing field is not level, it will be hard to trust the numbers and measure in a comparable way. There will be other variables impacting performance at play that may be outside the marketers control. This may set up a new normal for the way we approach metrics.

10. Your affiliations will decide your fate: is an ISP decides they don’t want to be associated with you, your brand, your values or your audiences, they may just cut you off. Almost like some publications who refuse to (unofficially) carry a certain kind of content or advertising. Goodbye freedom of speech?

  MIKE KELLY, PARTNER AT KELLY NEWMAN VENTURES AND MARTECH ADVISOR CATEGORY EXPERT FOR AdTech WEIGHS IN ON THE IMPACT ON ADTECH...

What this end of net neutrality means to advertisers and advertising? At first, not a whole lot. Down the road it could be dramatic. Let’s face it, this puts the ISP's in a position to create multiple new revenue streams around the speed and delivery of content and ads. As more video content moves to streaming services, more video/TV advertising will be streaming as well. Conceivably, your ISP could charge more to ensure your video ad plays without buffering. The increase in complexity and cost could be a giant headache and expense.  

Is there a silver lining or opportunity for advertisers who want to further customize creatives to go with their programmatic ad buys? Again, it puts the ISP in the pole position so if made available, they can work with advertisers and create targeted advertising services. It will mean that ISP's will have more incentive to focus on advertising and targeting. At this time, it’s unclear how it will enhance customized creative. How would this impact the analytics and metrics of programmatic adbuys? ISP's can control the flow of data more aggressively and create new categories of inventory around speed and accessibility.

Silver linings, anyone?

**Innovation is the victim, and innovation will be the saviour.**

Could email be the big winner in a world where online experiences are going to change dramatically?

Will mobile marketing be a game changer?

Will we see amazing innovation in content marketing techniques?

Will someone – a disruptor of mythical proportions- come up with a whole new way of accessing the internet? We may not even need the ISPs anymore then…

With every closed door, another one opens. So, I’d like to end this on an optimistic note. Will this create disruptions we (or they) never saw coming? Possible. Nothing is outside the realm of human creativity.

My closing question is – for the moment - will money become more important than merit on the internet? Most likely. But more importantly, are the big ISPs being penny wise and pound foolish on this one?

  THE ‘AGE OF THE CUSTOMER’ WILL GO BACK TO ‘THE DARK AGES

CHRISTINE CRANDELL, President, New Business Strategies, and MarTech Advisor Category Expert for CX, shares her perspective on how the end of Net Neutrality will impact CX, innovation and the digital transformation experience For decades 'all things cloud' were heralded as the future. Get on board or be left behind was the mantra. It didn't matter if you were B2B or B2C, the global economy is hooked on the internet. Heck, I can't get my email if my phone is not connected to the Internet and I will go to great lengths to make sure I'm always connected. The global economy assumes unfettered, ubiquitous access with increasing bandwidth to support our appetite for instant access to all applications and data, petabytes of data. The effect of the reversal of Net Neutrality is more than being held hostage for access and an Orwellian dampening of freedom of speech - it will dramatically and negatively impact customer satisfaction and service and innovation. The real loser is The Customer. Companies are in the midst of shifting the majority of their operations online - everything from accounting, supply chains, sales enablement, reporting to manufacturing systems. The result is a significant percentage of the economy is wrapped around the customer. Whether it's through programmatic ads, store beacons, self-serve applications, AI-enabled chat, real time collaboration or ecommerce, post-purchase support, satisfaction ratings, crowd sourced help, or influencer marketing - it's all about the customer. The reversal of Net Neutrality puts a choke hold on the digital experience transformation. Sure Facebook, Google, SAP, Microsoft and Amazon will pay to enable fast access but smaller innovative companies like Totango, Bluescape, Cogito, PayScale, and the emerging digital customer acquisitions companies like LQDigital will not be able to. Their customers and prospects will encounter a slower, patience-testing experience through no fault of the brand. If you're Bluescape enabling a studio to globally collaborate on a movie; slower access equals death. The same is true for Totango and companies like Cogito and ZipWhip that enable brands to better understand and serve their customers more effectively. What will you do when the Lyft app is slow and you get the spinning clock? And Uber is no better? What are you going to do and who are you going to complain about? Oh right, NextDoor isn't loading on your phone, either. Think about this people. Sadly, most customers will not understand what is happening and will blame the brand. In response brands will shift investment out of engineering and marketing and into paying for priority bandwidth, thus stymieing innovation and the ability to be more customer aligned. Customers will interpret the slower pace of product enhancement and support as a weakness of the brand. Otherwise innovative good companies will either fail or be forced into acquisitions that are less than ideal for them and their investors. In the midst of all the turmoil, the customer will get lost. Promising new technologies and innovations like blockchain, IoT, and deep learning AI will be side lined because start-ups won't be able to reach their target customers. The emerging focus on cybersecurity, which is desperately needed and long overdue, will be side lined too. The result is the Age of the Customer will step back into the Dark Ages. My advice is to not throw out that landline phone, that dusty phone book from 2010 or your cookie jar of cash - we're about to become our parents. Thanks to the FCC; not really.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[junker-town]

Here’s what the hell happened to Florida State

Five keys to the Noles becoming 2017’s most disappointing team.

Every year, we swing and miss.

In 2016, LSU was the preseason No. 5. Ole Miss was 11th, and Michigan State was 12th. They combined to go 14-20.

In 2015, Auburn was preseason No. 6, Arizona State was 15th, and Georgia Tech was 16th. They went 16-22.

In 2014, Oklahoma was fourth and South Carolina was ninth. They went 15-11.

There are always the alternative stories, too. TCU going from unranked to the brink of the CFP in 2014, Penn State doing the same in 2016.

Sometimes, we whiff spectacularly. My favorite example has long been 1997 Colorado. The Sporting News, no stranger to bold predictions, named Rick Neuheisel’s Buffaloes No. 1 in the preseason. The AP had them eighth. They fell apart against a rugged schedule, going 1-5 against ranked teams on the way to a limp 5-6 finish.

The 2017 season might have produced the standard-bearer for swings and misses.

Florida State began the season third in the AP poll. I damn near decided to rank Jimbo Fisher’s Seminoles even higher than that.

They returned all the pieces they could need on defense, from Buck end Josh Sweat to linebacker Matthew Thomas to the star, safety Derwin James, thought to be the best player in college football.

If there was an issue, it would come on offense.

No Dalvin Cook. Cook was an amazing security blanket for a first-year starting quarterback. He not only rushed for 1,765 yards (and behind a line that started nine guys at least twice, no less) and powered an offense that ranked fifth in Rushing S&P+; he also caught 34 passes for 513 yards and a 53 percent success rate. Among other things, FSU doesn’t win the Orange Bowl without Cook.

No receivers? FSU must replace last year’s top four receiving targets: Travis Rudolph, Jesus Wilson, Kermit Whitfield, and Cook. Rudolph, Wilson, and Whitfield combined for 120 catches, 1,616 yards, and nine touchdowns. On a per-target basis, they weren’t great, but continuity in the receiving corps is a big thing, and FSU doesn’t have much. [...]

FSU’s line ranked 72nd in stuff rate and 63rd in Adj. Sack Rate, and that was with All-American left tackle Roderick Johnson and all-conference guard Kareem Are.

You had to have faith in FSU’s recruiting and offensive coaching to believe in the Noles as a national title contender, but it wasn’t difficult to find that faith, especially with the return of quarterback Deondre Francois.

On the first Saturday of the season, however, Francois was lost for the season with a patella tendon injury. That redefined the Noles’ season, virtually eliminating a national title run.

But Fisher still had a roster full of former blue-chippers. It was easy to assume they would still have a large role in the ACC title race and would have a successful, if marginally disappointing, season.

Wrong on all counts.

On Friday night, Florida State lost 35-3. It was the third time in four years that a Fisher team has lost by 30-plus points, but whereas the other two came against Heisman winners and good teams — Oregon in 2014, Louisville in 2016 — this one came against ... Boston College. It dropped FSU to an incredible 2-5 for the season.

FSU’s first four losses were at least competitive. Before Francois’ injury, the Noles trailed Alabama only 10-7 late in the third quarter. And losing to NC State, Miami, and Louisville by a combined 13 is not the end of the world. You could craft a narrative that FSU wasn’t that far away from being FSU.

No matter how impressive BC has been over the last few weeks, however, you can’t create any sort of positive spin from Friday night.

At this point, the Noles have about a 10 percent chance at best of reaching bowl eligibility. They are on their way to their first losing season since 1976, Bobby Bowden’s first year. When the wheels came off for Bowden at the end of his career, it meant unacceptable 7-6 seasons. There is a chance this FSU team finishes about 3-8.

So what the hell happened?

You can’t just pin this all on Francois’ injury. Maybe that’s worth an extra couple of wins at this point, but again, FSU is 2-5. And a recruiting machine like Florida State’s should have at least a tolerable backup quarterback situation.

It should be able to produce a run game capable of taking pressure off of a young QB. And good lord, no matter how many injuries we’re talking about, it should be capable of ranking better than 110th in Off. S&P+ at the moment.

In the BC aftermath, we’ve seen a new narrative: that FSU is this year’s version of Notre Dame, a talented team suffering from a rash of close losses with a stale coaching staff. And to be sure, Fisher — whose buyout is large enough to preclude any sort of hot seat conversations — will likely make quite a few staff changes this offseason.

But the advanced stats paint a shaky picture. Brian Kelly’s Fighting Irish finished the 2016 season 26th in S&P+ despite the 4-8 record, suggesting they weren’t far from improvement. FSU’s down at No. 75 right now.

Their offense finished 36th, their defense 28th. Kelly made a series of changes, but at least one was not because of some urge; offensive coordinator Mike Sanford finished 2016 well-regarded enough to earn the Western Kentucky head coaching job.

Kelly still made some great choices. Despite a new quarterback (and, yes, some QB injuries) offensive coordinator Chip Long has the Irish up to 12th in Off. S&P+ and first in Rushing S&P+. Fellow new coordinator Mike Elko has a defense that is both aggressive and good at the bend-don’t-break routine. The Irish are 18th on that side of the ball.

Some new blood on the field and sideline made a world of difference for Notre Dame. But the Irish didn’t have that far to go.

FSU still has time to rebound a bit, but the Noles have a lot more questions to answer than Kelly did a year ago.

Here are the five things most wrong with the FSU product on the field at the moment.

1. Extreme offensive youth

This doesn’t explain an offensive ranking in the triple digits, but it has to be mentioned. The offense has been wrecked by injury, far beyond Francois. The Noles’ backfield is now manned primarily by true freshmen: quarterback James Blackman, who did not enroll early, and running back Cam Akers.

There isn’t a senior to be found in the receiving corps. The only senior with more than one target this year is former safety Ermon Lane, who moved back to offense because of injuries. Junior Auden Tate and sophomore Keith Gavin have missed significant time, and sophomore George Campbell’s season is over. The offensive line has been wrecked by the injury bug as well.

In fact, there were only two seniors, period, on FSU’s depth chart last week: right tackle Rick Leonard and reserve tailback Ryan Green. There are 11 freshmen, redshirt freshmen, or sophomores.

There are still blue-chippers everywhere, but those players still have to develop. And it’s always going to cost you when the team you think you’re bringing into August in no way resembles the team you have at the end of September.

2. The offensive line is a sieve

The FSU line has long been less than the sum of its parts, at least from a statistical perspective. The Noles ranked 22nd in Off. S&P+ in 2015 despite dreadful short yardage success (114th in power success rate) and leakiness (107th in stuff rate, 74th in passing downs success rate). They ranked third in Off. S&P+ last year despite a lot of the same issues: 77th in power success rate, 105th in passing downs success rate.

FSU had to replace Johnson and two other part-time starters, but it wasn’t hard to believe depth and experience would be an asset.

Considering the youth behind it, the line needed to raise its game. It has not. The Noles rank 67th in power success rate, 120th in passing downs sack rate, 125th in stuff rate. Worse than ever.

The sack rate has a lot to do with Blackman. The run blocking figures? Less so.

3. The defense hasn’t stepped up either

Charles Kelly’s unit was the primary reason for title-level optimism. FSU had rebounded from early-2016 issues, enough to finish 10th in Def. S&P+. With James’ return, it was easy to see the Noles dominating on that side of the ball.

The 2017 defense hasn’t been bad, but it hasn’t been as good as advertised. And it has had to face a hefty slate of good offenses: Louisville ranks eighth in Off. S&P+, Alabama is 19th, Miami is 20th, NC State is 27th, Wake Forest is 40th, and Boston College has become one of the hottest attacks in the country.

Adjusting for opponent, you see that the defense has been ... fine. The Noles are 25th in Rushing S&P+ and 16th in Passing S&P+. But we expected elite. And you can’t really blame injuries for the discrepancy.

The overall Def. S&P+ ranking has been dragged down by niggling issues and situational breakdowns: awful short yardage execution (101st in power success rate) and too many big plays on passing downs (107th in passing downs explosiveness). Opponents have no fear of the pass defense and are passing non-stop on passing downs.

It is unfair, but the hapless offense has forced the defense to be even better than expected. Instead, it is worse.

4. Punting hasn’t helped

A good punter can make up ground in the field position battle.

Instead, Logan Tyler has struggled. He’s averaging a decent 42.2 yards per kick, but opponents are also averaging 12.3 yards per return, resulting in a punting success rate of just 50 percent, 99th in FBS. Is net punting your preferred measure? FSU’s 108th in that. FSU’s averaging a 35.4 yard net, about eight yards worse than your typical top-10 punt unit.

5. FSU isn’t taking advantage of its biggest asset: athleticism

FSU has yet to score 30 points in a game this season and only scored more than 20 once in October. Part of that is a tempo issue, as in, FSU has none. But overall, the Noles’ statistical profile shows minimal signs of aggressiveness.

FSU ranks 125th in Adj. Tempo, up from 129th a week ago.

The Noles have only 30 gains of 20-plus yards all season, 104th.

They are 129th in passing downs sack rate.

Fourth downs are automatic kicking downs, almost no matter what.

Just about the only sign of aggression on the stat page is the number of big plays they’re allowing on passing downs. You could craft a “they’re blitzing and getting burned” narrative ... until you see that they never actually get to the QB.

Conservatism makes sense when you’re young on offense and trying to grind out wins or trying to avoid demoralizing blowouts. Either way, it’s not working, and there doesn’t appear to be a Plan B.

Taking deep shots? None of that.

Simplifying concepts and executing them with pace? The exact opposite. The offense remains complicated, and the snail’s pace allows defenses to make complicated calls as well.

Risking big plays in the name of havoc on defense? Not much of that either (they’re 51st in havoc rate).

To be sure, a lot of this has to do with the stale coaching staff. There have been rumors of major discord, and one should expect quite a few more changes than Kelly made in South Bend.

On Friday night, we saw a team that had pretty much packed it in for the year.

The defense began to play more as individuals than a collective and got burned. The offense ... scored three points.

A team with a pulse could still win three of its final four games, home games against Syracuse and Delaware State and road games against Clemson and equally lifeless Florida.

And in this scenario, FSU could attempt to reschedule its game against ULM (which was canceled in September) or ask for an NCAA bowl waiver because of the cancellation.

Or, the Noles could simply play out the string, make staff changes, and move on.

The former appeals to pride, but I’m betting the latter sounds tempting.