This article is about how strange social media has become.
You will hear examples from six mainstream social media sites to prove my point.
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5 Easy, Free Tips for New Bloggers
Are you interested in tips for new bloggers?
Would-be bloggers are often deterred, dissuaded, discouraged (choose one) from blogging.
They need these tips for new bloggers.
Did you know the ease of blogging is controversial?
Some people claim blogging is so difficult, they could never master the tasks.
Other people claim blogging is so easy because anyone can sit at a word processor and write.
This post is for the first group, the group of potential bloggers who are afraid of writing their first blog post.
After you read this article, you will know just how simple blogging can be.
Many potential bloggers believe blogging is expensive as well as time-consuming.
Blogging becomes simple once you know the free tools to use.
Let’s get started.
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Crypto – Blockchain Revolution: Bringing Change to the World of Finance
Photo by Karolina Grabow Crypto-Blockchain Revolution:
Bringing Change to the World of Finance
Banks have existed since the late 1700s and have been the go-to financial institution for generations. But like how they made barter trading obsolete, banks are currently facing what could very well bring their end. Cryptocurrencies, through blockchain technology, are gradually taking control of the world of finance, ushering in the era of decentralization.
With the help of these virtual currencies, the grip that financial institutions and governments have over people’s money is weakening. In fact, people can now directly transact with one another with the only requirement being that they have a working cryptocurrency wallet. Well, while impressive, these are just the beginning. The rest of the revolution is yet to come.
Trading Made for All
There’s no denying that, even today, buying and selling shares isn’t as easy as it should be. To start trading, you need to open a brokerage account, which may require you to provide all sorts of personal information including your address, phone number, income, and net worth. You may also be asked to present other means of identification like your social security number.
Say you don’t have all that’s needed to open an account with a brokerage firm, or you simply don’t trust them enough to willingly give up such information. That means you wouldn’t be able to trade. In other words, you will be locked out of this opportunity regardless if you have the financial capacity and knowledge to take part in it.
In addition, having to do things through a brokerage translates to additional expenses and potential delays. This, of course, leads to reduced profits and missed opportunities. With the help of blockchain technology and its decentralized ledgers, the traders of tomorrow may finally get rid of these middlemen, buying and selling shares with minimal delay and cost.
Hope for Businesses
Blockchain won’t only affect finance in the context of stock trading. It will also transform the global business landscape as entrepreneurs and small corporations will have access to partners that they otherwise won’t be able to reach. Take, for example , businesses in Asia that wish to work with their counterparts in Africa.
Despite the advantages of doing business with one another, these firms used to have no choice but to ignore such opportunities due to the cost of remittance in Africa being among the highest in the world. But now, as digital exchange platforms that make use of both crypto and blockchain are starting to emerge, these companies can at last send and receive payments without the unnecessarily high price and complexity of traditional means.
These platforms likewise make it possible to effortlessly convert bitcoin and altcoins into conventional currencies. In a way, this allows business owners to choose to hold onto their cryptocurrency, only cashing it out once the time is right—meaning they can further increase their gains, assuming of course that they do make the right call.
Many More to Come
As the world becomes more and more familiar with cryptocurrencies and the technology they’re based on, new ways of harnessing their potential will surely be developed. Some may think it too optimistic, but it’s hard not to believe in a future where finance has become decentralized, transparent, seamless, and most importantly, accessible.
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Discover Why The Tale of Prince Google is Not Limited to Fairy Tales in 2021
Once upon a time, there was a kind prince named Google. Bloggers delivered him amazing presents in the form of tribute. There were rumors that he was the Google god, after all.
Bloggers delivered Prince Google rich treasures in the form of blog posts. The blog posts helped Prince Google’s people, the search engine users. Bloggers were handsomely rewarded for these gifts in the form of search engine traffic.
Over time, Prince Google became dissatisfied. He became more and more demanding.
Bloggers, ever fearful, made their gifts richer. Their thousand-word blog posts became 3000. Prince Google still was not satisfied.
Bloggers quaked and added videos, images, infographics, and tables with data. Prince Google continued to want more and more. “Beat the competition,” he bellowed.
The bloggers resorted to getting special tools like the MozBar and spent time learning how to get into MozBar. Naturally, video-making tools like Video Instasize soon followed.
Then Prince Google became really cross. He only implied what his demands were. Did social shares even matter to this now ambiguous ruler? Despite the disadvantages of Instagram, bloggers promoted on Instagram and other social share sites. They even promoted on obscure social share sites like MeWe social media.
Prince Google continued his vague demands. He now spoke in acronyms. “Meet the E-A-T criteria,” he shouted. Over time, Prince Google kept screaming, “More, more.”
One rebellion occurred. “Prince Google, we have done what you ask. We want our blog traffic now. We are tired of waiting.”
Prince Google sneered. “How does it feel to want?”
He snickered. “Blog traffic requires longevity. I give traffic to older blogs. Didn’t you read the fine print? Blogging takes patience.”
Wrapping Up
Did Prince Google and the Bloggers live happily ever after?
Prince Google continued his demand for power. Today, Prince Google is a great king. People speculate he is indeed the feared Google god after all.
As for the bloggers, they continue to please the Google god. Today, the bloggers continue to serve the Google God as his slaves.
Will there be an end to King Google’s rise to power and the bloggers’ never-ending quest to please him?
Not as long as people need search engines, this story is not limited to fairy tales.
This post first appeared on Medium.com in May 2021 under the title “The Tale of Prince Google.”
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Understanding Blockchain
Understanding Blockchain:
From Decentralization to Anonymity
Photo by David McBee on Pexels.com If you’ve heard of bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, then you’ve surely heard about the technology that makes it all possible—blockchain. And in just a matter of years, this so-called digital ledger became synonymous with words like “decentralization” and “anonymity”, inspiring confidence among traders and businesses around the globe.
But, being someone who’s yet to decide whether to go all in on cryptocurrencies, you can’t help but be a bit skeptical. Does it truly embody these buzzwords? Is it as infallible as everyone makes it out to be? Your mind is filling up with these kinds of questions. Well, it’s about time to find some much-needed answers.
How is Blockchain Decentralized?
The technology, by design, stores information throughout a network of computers. No single participant in that network has authority over others, and so, changes need to be approved through consensus. This means that if a copy of the data gets tampered with, it will simply be rejected by other members—seeing that it no longer matches what’s stored by the majority.
This decentralized approach isn’t simply about shifting power away from a single entity or making it easier to detect fraudulent data entries, however. For one, in the case of bitcoin in relation to conventional banking, people won’t have to worry about following business hours and can simply carry out transactions anytime they wish.
Another perk to a decentralized system is not having a single point of failure. Even if one computer breaks down or is compromised (such as in the case of hacking incidents), the ledger itself won’t be affected. There won’t be downtime either. This isn’t the case with banks, of course, where technical troubles often cause frustration to everyone involved.
Just How Anonymous is Blockchain?
Truth is, the technology only provides a good level of confidentiality, not anonymity—especially in the context of its financial applications. Confused? Many who believe that it’s anonymous tend to focus at the lack of personal info needed for creating a wallet and the use of public keys whenever transactions are made.
If those are the only things you’ll need, identifying you won’t be possible. But since you have to rely on exchanges to convert your crypto into cash and vice versa, you will still end up providing your personal details as you sign up for these services. With this, your wallet or the key representing your transactions can realistically be traced back to you.
This is why people with shady intentions have to do all sorts of schemes to blur their trails. For example, some use mixer or tumbler services to combine their crypto with those of other people before finally sending it to the intended recipient. Fortunately, authorities worldwide are constantly developing new ways to identify and trace these “dirty” virtual money.
An Intriguing Future Ahead
All in all, blockchain does support decentralization, making it easier to shift power away from a single authority. While this has its perks, there’s also the risk of it being used illegally. And so, it’s interesting to see how things will unfold as cryptos go mainstream. Will increased regulation shape its future, or will it still be the people who’ll determine its fate? Only time will tell.
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The Wealth Effect Failure
Treasure Chest. People tend to increase spending when the prices of their stock market and real estate assets rise. They perceive it as an increase to their financial security. This is known as the wealth effect.
“The wealth effect is a psychological phenomenon that causes people to spend more as the value of their assets rises. The premise is that when consumers’ homes or investment portfolios increase in value, they feel more financially secure, so they increase their spending. Conversely, when consumers see the value of their homes or portfolios fall, they tend to spend less. The wealth effect attempts to explain why consumers might change their spending habits even if their income and fixed costs have stayed the same.” ~Investopedia
Monetary policymakers consider the increased consumer spending that follows a rise in the price of assets to be an indicator of economic recovery. But is it really and does the everyday family benefit? What is the reality?
- Higher home prices (significantly increased since 2008) make homeownership more unavailable to more people. Homeownership is at its lowest rate since tracking began in 1963.
- Higher home prices also put rental property prices out-of-reach to more people.
- Home sales in 2016 are not broad-based and people-driven as they were in 2008, albeit via sub-prime loans. Now a large percentage of homes sales are cash sales of homeowners and investors (domestic and foreign) who need somewhere to park assets. Banks offering low-interest rates remain an unattractive option.
- Additionally, the 2016 big bump in home sale prices and purchases are pocketed in 3 main areas of the United States due to the presence of the U.S Government, government contracts, and technology companies: Washington D.C., New York, and San Francisco where tech employees can also get home loans based on their stock options prices.
In April of 2016 GOBankingRates.com created a survey they called: Financial Burdens Survey. The respondents ranked their personal finance issues according to the six categories the survey provided. Interesting to me is that a category called, personal debt was totally absent! Here are their six categories:
- The high cost of living
- Healthcare costs
- Insufficient income
- Taxes (income, property, and/or other taxes)
- Retirement savings
- Higher education costs
Not surprising, one in four Americans responding to the survey said the “high cost of living” was their most challenging personal finance issue. Not only do salaries and wages fail to keep up with the cost-of-living (since the 1970s) but also the killer – personal debt – takes a growing bite out of incomes.
The wealth effect is a smokescreen. It distracts from any focus being put on the flaws of the monetary system. Rising asset prices favor the haves who own assets (minority) while extracting precious resources from the have-nots (majority).
More decent-paying jobs can certainly help; but alone, jobs cannot make it “right.” Why? The independent-of-governments central banking system pulls the strings. Simply put: The money they issue is systemically devalued via a mathematical formula decreasing money’s purchasing power. Anyone who has studied this, as I have, knows that nothing short of a system overhaul could possibly bring back long-term economic recovery. Even if everyone had a job, their hard-earned money over time will purchase less and less.
The good news is that with this knowledge you can rethink the best ways to earn, spend, save and invest to ensure the most quality in your life with the least amount of stress. That is until really real change takes place at the monetary system level.
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Planning Your Email Marketing
Your best chance of success with email marketing is to create a plan based on the products that you want to promote. It all starts with your product funnel, which leads to your content marketing plan, which leads to your email marketing calendar. All email marketing should be focused on promoting your products and/or services and that requires planning. The following steps will help you increase the results of your email marketing.
Craft a Working Product Funnel – You probably already have various products and services, but you may not have designed a product funnel yet that helps you understand how everything is interconnected and works together. Understanding this can help you keep your different lists and promotions in order.
Design Sales Pages for Each Product – Each page should tell your audience the benefits of purchasing the product. Remember a sales page focus is on the audience, not on you. Benefits over features, always – pretend you are the client and answer all the questions and concerns they might have right on the sales page.
Start Appropriate Email Lists for Each Product– Using your autoresponder, create the lists for each product or service that you will promote. At the minimum, you will want a general email list for people who visit the front page of your blog and then two lists for each product you sell. Create one list for people who purchased the product and one list for people who just want more info about the particular product. Name them appropriately so that you know where to put the messages based on where the audience joins your list.
Develop a New Product Launch Calendar – Knowing when each product is being launched for new upcoming products and or services will help you identify which lists you can include the announcements and information on. Plus, it will remind you to create new sales pages, lists, blog posts and email marketing messages for each new product.
Create a Blog Post Publication Calendar – Based on the product launch calendar, write blog posts and set deadlines for them to be scheduled. Ensure that some blog posts promote the various sales pages, and other blog posts are designed for those who purchased already. For each message, consider who will see it and where they come from.
Create a Social Media Content Publication Calendar – Develop social media messages in a series based on your blog posts that will attract your readers to click through to your sales pages and purchase or sign up for your email lists.
Create an Email Publication Calendar – Based on how everything works together above, create a series of emails that you can edit appropriately for each separate list that you may want to promote the new product to. Load them into the right auto responders, ensuring they link to the right sales pages depending on the audience they are sent out to.
Craft Follow-Up Messages – Don’t forget to craft all your follow-up messages too for each product that you sell. Once sold, you will want to keep in contact with the customer who bought it so that you can market future products and services to them.
By creating a plan of action to follow, you can make sure every single time you launch a new product that you can cross-promote other products and services without bombarding your list too much with messages they don’t need, thus increasing your conversion rates exponentially. If all the content you create goes together like a puzzle to promote all of your products and services in a seamless way, it’ll be that much easier each time to set up for each new product.
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The 5 Challenges All Online Retail Stores Face
The Challenges All Online Retail Stores Face
In the last 10 to 15 years, e-commerce has revolutionized the retail business, and eCommerce not only made progress rapidly but transformed with time to meet the ever-changing desires and requirements of consumers of the modern time.
eCommerce is the best way to grow your business. There are various options, and every option has its own set of e-commerce challenges.
Some people sell their own items to start an online business using other sites like Offer Up; on the other hand, some people prefer product drop-shipping. Through the drop-shipping of products from third-party manufacturers, lots of people made their own companies while some people purchase products to resell them online.
Running an online eCommerce store is not so easy all the time, there are so many challenges for entrepreneurs. and they fail to solve them.
Here are some of them.
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How to Improve Your SEO Ranking Through Content Marketing
Search engines have dominated the internet as the primary source of traffic for many websites, and there is hardly anything else out there that can make a dent in their dominion.
That is why many businesses that seek to create a prominent online presence often require them to make efforts to improve their search engine rankings, allowing them to make their domains more visible for users. Amongst many tactics, content marketing is a comprehensive approach to augment your search engine rankings.
Your Domain Authority ranking has the potential to increase as well when you follow these strategies. Here you will find instructions explaining how to get into MozBar.
According to a recent report by OptinMonster.com, 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing to reach customers, while 85% of B2C marketers think content marketing is a key strategy. Furthermore, Point Visible research shows that 60% of B2C marketers are committed to this strategy, while 63% of businesses don’t have a document content marketing strategy.
Moreover, 65% of companies consider it a challenge to produce engaging content, while 60% say that they cannot create content consistently.
In light of this information, let’s look at some of the ways through which you can improve your SEO ranking through content marketing.
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7 Obscure Social Media Sites
Obscure social media sites.
Why would you need them?
Why would you need anything obscure?
Why would little-know websites be helpful?
Simple!
Being a proverbial “little fish” in a “big pond” is tiresome.
You swim around and around hoping to get attention, but there are so many other fish there, no one interested in fishing notices you.
On social media sites, people fish for attention.
With so much competition, standing out is next to impossible.
Obscure social media sites to the rescue!
On obscure social media sites, you still get the benefit of mainstream social media sites:
- Network with like-minded thinkers.
- Network with like-minded content creators
- Learn from content created on those sites.
- Promote your content to boost your brand and traffic.
- Make money.
By the time you’re done reading this post, you’ll know how to do all these things on obscure social media sites.
You may have never heard of these sites, but they still hold all the benefits of mainstream social media sites.
Let’s get started learning about obscure social media websites.
