#but explaining how i visualize and remember space stuff in simple terms is one of my favorite things to do ever

[ilovedthestars]

Hello there, I am a space nerd, a fact I’m sure no one guessed from the fact that I go by Stars on the internet. I am here to explain how the moon works, because I think it’s cool and also something that most people don't know. This is mostly an infodump just for fun, but may also be vaguely useful for artists, writers & stargazers.

By “how the moon works,” I mean that although pretty much everyone knows about the moon’s phases, not everyone really gets how they affect things like when & where the moon is in the sky. See: the common idea that the sun is in the sky in the day, and the moon is in the sky at night. You know this isn’t strictly true if you’ve ever seen the moon in the sky in the daytime, but do you know how it actually works? If I gave you a moon phase and a time of day, would you be able to tell me whether the moon was in the sky or not?

I am here to (hopefully) explain how you can do that! With scribbly diagrams! Please join me under the readmore if you would like to come to my TED talk.

First of all, to avoid any accidental curse-of-knowledge assumptions on my part, let me define some terms!

First off, the phases of the moon, which you probably know most of, but bear with me. A “full moon” is when the moon is fully illuminated and appears as a circle in the sky. A “gibbous moon” is when the moon is more than half full, but not completely full—it appears large and roundish, but not a circle (not everyone knows the name for this one). A “half moon” is when the moon is half illuminated and appears as a semicircle—this one has some other names that I’ll get to in a second. A “crescent moon” is when the moon is less than half illuminated and appears as a concave curve. A “new moon” is when the moon is completely dark from Earth’s perspective and can’t be seen in the sky.

Also, “waxing” is when the moon is transitioning from new to full, or getting bigger in the sky, and “waning” is when the moon is transitioning from full to new, or getting smaller in the sky.

Speaking of “half moon,” I frequently confuse friends by calling this a “first quarter” or a “third quarter” moon. Those names refer not to the illumination of the moon but to the full cycle of phases. If you think of the moon phases as split into four quarters, starting from zero at a new moon, then halfway to full is 1/4, full is 1/2, halfway back to new is 3/4, and then we’ve reached the end/beginning of the cycle with another new moon. So one of the half moons is a first quarter moon, and the other (with the other half illuminated) is a third quarter moon.

This is where I have to add a disclaimer—I am in the northern hemisphere, and I am familiar with astronomy in the northern hemisphere. If you are in the southern hemisphere, to you, I am looking at the moon “upside down.” Yes, really. If you’re using my diagrams, flip them upside down. I’ll try to be clear when I’m talking about stuff that flips between the hemispheres, but it’s something that I struggle to wrap my head around too, so apologies if I’m confusing or miss something.

So, here’s a diagram of the moon phases to show you the difference between first and third quarter moons, but if you’re in the southern hemisphere, please flip it over to see what they would look like for you. (The chronological order still goes in the same direction as the arrow, the moon itself is just the other way in the sky.)

The fun trick I was taught to remember which way the cycle goes is “light from the right.” (Southern hemisphere people, you’ll have to flip this one.) Light, or shadow, moves from the right edge of the moon to the left. So if the moon is a crescent and the right edge is lit up, it’s waxing, or moving towards full. If the moon is a gibbous with a dark right edge, it’s just past full and will be waning towards the third quarter over the next few days. If you look at the diagram above (and imagine the crescent and gibbous phases transitioning in between), this might be easier to imagine.

Like I said, for the southern hemisphere this would actually be “light from the left.” If you’re near the equator and the moon is overhead, you could use “light from the west,” because that’s secretly the real rule. Another thing that’s useful to know for stargazing—the moon, sun and planets follow a path in the sky called the ecliptic, which is roughly over the equator. (Not exactly—it wiggles around relative to earth’s surface, because of the tilt of the earth’s axis that causes the seasons, but it stays near the equator.) If you’re standing in the northern hemisphere, the equator is south of you, so the ecliptic is also in the southern part of the sky. When you look at the moon, it will always be in the south, so the west-facing side of the moon will always be to your right. Likewise, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, the moon (and sun, and planets) will always appear in the northern half of the sky, so west will be to your left. Light moves across the moon’s surface from the west to the east.

Now you can impress people by looking at the moon and saying, “Oh look, what a lovely waxing gibbous!” (I don’t actually know if the is impressive, but I do it all the time. For bonus points, get an app on your phone that tells you the phase of the moon and check it frequently so you can plan when to stargaze. Then you can casually mention that the moon will be full in a couple days when it’s not even in the sky, and maybe people will think you’re a werewolf.)

Now that I’ve explained the moon’s phases, I get to explain how they’re related to the time and place that the moon is in the sky. See, most people (I assume) don’t think twice about things like, say, a book describing a crescent moon in the sky overhead at midnight. But that actually can’t happen! And it has to do with the moon’s position in the 3D solar system, and how that maps onto our sky. This is kind of hard for me to explain without a lot of 3D hand gestures and pointing at the sky, but I’m gonna do my best to show it in two dimensions.

So, most people probably know that the moon’s phases are caused by the sun’s light illuminating half of the moon, and since the relative positions of the moon, sun & earth change throughout the month, the half that’s illuminated moves around the moon and changes how it looks from our viewpoint. So, a very basic rule: the side of the moon that’s illuminated is the side that’s facing the sun.

So, when the moon is full, that’s because the side that faces us is also facing the sun. This means the sun is directly opposite the moon. Here’s a very scientific diagram:

In case it’s not clear, this is a “top-down” view of the solar system where the moon, earth and sun are all in the same plane (in this case it doesn’t matter if we’re looking at the north or south pole, the positions would look the same). It’s also obviously not to scale and very simplified, but the point is to demonstrate that the moon is opposite the earth from the sun.*

The little person on the earth is of course spinning around as the earth rotates once per day. But at this point in the lunar month, you can see that when they are on the side of the earth where they can see the moon, they are also on the side facing away from the sun. When the moon is full or close to full, it’s opposite the sun—it rises around sunset, sets around sunrise, and is at its peak in the sky around midnight. This is how lots of people tend to think of the moon rising and setting, but it’s only true when the moon is close to full!

If that doesn’t make sense, here’s a diagram of when the moon is at the opposite point in its cycle, a new moon:

When the moon is new, the side that faces the earth is dark, which means the opposite side is facing the sun. The moon is on the same side of earth as the sun is. The little person spinning around the earth won’t see the moon in the night sky, because the moon is close to the sun in the sky,* and it’s actually rising in the morning and setting in the evening at this time of the month! You can’t easily see the moon when it’s new, but it might be visible a few days before or after this as a crescent. You’ll only see a crescent moon in the sky during the day, or close to dawn/dusk—it will be close above the horizon where the sun has just set or is about to rise. (The light edge faces the sun, so if it’s near the horizon in twilight sometimes it will look like the light edge is actually pointing down, with the tips of the crescent pointing up in the sky.)

*A side note on eclipses: My diagram is oversimplified! The moon, earth and sun aren’t actually all in the same plane all the time, they’re slightly misaligned. So even when I say the moon and sun are “directly” opposite each other, or aligned, they aren’t lined up perfectly enough to cast shadows on each other most of the time. When they do line up perfectly at the right time, that’s when you get a solar eclipse (when the moon is new) or lunar eclipse (when the moon is full).

Okay, so when the moon is full it’s in the sky at night, and when the moon is new it’s in the sky during the day. What about in between? This is where it gets a little confusing, especially for those of you in the southern hemisphere, who are going to have to flip everything I say. Apologies in advance, but it kind of hurts my head even to explain how this works in my own half of the sky.

So, when the moon is half-full, at the first quarter and third quarter of the phase cycle I explained above, the sun’s light is coming (from our perspective) from the side. The moon is ninety degrees away in its orbit from full or new, and the sun’s light is effectively perpendicular to our viewpoint, instead of parallel. This time it matters which way we’re looking, so these are a top-down view from the northern-hemisphere side. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, I think you can flip which is the first & third quarter to make this accurate.

As you can see, when our little person is spinning around the globe, they’re going to be seeing the moon high in the sky right around the line between night and day. From a northern perspective, the earth spins counter-clockwise (vice versa from the south), so if you picture the person spinning around their little earth, you can see that the first quarter moon is going to be visible when they’re spinning from light to dark (sunset) and the third quarter moon is going to be visible when they’re spinning from dark to light (sunrise).

Bonus fun trick: If you remember the rule of “light from the right” in the northern hemisphere and how that determines the order of the phases, and look at these diagrams again, you can figure out which direction the moon orbits the earth from this viewpoint. (This is, in fact, the only way I can remember which direction the moon orbits the earth, despite being far more complicated than just memorizing it. If you’d like to make a game of it, I’ll put the answer at the bottom of the post).

Remembering how this looks from this top-down floating-above-the-earth perspective is hard, but you don’t really have to. I only explained it so it would make sense when I went back to my earlier visualization, from when I was explaining how “light from the right” works. I’m a very spatial learner, and I like picturing things relative to my own body, so this is how I remember when the different phases of the moon appear in the sky:

Imagine you’re standing, facing the ecliptic, where the sun and the moon travel through the sky. In the northern hemisphere, you’re facing south, with east to your left and west to your right. Imagine that the sun has just set, falling beneath the horizon to your right. Imagine that the moon is full, and hopefully I’ve explained well enough that now you know where it will be—cresting the horizon at your left. Imagine the opposite too—the sun is rising in the east at your left, as the full moon sinks in the west at your right. The new moon’s position, if you’d like to visualize that, is effectively the same as the sun.

Now, the difference between the two half-moons. Light comes from the west—in the northern hemisphere, your right—so when the right half is illuminated, it’s the first quarter of the lunar month, waxing to full, and when the left half is illuminated, it’s the third quarter, waning to new. One is high at dusk and one is high at dawn. Which is which?

You’re facing south. Picture a first quarter moon, right side lit up, at its peak in the southern sky. The light side is always facing the sun. Where is the sun? It must be to your right, touching the horizon in the west, setting. The first quarter moon is in the sky before, during and after dusk.

Picture a third quarter moon, left side lit up, at its peak. The light side faces the sun. The sun is to your left, touching the horizon in the east, rising. The third quarter moon is in the sky before, during and after dawn.

When I imagine this, I’m standing on my back porch, where I often go outside and stargaze. My telescope is small and one of the few things it can see with any detail is the moon. I want to be able to look at the moon just after dark, without having to stay up too late—and this memory device, of facing south and imagining the sun at my right hand to the west, is how I remember that the first quarter is the best time for me to observe the moon. It will be high in the sky at sunset, easy for me to see over the houses and trees.

If you remember that the moon waxes and wanes from the west (right in the north, left in the south), then you can fill in all the gradations of crescent and gibbous moon between the four main quarters. (As an example, if I wait a few days past first quarter to go outside and look at the moon, it’s waxed into a gibbous moon and it rises later in the evening, peaking in the sky closer to midnight. Another example: a waxing crescent is between a new moon and first quarter, so it will trail behind the sun and be above the horizon in the southwest at sunset.)

I hope that all of this makes sense and is useful to someone, whether for figuring out when you can observe the moon and where in the sky to look, or for thinking about how to place it in the sky in your writing and art. If nothing else, I hope I have brought you entertainment, and/or ruined the way the moon works in Minecraft for you forever. (It rises and sets directly opposite the sun!! Even when it’s a new moon!!! Light doesn’t work like that!!)

And finally, if you were trying to guess, the moon orbits the earth counter-clockwise if you’re looking down from the northern side.

#stars has thoughts #space #the moon #amateur astronomy #thank you for coming to my ted talk #and thanks discord friends for saying 'write the moon infodump post!!' #when i was like 'i wonder if i should write a moon infodump post' #i am a humble space nerd slash backyard astronomer with a 4inch scope #but explaining how i visualize and remember space stuff in simple terms is one of my favorite things to do ever #i could do a bunch of other posts about stuff like this. why venus is the morning star. how telescopes work (explain it like i'm 5 edition) #perhaps i will #undescribed #(i will try to come back with image descriptions later but i have already done all the explaining of visual concepts with words #that i can manage today. apologies)

[sassypotatoe1]

As a journalist, effectively translating complicated information into laymen's is one of my top skills. With that in mind, here's how you "explain it to me like I'm a five year old" for STEM writers. USE THE BIG WORDS AND NAMES FOR THINGS. use the names for thing, but THEN explain the meaning. Don't just explain the meaning and not give the name, it becomes confusing when a concept isn't tethered to a name. If you have to explain the stages of mitosis to a 5 year old, you would say something like "mitosis is when a cell splits into two cells, and it has 4 stages called the prophase, anaphase, metaphase and telophase," and the 5 year old will go "what's a cell?" and when you explain what a cell is they would go "what's a prophase?" and you'd have to explain that, etc. They grasp better with visual presentation too, but don't underestimate them with the language either. If you go "mitosis is when a cell splits in two, and it has four stages where it does this and this and this and this," there's no concept for their brain to match the description to.

Instead, what works best with 5 year olds and literally everyone after that to do something more like breaking an egg into a bowl and saying "this is what a cell looks like. It has the white around it with the goop where all the stuff it needs to eat with and to create energy with is in. That's usually encased in a little bag or box depending on the cell. The yellow is like the brain of the cell, it remembers your DNA and how to reproduce. Cells are what make up all of you, your whole body is made of different kinds of cells, they're just so small and so many that you can't see one unless you look really closely. When a cell needs to grow a second cell, it starts creating more cell stuff in the yellow bit and then it starts to split," and you can use a second egg to demonstrate it. I never actually learned the stages of mitosis and I can't be assed to Google them but the gist of it is that you would say the name of the stage, demonstrate it with the egg, then explain what's happening in simple terms. Bonus points if you explain what the prefix pro means, because that cements concepts in a brain. You would then do the same thing for anyone older, using less juvenile but equally descriptive and simple language. The amount of words becomes less as the audience becomes older, and physical demonstrations turn into diagrams. So when someone asks you to explain black holes like you'd explain it to a 5 year old, don't go "big star go boom, then become very small, and now sucks in everything because very dense and high gravity," you didn't explain much of anything. Something like "big things are heavy, very big stars sometimes become too heavy to carry themselves so they pop and then everything they were made of pulls together into a small teeny tiny ball, but it's still too heavy so now everything around it gets affected by that. Gravity is when something with a lot of mass, very heavy things, draws in other things, and the more heavy stuff is compacted into a smaller space, the stronger the gravity. With black holes it's as much heavy stuff as a very big star, but in the space of a cell, so the gravity is very very strong, so much that it pulls in even light, which is the thing that can go the fastest in the universe. It's like when a very fast swimmer that always escapes big waves in the ocean isn't even strong enough to swim faster than a tsunami pulling them back." you're actually explaining and demonstratimg what happens.

And again, with a higher understanding level comes less juvenile language, but the level of explanation and demonstration stays the same.

[letterboxd]

Together, Alone.

Together Together writer and director Nikole Beckwith talks to Ella Kemp about platonic love, pragmatic pregnancy, melancholic comedy and being inspired by Magnolia’s rain of frogs.

“The three of us were having our own platonic love affairs while we were making the film, which was very, very cool.” —Nikole Beckwith on working with Ed Helms and Patti Harrison

Back before vaccinations began, when we were still looking for glimmers of hope, the virtual 2021 Sundance Film Festival delivered us an abundance of joy: the family dramedy CODA, Questlove’s extraordinary piece of history, Summer of Soul, the delightful Sesame Street documentary and some precious smaller stories, too. One of those is the low-key revolutionary Together Together, Nikole Beckwith’s “visual representation of a warm hug”.

A platonic love story about surrogacy and solo parenting, Together Together stars Ed Helms as Matt, a single man in his forties who desperately wants to be a father. Interviewing women to carry his baby, he chooses twenty-something Anna, played by Patti Harrison, who completely nails her first feature leading role (she has previously appeared in A Simple Favor and Raya and the Last Dragon).

Over the nine months that follow, the pair boundary-shift as they navigate their unconventional relationship. They’re not together-together, but the bond between them is real, and strong. “Matt and Anna are loners, but they’re comfortable and functional in that space,” Beckwith explains. “And part of their connection is recognizing and respecting that in each other.”

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison in ‘Together Together’.

Flipping the narrative on surrogacy stories, Together Together encourages audiences to think about family in a new way. “Matt is in this strange middle zone,” Beckwith explains. “He’s not part of a community with a ton of children, and he’s not out partying at bars or living the child-free life. So the key to moving out of that space is taking matters into his own hands and redefining his future, and his idea of and desire for parenthood comes from himself—not from wistful fantasies romanticizing the idea of having kids.”

Anna’s story is just as clearly drawn: positive, rational, generous. “The last thing I wanted was to see her looking at children, with her hand on her belly, thinking ‘How am I going to give this up?’,” the filmmaker says. “I think that’s a really dominant way into surrogacy stories, but surrogacy is positive, it’s additive, and Anna knows herself. She knows what she’s capable of.” It’s a rare depiction of pregnancy on screen. “When a woman becomes pregnant, they’re not completely eclipsed by that fact. It doesn’t become their primary identity. So Anna is being very pragmatic about that experience.”

Together Together embraces “alone-ness” in a reassuring way, especially coming after a year in which many of us have experienced solitude involuntarily. Originally from Newburyport, Massachusetts, Beckwith spends a lot of time alone, but is firm that loneliness and solitude are not the same thing. Her story about the ambiguous spaces we inhabit when we don’t have a partner has its roots in real-life relationships.

“We just couldn’t get enough of each other,” Beckwith says of one male friend who changed her life when she moved to New York, far away from the small town she had grown up in. “I was just totally electrified and excited by them, and it was so hard for me to figure out that we were falling in platonic love. I hadn’t realized that was a kind of love you could fall in and just thought, ‘how beautiful’.”

The timelessness of non-romantic relationships is reflected in the film’s wondrous piano score, “a strange, poetic stream of consciousness” composed by Alex Somers, who also scored Captain Fantastic and Honey Boy. It is a hat-tip to Nora Ephron’s films, “those two-hander relationship movies in which the score is largely piano standard,” Beckwith explains. “We didn’t want it to sound old, while still having a whiff of nostalgia, while still feeling new, but in a timeless way instead of an overtly modern way.”

Beckwith looked for inspiration in all the right places. She nods to the dynamic between Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph in Bridesmaids as a depiction of platonic love that set the bar for Together Together. For examples of a middle-aged man who oscillates between being alone and lonely, Bill Murray’s performance in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation led the way. And in terms of the first film to light a fuse in her moviemaking brain, she has Paul Thomas Anderson to thank.

“I had a pretty incredible experience watching Magnolia when it was in theaters,” she remembers of the filmmaker’s 1999 emotional epic. "When the frogs fell from the sky, I was like, ‘So you can do anything?’ And then every time William H. Macy turns on his car radio and Gabrielle’s ‘Dreams’ comes on, for some reason that opened a pocket in my mind which was like, ‘These are decisions that somebody is making.’ And that was the first moment, with those two scenes, that I realized movies are made.

“I hadn’t ever thought of the rubber-to-the-road aspects of movies coming from someone specific. Being from a small town, I’d never seen a movie like that before. Those two moments really kind of made me think about it in a new way—it was very cool.”

Writer-director Nikole Beckwith.

Just as Anderson has brought dramatic nuance out of renowned comic actors (most notably, Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love), Together Together also asks us to adjust our expectations of our modern-day comedy heroes. It is packed to the rafters with American indie comedy stars (Tig Notaro, Anna Konkle, Sufe Bradshaw, Julio Torres, Jo Firestone and many more), but plays for laughs only where it feels right. The tone is held throughout by Harrison and Helms, who were, says Beckwith, “grounded and present”.

Leave your memories of Helms as office nerd Andy Bernard at the door, and expect a softer Harrison than the acerbic comedy titan who greets you on Instagram or the TV show Shrill. It was a shot in the dark that such potent chemistry would materialize. “I mean, what is chemistry?” Beckwith says, when asked about the electric feeling her leads emanate. “It’s an elusive magic—you can’t invent it, you can’t count it. It just is or it isn’t, and we were so lucky that it was.”

“They’re both such gifted comedians that there was no doubt in my mind that we could take the things that fuel the stuff we know them for, and just switch it around,” says Beckwith. “I think in order to be a truly terrific comedian you have to be holding hands with all the difficult, melancholy things about being alive, because that’s where comedy comes from and that’s what it relates to—and that’s why it’s so ubiquitous. We need it.”

Related content

Selome’s list of indie pregnancy dramedies that de-center the nuclear family

Melissa’s list of films about daddy issues, single dads/fathers, being a dad/father, grandfathers

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

‘Together Together’ is in limited US theatrical release from April 23, and on VOD from May 11, via Bleecker Street.

#together together #ed helms #patti harrison #directed by women #female director #female film directors #nikole beckwith #nicole beckwith #comedy #pregnancy #surrogacy #surrogate #solo parenting #films about pregnancy #julio torres #jo firestone #tig notaro #comedy film

[cyanoscarlet]

20/20 vision ☀️🎁 "He’s being saved again, comes the rueful thought. How many times does that make it, now?" The sheer *clenches fist* BACKGROUND in this line, how DARE you dani. This is the line that spawned my train of thought, I hope you're happy. Reducing me to angstful tears as I think about backstories and the potential in a hospital.

...... Aiyah...... (breaks into nervous sweats)

I’ll preface this with the fact that 20/20 vision, too, was a product of post-duty chaotic-brain-ing while on a coffee high, so thank you again! THANK YOU so much. Forever over the moon over this! <3

List of fic asks here!

He’s being saved again, comes the rueful thought. How many times does that make it, now?

20/20 vision, bungou stray dogs

(In which Chuuya is an ophthalmologist, Dazai is his optometrist, and they slowly fall in love.)

.

☀️ -  Was there any symbolism/motifs you worked in? 

Apart from the obvious references to eyes, some of the other passages used in this story are, indeed, metaphors for certain aspects of Dazai and Chuuya’s relationship, as well as Chuuya’s developing feelings for Dazai— many of them I’ve only derived from rereading this fic again and again just now, you’ll note!

Just a few major ones among the many:

The business proposition - Dazai does mean it literally, but yeah, he’s also taken interest in Chuuya himself, and wants them to be in a relationship. Chuuya himself is at first tolerant, then accepting of it, which runs parallel to his growing thoughts and feelings for Dazai. The way he keeps track of how many times Dazai has said this now is indicative of that. He is still hesitant, of course— be it due to confusion or to career-related reasons, but Dazai is and will always be willing to wait for Chuuya, hence the gentle, persistent reminder every time he visits.

Also, yes, the ending part in which Chuuya calls back to this is totally him saying ‘yes’ to Dazai— tantamount to a love confession, if you will. The essence of that whole last conversation, in light of everything that has happened before it, makes the story come full circle in its own way. There is always something sweet about saying ‘I love you’ without actually saying it, and the symbolism of the business proposition works really well for this whole purpose.

The spare glasses - It reflects both Dazai’s long-term familiarity with (everything about) Chuuya at this point, and the fact that no matter what, Chuuya will always have a safe space (home) with Dazai himself, eye problems and friendship and everything in between. You have Chuuya ruminating on his pride and principles and admitting his own faults, and he can just be all of that— that is, himself, when he is with Dazai. And Dazai knows this, too: “You didn’t have to ask, you know.”

The coffee and prescriptions - In the more literal sense, it’s Dazai being his disaster himself + creating trouble (coffee), and Chuuya having to take care of him (prescriptions), albeit a bit more hilariously unwilling on his part. Subconsciously, Dazai is always wanting to keep Chuuya’s attention on him, hence the repeat offenses, but Chuuya is always willing to forgive him those anyway / shower the attention that Dazai wants. Similarly, the wine / coffee discussions represent their individual differences, and what Chuuya thinks of them. They do try their best to meet in the middle, though, coming to an understanding / compromise of sorts— you see this in the ending, too, when they go out drinking.

A note on Kunikida, and his relationship/s with Dazai and with Chuuya - Kunikida, in this story, is Dazai’s old classmate from college, and is currently Chuuya’s colleague in a different department. Although it may appear that Dazai and Kunikida seem a bit more dismissive of each other, they do have a good relationship founded on common ground (science / statistical analysis), which Chuuya does not share with Dazai (literature / writing). You are right in that this makes Chuuya and Kunikida good foils of each other, yet they, too, have a good relationship / understanding despite their differences, both as individuals (Chuuya in Ophthalmology and Kunikida in Internal Medicine) and within their respective relationships with Dazai (Chuuya being more tolerant / forgiving as the newer friend, and Kunikida being more strict / stern, as the older friend).

.

On the more headcanon-y stuff (which I really don’t think I’ll be able to write at this point because my brain is already decidedly chaotic as fuck hahaaahah), a couple of lines I’ve picked up that can be expanded on are:

1. Chuuya and 20/20 vision - As you may have probably sensed from his character (and it totally fits him in canon), he never really wanted to be a doctor. He even had a rebellious streak in college for it. He still ends up in med school, though, but he doesn’t have a direct goal / direction in life at this point. This is represented by his worsening visual acuity, which, yes, was directly caused by constantly burning the midnight oil while studying. He’s stuck in a field he doesn’t want, yet tries his best, way too much, that he just gets lost. It is at this low point in his life that he meets Dazai, and his life changes. He gets glasses, tries to make sense of his life (regain 20/20 vision), and where to go from there. And Dazai, god bless him, is always there, always has his back for the whole ride: He’s being saved again, comes the rueful thought. How many times does that make it, now? They fall in love along the way, and it takes very long for them to reach the endgame, but they do, and it is beautiful. Chuuya’s 20/20 vision is his contentment with his life now, and a forever with Dazai. It’s the best view he could ever wish for, and he is very happy with it.

2. Chuuya, Mori-sensei and Promises - A very different version of Chuuya learning from (and in turn, being influenced by) Mori from Fifteen (Pre-canon) Arc. I don’t have a solid one for this tbh, but let’s just say an encounter with Mori greatly changes Chuuya’s outlook and makes him choose Ophthalmology as his specialty, the way he comes to swear loyalty to Mori and the Port Mafia in canon. No real solid connection with Dazai, in this case, but feel free to make of it what you will! I’m not quite imaginative enough for this hahaha.

... Okay, that was long. (sweatdrops)

.

🎁 -  Any writing advice for people who want to write something like this? 

First of all, do not drink brewed coffee at lunch time and end up with nearing 48 hours of palpitations later. Also, do not be like Dazai and drink 18 cups of coffee in one sitting, holy crap. I don’t think even Kunikida can save you from that if you do end up going over that literal and proverbial edge.

All that crap aside (which I do mean in earnest!), this idea totally came from a simple desire headcanon of Chuuya in prescription glasses. This, in turn, was influenced by downtime chats with my triage partner for that day, my classmate from med school now doing Ophthalmology residency. There were also other small things that happened to me IRL, like the way the lenses of my false glasses quickly yellowed within days of purchase, and the unexpected offer of free brewed coffee. Bottom line, take cues from real life; it’s a fun goldmine of tales tall and short, and you’ll have fun telling those because they are first and foremost yours. 

Similar to this, take note of the small things around you— pay attention to the way the leaves are swept by the wind, the way she crosses the street, the taste of the coffee you drink. Then describe those in your head— what I find works best for me is both immersing myself in the scenario and staying outside of it, like controlling a video game character / avatar, in a way. That way, I can develop my sentences in a vivid manner yet stay objective. (This is a bit harder to explain, actually.)

Most of all, write what works best for you, no matter what style you use. One quote I remember from English writing class (yet another gen-ed pre-req subject boohoo) states: “Write in white heat; revise in cold blood.” When you are struck by the idea, write it down. Let the ideas take over your fingers and let yourself get carried away. I admit that I really didn’t think through the plot of this very fic myself; I just let myself go until I was done a few hours later. This heat-of-the-moment writing high rarely happens to me (I wish it happened more often!), but I find that what I do come up with when I don’t think things through ends up a final product I quite like, other people’s feedback aside. The editing later is another story; don’t be afraid to critique your own work and adjust accordingly, if you feel that it will make the story better. (This part I have a decidedly much harder time with, but it’s still good advice, so I’m putting that down here, as well.)

.

Okay, that got reeeeeaaaaallyyyyyy long, now. Aegis really be pushing me to my limits every time we talk, and it’s making me grow and learn more about writing and about myself. I’m really, really grateful for this ask. I hope you all enjoyed reading this, too!

List of fic asks here!

#dani answers #eternal-aegis #fanfic ask #fic meta #fic discourse #bungou stray dogs #dazai osamu #nakahara chuuya #soukoku #skk #dachuu #long post

[xellshun]

DXM

So here’s a little something I like to talk about from time to time. For starters, I am a sociopath, if you don’t know what that is then look it up if you want because it’s a lot to explain. But let’s just say this means I’m incapable of feeling things like empathy, remorse, guilt, and shame.

So with the fact that I am emotionally and mentally colder than normal people, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel other negative feelings. With that being said I have gone through my fair share of drug and alcohol abuse and over the years there was one drug that just seemed to solve everything that my disorder couldn’t. For some, it’s meth, for others, it’s pain pills, and for some, it’s alcohol. I’ve tried basically everything, I’ve even tried drugs that don’t have names yet. But there was one drug that just stood out from the rest.

The drug has many names and terms associated with it - Tripple C’s, Robo Tripping, The Poor Man’s PCP, and so on... But for me, I stuck with the simple name - DXM.

Before I share my story I do NOT condone the use of this substance and will encourage anyone reading this to steer clear of it. The purpose of this is just to share my story.

I won’t ramble on about when my abuse started or why I began abusing it. This is more focused on the experience itself. SO! DXM stands for dextromethorphan. What is it? Easy, it’s cough medicine. Yeah, childish right? Well for me it didn’t matter and what makes this drug so dangerous is the fact that you can buy it anywhere without a script, it’s extremely cheap, it’s not illegal, and doesn’t show up in drug tests...

I won’t go about giving details about the unique routine I perfected over the years to get high off of this drug because I don’t want anyone reading this to copy it and end up fucking killing themselves or anyone else. Not that I give a shit but I won’t have that coming back on me. I will also not be mentioning dosage amounts, what brands I used, where exactly to get them, or how much this stuff costs. But what I will go into detail about is the high itself, what I felt, and what it was like. And if, for some reason, YOU decide to try this shit. Do it at your own risk. I used my own body as a test rat before I figured out exactly how to achieve my desired high without causing myself or others harm and I’m fucking LUCKY for that...

So let’s begin:

Stage one - The preparation dosage. I would always start out by eating a well balanced meal, making sure I had a means of getting fresh water, accessibility to a bathroom in case I got sick, a way of calling for help if needed, and I always made sure to seclude myself. I would then begin dosing up. Taking so many at a time on a strict schedule over the course of 30 minutes. After that I would wait for the first plateau of the high to take hold. The first stage is pretty mild. The first effects you’ll feel are a mild form of numbness throughout your body, your lips will begin to tingle, your vision will begin to become slightly blurred, and you’ll feel an overall sense of euphoric calmness. Once this stage was finished I would proceed with the next. But This stage was a must. Taking more than what my routine called for too quickly would cause me to get sick which would ruin the high. The goal of this stage was to push my body far enough under the influence that my stomach would then be unable to feel the fact that I was overdosing on a substance it would recognize as poison.

Stage two - The waves of calmness. Over the next hour or so I would slowly begin taking waves of this medicine in quantities that amount to half, equal to, or times 1 and 1/2 as much as the first dosage. How I felt as each wave kicked in would determine how much I would take on the next. This would be enough to take me to a level of intoxication between the second and third plateau of the high in a couple hours with the climax of the high hitting around hour 3. At this level I would feel a physical numbness in my skin equal to what you would feel on a high dose of pain pills. At this stage I would also experience my favorite part, the emotional and mental numbness. It wouldn’t matter how I was feeling before I would get high, it would feel as if every negative feeling inside my heart and mind would just slowly fade. Just imagine in. Imagine that no matter what discomfort you are feeling. This high will make it all go away, leaving you in a state of harmony... Along with that, this is the point where visual and auditory hallucinations begin to kick in. They were never anything scarry, nightmarish, or anything that would cause me to go out and randomly attack someone because I though they were lizard people. No, hallucinations are actually very timid and for me, amusing. I remember a time I was outside at 2am having a smoke, I looked off into the distant fields near the park and track just beyond my yard. And I remember seeing fireworks flying into the air just passed the tree line about 200 yards away. They didn’t look like normal fireworks and there was no sound. If you’ve ever watched the first Lord of The Rings movie where Gandalf is shooting off fireworks in the shire, it was similar to that, they looked like they were alive. A lot of my hallucinations were filled with lights that appeared without a source, they would dance and zip around the room like bugs and would even form the shapes of tiny people who would wave at me. Another common hallucination is what I like to call “sand people.” It’s where I would stare into space and right before my eyes, particles and clumps of colored sand would appear in front of me. They would move around slowly forming all kinds of shapes. If I wanted them to vanish I would just shake my head and let them reappear. So at this point, the high was overall very calming, there was no pain, no fear, no stress, no anxiety, no depression, no sadness... It was just pure... Peace... For each person I imagine the things you see and hear will be different, but these are just examples of the “pros” of the high for me.

Stage three - Beyond the safe zone. As you can probably guess, there is a fourth plateau. This level of the high is where it can become frightening and possibly even life threatening. BUT I’ve gone to and far beyond this level. There were only a handful of times where I considered calling an ambulence but never did. Not because I wanted to die, but because I was in such a messed up state of mind I just said “fuck it.” Anyways, so during these days where I decided to send my soul to a parallel universe I was, thankfully, alone because at this point the side effects become so intense that it’s impossible to hide the fact that you are CLEARLY fucked up on something. During the second and third plateau you’ll start to experience dificulties walking and talking, much like you would with alcohol but it is slightly different. Anyways, at and beyond the fourth plateau these side effects become very strong. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to slowly crawl to the bathroom because I couldn’t walk. Not only do you become very physically impaired but at this point you will begin to loose your grip on reality. The hallucinations will become so powerful that you will experience temporary fits of delirium and psychosis. Yes, I’m serious.. For me it was like having a messed up dream that made no sense but I was wide awake and watching it play before my eyes but I was also inside the dream outside my own body... This made everything very confusing and often times I would also go through moments where my brain would race so fast that I couldn’t focus on anything... Literally. I called this side effect “The Haze.” Things would only get worse too. Slowly I would start to feel my bodily functions just... Turn off... Like I was breathing and alive but only with the most basic functions. I called this stage “Zombie Mode” because it was pretty much a mode where the lights are on upstairs but no ones home. Ready for the frightening side effects? Yeah, haven’t got there yet... Imagine you get your body and mind so far under the influence of this drug that one of your eyes LITERALLY AND ACTUALLY shuts off temporarily. Yes, this is a very real side effect that I have witnessed, temporary fucking blindness... Oh, how about uncontrollable muscle spasms that are so random and strong that it literally feels like invisible people are grabbing you and shaking your limbs? Or how about if every time you try to move, your muscles are so disfunctional that it actually feels like you have dead meat inside of you, just sitting there, weighing you down. Not only this but the hallucinations can, at this point, become nightmarish. For me, I was so used to it that I always just closed my eyes, covered my ears and would tell myself “It’s just the drugs, it’s just the drugs, it’s not real, don’t freak out, just let it wear off!” And I can’t even begin to tell you how confused and delusional you become at this point. At this stage it becomes a battle of mind over matter. So unless your pretty fearless like me, this stage might cause real harm... So yeah, it kind of feels like your body is slowly shutting down and dieing underneath you without the pain or suffering. It’s a side effect called “Ego Death.” The only GOOD part about this stage is that the physical, emotional, and mental numbess are still present and very strong. So a lot of times I was still very unmoved by what was happening to my body. This is a level I do not like to go to because of the negative side effects. The small amount of times that I did reach this point was for one simple reason, I was just too high to know any better before hand and took too much too fast. Oh and guess what else? You can’t have sex on this drug. Men can’t achieve erections, women can’t get wet, and neither can reach orgasm. At least not without the help of other drugs. So don’t plan on fuckin’ while you trip out on this shit... And let’s not forget the come down!... It’s not that bad, haha. There’s no hangover waiting for you after the come down too. The come down is just very slow, you’ll feel your bodily functions start to turn back on, things will become more clear, the feeling in your skin will come back in the form of a tingling feeling, your inner organs will start to become warm (yes you can feel it). You’ll have waves of what feels like...(How do I describe this)... Ever seen the Poltergiest movies? I think it’s one of those... A scene where someone is pulled from the fucking ghost dimension from a portal covered in fucking slime? Yeah, kind of feels like that. I call it the “Rebirth” stage. And yes, you will sweat out layers of the drug. It will be a cold and abnormally thick sweat though... Hence the slime reference. BUT at the end of the road, no hang over, no headaches, no upset stomach, you just... Go back to normal. Often times I go into a deep sleep for 12 hours and wake up feeling at 120%. So I guess you could say the come down could be both negative and positive? Depending on your opinion? For me the come down was very soothing so I never hated it..

So that’s just a glimpse into what I was going through for what was about 4 years. Those four years happening during the development of my disorder, ASPD, as well.

So why did I do it? Besides the fact that it was readily available, cheap, legal, and untraceable.... It was the mental and emotional numbness that I fell in love with... It’s not that the drug was bringing me any one type of feeling... It was the drug taking all my feelings away and allowing an overwhelming sense of peace and calmness over take me. It was my escape from reality. My way out. It was like mentally getting into a rocket ship and just blasting off into space on an adventure in my head. In fact, often times I would simply follow my own rules, get high, sit myself down in front of my TV and play video games. I would get immersed in the games and forget about the struggles of real life...

Oh and just another fair warning for you all. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT EVER mix this shit with ANY other substance, especially alcohol!! I promise you it will end badly, trust me, I would know...

So what the fuck does this have to do with my disorder and the fact that I’m a sociopath? It was just another way of completing myself. I already have a lack of many emotions due to my disorder, so for me, it was finishing myself off. Making myself completely void of any and all emotion.

Do I think this drug had any kind of effect on making my disorder worse?.. It’s possible. But their were many factors that caused my disorder to get worse over the course of the last 7 years since it started to develope. So it’s hard to tell.

Do I think this drug has caused any permanent damage to me in any way? That I’m not so sure about either. I’ve done my own research on this drug and there just isn’t alot of solid information on it because this isn’t a drug that is commonly brought up when you think of individuals suffering from substance abuse. It’s just not up there on the high ranks along side substances like opiates, stimulants, and alcohol.

So what kind of drug is DXM anyways? It’s what’s known as a dissociative anesthetic hallucinogen and is commonly compared to hard drugs such as PCP and Acid. Does this mean when you take cold medicine you could get high on accident? No. At proper dosages cold medicine acts as a cough supressent. You have to overdose greatly in order for it to act as a hallucinogen.

Am I still currently using this drug? Yes, but very rarely. I only use it when I know 100% I can do it safely, without being noticed, without hurting myself or anyone else. And since I am currently on probation with just one month left and also attending counseling... Well let’s just say I keep this shit strictly to myself and do it very secretly. The last thing I want is to end up back in jail. So don’t be concerned, you don’t have to worry about the possibility of a sociopathic guy running around town high off his ass in the middle of the night... Do I want to stop? Yeah of course. Relying on a fucking drug to feel “okay” kind of fucking sucks. Will I stop? I don’t know... Only time will tell...

So.. Is it addictive? Yes and no. Not in the same way that heroin and meth are. You won’t get withdrawal symptoms after coming off of it...

It’s more of an addiction to the “lack there of” when it comes to your emotions and mentality...

It doesn’t give you what you want, it takes away what you don’t want...

And for me, during my darkest hours of life, that is exactly what I crave...

#sociopath #aspd #drugs #addiction

[realtalk-tj]

Could you please explain in more detail what each of the math post-APs are and how easy/hard they are and how much work? Thanks!!

Response from Al:

This can be added on to, but I can describe how Multivariable Calculus is. First off, I want to say not anyone’s opinion should affect how difficult or easy a class would be for YOU. Ultimately, do the classes you’re interested in. Personally, I thought Calculus was cool as subject, so that’s why I pursued Multi. Multi. builds off of BC Calculus, Geometry, and even some of the linear algebra you learned from middle school (not to be confused with the Linear Algebra you can take at TJ), so as long as you have a good foundation in those subjects, I’m sure you’ll do well in Multi. Depending on your teacher, assessments may or may not be more challenging, and that’s why I strongly emphasize take the class only if you’re genuinely into it. Don’t take it because of peer pressure / because you want to stand out in colleges. I’ll let anyone add below.

Response from Flitwick:

Disclaimer: I feel like I’m not the most unbiased perspective on the difficulty of these math classes, and I have my own mathematical strong/weak points that will bleed into these descriptions. Take all of this with a grain of salt, and go to the curriculum fair for the classes you’re interested in! I’ve tried to make this not just what’s in the catalog/what you’ll hear at the curriculum fair, so hopefully, you can get a more complete view of what you’re in for. 

Here’s my complete review of the post-AP math classes, and my experience while in the class/what I’ve heard from others who have taken the class. I’m not attaching a numerical scale for you to definitively rank these according to difficulty because that would be a drastic oversimplification of what the class is.

Multi: Your experience will vary based on the teacher, but you’ll experience the most natural continuation of calculus no matter who you get. In general, the material is mostly standardized (and you can find it online), but Osborne will do a bit more of a rigorous treatment and will present concepts in an order that “tells a more complete story,” so to speak. 

The class feels a decent amount like BC at first, but the difficulty ramps up over time and you might have an even rougher time if you haven’t had a physics course yet when it comes to understanding some of the later parts of the course (vector fields and flux and all).

I’d say some of the things you learn can be seen as more procedural, i.e. you’ll get lots of problems in the style of “find/compute blah,” and it’s really easy to just memorize steps for specific kinds of problems. However, I would highly recommend that you don’t fall into this sort of mindset and understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how that’ll yield what you want to compute, etc.

Homework isn’t really checked, but you just gotta do it – practice makes better in this class.

Linear: This class is called “Matrix Algebra” in the catalog, but I find that title sort of misleading. Again, your experience will depend on who you get (see above for notes on that), but generally, expect a class that is much more focused on understanding intuitive concepts that you might have learned in Math 4/prior to this course, but that can be applied in a much broader context. You’ll start with a fairly simple question (i.e. what does it mean for a system of linear equations to have a solution?) and extend this question to ask/answer questions about linear transformations, vectors and the spaces in which they reside, and matrices.

A lot of the concepts/abstractions are probably easier to grasp for people who didn’t do as well in multi, and this I think is a perfectly natural thing! Linear concepts also lend themselves pretty well to visualization which is great for us visual learners too :)) The difficulty can come in understanding what terms mean/imply and what they don’t mean/imply, which turns into a lot of true/false at some points, and in the naturally large amount of arithmetic that just comes with dealing with matrices and stuff. 

Same/similar notes on the homework situation as in Multi.

Concrete: Dr. White teaches this course, and it’s a great time! The course description in the catalog isn’t totally accurate - most of the focus of the first two main units are generally about counting things, and some of the stuff mentioned in the catalog (Catalan numbers, Stirling numbers) are presented as numbers that count stuff in different situations. The first unit focuses on a more constructive approach to counting, and it can be really hard to get used to that way of thinking - it’s sorta like math-competition problems, to a degree. The second unit does the same thing but from a more computational/analytic perspective. Towards the end, Mr. White will sort of cover whatever the class is interested in - we did a bit of group theory for counting at the end when I took it. 

The workload is fairly light - a couple problem sets here and there to do, and a few tests, but nothing super regular. Classes are sometimes proofs, sometimes working on a problem in groups to get a feel for the style of thinking necessary for the class. if you’re responsible for taking notes for the class, you get a little bonus, but of course, it’s more work to learn/write in LaTeX. Assessments are more application, I guess - problems designed to show you’ve understood how to think in a combinatorial way. 

Unfortunately, this course is not offered this year but hopefully it will be next year! 

Prob Theory: Dr. White teaches this course this year, and the course’s focus is sort of in the name. The course covers probability and random variables, different kinds of distributions, sampling, expected value, decision theory, and some of the underlying math that forms the basis for statistics. 

This course has much more structure, and they follow the textbook closely, supplemented by packets of problems. Like Concrete, lecture in class is more derivation/proof-based, and practice is done with the packets. Assessments are the same way as above. Personally, I feel this class is a bit more difficult/less intuitive compared to Concrete, but I haven’t taken it at the time of writing. 

Edit (Spr. 2020) - It’s maybe a little more computational in terms of how it’s more difficult? There’s a lot of practice with a smaller set of concepts, but with a lot of applications. 

AMT: Dr. Osborne teaches this course, and I think this course complements all the stuff you do math/physics-wise really well, even if you don’t take any of the above except multi. The class starts where BC ended (sequences + series), but it quickly transitions to using series to evaluate integrals. The second unit does a bit of the probability as well (and probability theory), but it’s quickly used as a gateway into thermodynamics, a physics topic not covered in any other class. The class ends with a very fast speed-run of the linear course (with one or two extra topics thrown in here and there). 

The difficulty of this course comes from pace. The problem sets can get pretty long (with one every 1-2 weeks), but if you work at it and ask questions in class/through email whenever you get confused, you’ll be able to keep up with the material. The expressions you’ll have to work with might be intimidating sometimes, but Osborne presents a particular way of thinking that helps you get over that fear - which is nice! All assessments are take-home (with rules), and are written in the same style as problem sets and problems you do in class. The course can be a lot to handle, but if you stick with it, you’ll end up learning a lot that you might not have learned otherwise, all wrapped up in one semester.  

Diffie: Dr. Osborne has historically taught this course, but this year’s been weird - Dr. J is teaching a section in the spring, while Dr. Osborne is teaching one in the fall. No idea if this trend will continue! Diffie is sort of what it says it is - it’s a class that focuses on solving differential equations with methods you can do by hand. Most of the class is “learning xx method to solve this kind of equation that comes up a lot,” and the things you have to solve get progressively more difficult/complex over the course of the semester, although the methods may vary in difficulty. 

I think this is a pretty cool class, but like multi, the course can be sort of procedural. In particular, it can be challenging because it often invokes linear concepts to explain why a particular method works it does, but those lines of argument are often the most elegant. This class can also get pretty heavy on the computational side, which can be an issue. 

Homework is mostly based in the textbook, and peter out in frequency as the semester progresses (although their length doesn’t really change/increases a little?). Overall, this is a “straightforward” course in the sense that there’s not as much nuance as some of these other classes, as the focus is generally on solving these problems/why they can be solved that way/when you can expect to find solutions, but that’s not to say it’s not hard. 

Complex: I get really excited when talking about this class, but this is a very difficult one. Dr. Osborne has historically taught this course in the fall. This class is focused on how functions in the complex numbers work, and extending the notions of real-line calculus to them. In particular, as a result of this exploration, you’ll end up with a lot of surprising results that can be applied in a variety of ways, including the evaluation of integrals and sums in unconventional ways. 

In some ways, this class can feel like multi/BC, but with a much higher focus on proofs and why things work the way they do because some of the biggest results you’ll get in the complex numbers will have no relation whatsoever to stuff in BC. Everything is built ground-up, and it can be really easy to be confused by the nuanced details. If you don’t remember anything about complex numbers, fear not! The class has an extra-long first unit for that very purpose, which is disproportionately long compared to the other units (especially the second, which takes twoish weeks, tops). Homework is mostly textbook-based, but there are a couple of worksheets in there (including the infamous Real Integral Sheet :o) 

This course is up there for one of the most rewarding classes I’ve taken at TJ, but it’s a wild ride and you really have to know what things mean and where the nuances are cold. 

#math #post-ap #complex #diffie #linear #multi #prob theory #concrete #amt

[ethos-rites]

Conor Harrington’s Bridges of High and Low

A few months ago I was dropping off artwork for a group show a friend had curated for the backroom gallery of a neighborhood bar in Chicago and upon seeing my piece for the show, the curator-friend claimed “Oh, I forgot that you actually make real art.”  Most the work from other artists fell in the category of street-art; sticker drawings, bootleg paintings of popular culture juxtaposed with pets, or illustrative comical drawings. My painting, at its surface, was a figurative portrait in a field of graffiti marks. Just this past month, I’d heard a similar comment when viewing Conor Harrington’s two paintings at the recent Beyond the Streets exhibition in New York; a spectator walking through a retrospective of graffiti and street art then exclaiming “Now this is art!” when viewing Harrington’s paintings The Trouble With Trolls and Hot Air I Do Declare (2019). We can distinguish between art and non-art, though the semantics of the distinction are very akin to denoting highbrow art from lowbrow art. This can be categorized by “disciplined” or “naïve” aesthetics from the approaches of the artist (Gotschalk 1962) and in terms of “mass taste” or “privileged connoisseur” from the economic status of the work’s intended audiences. (Tyler Cowen 2000) By employing modes and methods of both disciplined and naive painting, Conor Harrington creates bridges of accessibility between audiences of high art and low art.

Irish-born and London-based, Conor Harrington’s entrance to circles of art was initially through graffiti in his teens throughout the 1990s, eventually gaining a traditional arts education at Limerick College of Design. Through first glance at Harrington’s paintings, the immediate crossovers between classical art and graffiti are apparent; carefully detailed figures are painted alongside gestural graffiti marks, spray-painted tags, and quick textual inscriptions. The figures – portraiture of Victorian-European males - are often partially obscured or interjected, clearly depicted on some features and disrupted by these graffiti marks or subtractive decay methods. Through that detail Harrington creates a visual focus in his classically painted figures, concurrent with historical high art, then juxtaposes it with marks unconventional to figure painting, rather using a vocabulary reminiscent of 20th century abstract expressionism, creating a dialogue between the two discourses.

[Conor Harrington, A Land of Botox and Mercs, 2009, 183cmx152cm, Oil and Aerosol on Canvas]

Harrington acknowledges the influence of lowbrow graffiti on his work, though has sought to drive its semiotics and context further than that of non-art outside of an academic or institutional setting. “…[I] always felt like [graffiti] could go further than just being a fringe genre. I retained an ‘urban’ aesthetic in my work, mainly running tags through the figure, but after a while I felt like a fraud tagging on canvas.” (Harrington, Conor Harrington: Stakes Is High 2016) Other surface connections between his works on canvas and the vocabulary of graffiti come through the materiality. “My process is all about painting on, while simultaneously taking off, much like a conversation between a tag and the buff.” (Harrington, Conor Harrington: Stakes Is High 2016)

These crossovers between disciplined high art and culturally-naïve low art exist on bridges between abstraction and realism. It doesn’t take an academic background in the arts to approach the carefully depicted images of colonial Europeans nor the stylized and deteriorating marks from spray paint and text. Graffiti is accessible as it is legible to the naïve viewer, its letterforms communicating artist identity and technical skill, similar to the realistic figure painting in the bodies on the canvas. Though their interaction, often a disruption of one another, invokes an exchange between the two and connects their respective aesthetic histories for the audience. Under an institutional-art gaze, the machismo gestures of abstract expressionism are seen on Harrington’s canvases creating an active field of movement for the viewer, though taking pauses on the figures to suggest a new contextual investigation for those as well. These contexts invite audiences of both high and low art into a space of dialogue with one another allowing for movement from one audience’s paradigm to the other.

While Harrington’s use of oil paints on canvas or linen in a gallery setting creates degrees of separation or disingenuousness from the materiality of lowbrow graffiti, his inclusion of spray-painting techniques and methods of removal and decay reconnects that context in its own bridge-space. Attentive brushwork in his oil painting processes is met with expressive use of palette knives, squeegee pushed paint, and hand smudging, all paired alongside varied spray paint applications including the occasional use of paint-loaded fire extinguishers.

[Conor Harrington, Hot Air I Do Declare, 2019, 79″x99″, Oil and Spray Paint on Linen]

Placing his practice in the space between slower, more careful figure painting and quick, expressive mark making, Harrington’s own process-decisions fight to build a space between the two. Through research and conversation with other artists similarities between his approach to the canvas and others isn’t uncommon. “I’m no longer layering to achieve a certain level of polish. I’m trying to hit everything and move on… I remember being shocked that Luck Tuymans never spent more than one day on a painting, but I’m beginning to see his logic… If I can achieve the desired finish in one hit, then it works, and if I have to go back into it, I might kill it.” (Harrington, Conor Harrington: Stakes Is High 2016) Just as graffiti writers work quick for their practice, whether due to pressure of legality in their public work or technical requirements of rapid-marking of spray paint, Harrington experiences his processes as premeditated moments. A front load of planning, be it photo shoots for reference models, composition, or gestural sketching, leads to a rapid and often improvisational experience with his painting. “…I wanted to create a new world before, but now I just want to create a moment that I can attack. A lot of the narrative is coming from the painting process as opposed to the set.” (Harrington, Conor Harrington: Stakes Is High 2016) Through the juxtaposition of the two modes, Harrington appeals to both audiences of academic high art and naïve low art, creating a movement between the two demographics.

This bridge between demographics is achieved through more than modes of materiality; it can also be experience through the conceptual framework into which Harrington places his work. On one side of the gap, graffiti visuals place the paintings in this discourse of urban artworks along with attributed cultures such as hip-hop. Graffiti, in its traditional context, invokes a focus on the identity of the artist through territorial marking. Rap and hip-hop take on similar facets in empowering the name of the respective rapper or group. On the other side of the gap, Harrington is painting figures of Victorian-European colonialists, making use of photo shoots with historical reenactments. While the two images come from different timelines and contexts Harrington associates his own heritage to, both share attributes of the machismo, gendered identity attributed to abstract expressionism. “It’s all about bragging,” Harrington explains. “When I started painting the kind of Napoleonic early 19th-century generals with big hats and chains and stuff, it was like painting Slick Rick with all his jewelry and bling. It’s all power dressing.” (Harrington, Artist Conor Harrington Discusses How Hip-Hop and Fallen Empires Inspired His "Eat and Delete" Exhibition in New York 2014) Speaking to narratives of power and identity experienced by both audiences of low and high art, Harrington’s spaces become a meeting ground of common dialogue between the two.

[Conor Harrington, The Trouble With Trolls, 2019, 79″x99″, Oil and Spray Paint on Linen]

As apparent as the sense of masculinity in Harrington’s work is its association with conflict and violence. Throughout his work, depictions of colonial-European military dress can be seen, often worn by figures enticed in physical struggle, communicated through aggressive gestures of spray paint and subtractive processes. This sense of conflict, as seen in The Trouble With Trolls, is further communicated through striking fields of blue and red, politicized by not just the attire of the figures but also the striped flag wrapping around the figures that decays throughout the painting. These simple allegories of political conflict and gendered colonialism paired with the context of graffiti connect the historical imagery to media cultures of today, reenacting historical narratives for a contemporary audience.  Harrington describes his recent work as tighter and more focused than before due to increasing division in today’s cultures. (Harrington, The Story of Us and Them 2018)

The growing divisions of political spheres, divisions of nationalistic cultures, and divisions of economic class all concurrently reflect the polarizing divide between demographics of high art and low art. Over the last century, modern cultures have developed with a widening gap between consumers of renown, esteemed culture and mass-produced, popular culture. (Tyler Cowen 2000) Stemming from inhibitors to accessibility and comprehension of high culture, these denoted sides of the gap are perpetuated and at times reinforced by artists deciding to work for one audience of the other. As an arts educator, it’s become a driving focus of mine to create bridges between these two cultures; breaking down the academics and discipline of high art into scaffolding for students while contextualizing it in prior-known and comprehensible content. With this, the paintings of Conor Harrington have been particularly exciting for me. Rather than reinforcing or building walls in an increasingly divided culture, Harrington creates bridges for his audiences to traverse, connecting cultures and fostering open dialogues between them.

Works Cited

Gotschalk, D. W. Art and the Social Order. New York: Dover, 1962.

Harrington, Conor, interview by Evan Pricco. Conor Harrington: Stakes Is High. Juxtapoz Magazine, (January 2016).

Harrington, Conor, interview by Lauren Schwartzberg. Artist Conor Harrington Discusses How Hip-Hop and Fallen Empires Inspired His "Eat and Delete" Exhibition in New York New York Magazine, (October 3, 2014).

The Story of Us and Them. Directed by Andrew Telling. Performed by Conor Harrington. 2018.

Tyler Cowen, Alexander Tabarrok. "An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular art, or High Culture and Low Culture." Southern Economic Journal (Southern Economic Association) 67, no. 2 (2000): 232-253.

#conor harrington #conorsaysboom #beyond the streets

[altonadventures]

ALTON ADVENTURES BIG ANNOUNCEMENT

So...because its Friday and I usually update AA on Fridays, I figured it was time to make my big announcement! 

And that is...that Alton Adventures is changing. A little bit. 

Am I rebooted the comic again? No haha! Once I get back to it it shall continue as normal but some characters may look a bit different going forward. 

Who may those characters be?

Sir Gareth Nemesis 

Why is he changing? 

Sir Nemesis’ change is actually less drastic than one may think. For starters, he needed a design rehaul. I wanted his armor to be more simple, easier to draw but with still details that could tie him to Nemesis (the green eye, the arms, the light pink details instead of inconsistent tentacles). I also had an issue where his hair was too close to his skin color, so to combat this I turned him into a ginger! His eye color also changed from gold to green, another thing to visually tie him more to Nemesis. 

So yes, I changed Sir Nem’s design because I was unhappy with it. His armor was never drawn consistently ever, I was constantly changing the tone of his hair and his skin so that was inconsistent. I want my designs to be more consistent and polished going forward.

What else is different? Well, you can probably tell he looks much more serious, like in older pictures I drew of him. Why is that? Well, I was kind of..honestly tired of his role as the “dad character tm” that he kind of turned out to be. It almost undermined his true characterization and turned him into a typical over the top exaggerated hero character. And I started to realize how much I missed his original concept. A battle hardened solider that was filled with regret and remorse, who heavily sympathizes with the plight of the alien he’s locked in combat with. He’s still much a father however, as he has a biological son and adopts an alien who mimics his likeness (hence another reason he’s a ginger now as his Nemesis daughter always was one). He’s just returned to his roots as a character. Because I felt that characterization was a unique one for the Nemesis ride. And it was an idea I really loved. Sir Nemesis actually WAS one of my favorite characters...I wanted his role to be much larger than it is in the comics. I don’t blame anyone for him becoming a joke, I did initially kind of fuel the fire for it, I’m just hoping that its not to late to get back to the Sir Nemesis I originally wanted to write. And of course, all my characters are still meme and joke worthy. I just want to tackle much more serious issues with my comic and show the more serious side of some of my characters and don’t want there entire existence to be a joke Mr.S can’t have too many folks 1 uping him in the laughs department!  I guess to note with this change that his original voice claim has also been solidified as well. It’s a more somber and serious tone that I feel fits him as a character. 

Final Notes 

Sir Nemesis is a character that I have a lot of thought put into. His backstory is tragic, emotional, and his character is complex and he’s not the perfect hero people might image him as. I plan for his Arc to follow the Fireworks arc in the comic, as well as I am planning to start some more text heavy short stories about how the Secret Weapons became Secret Weapons (which I will likely call Secret Weapon Short Stories hehe) and will be writing his first. Also a very important thing i must address. Yes, the eye on his chest moves. (I have a gif but it doesn’t want to work on this post Ill have it up later ><)

Erica Annabelle Cloud 

ooof okay this is a huge one. Confession time. Erica was always my least favorite character. Why? She just had...no character. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with her, her design felt phoned in and there because I needed an Air/Galatica character, (yes, she is changing as her Galatica stage too). She was just. not well thought out. She had a dual identity but I think a lot of people didn’t pick up on that? She felt like a Rita 2.0 as just a nice and friendly optimistic person and literally had 0 backstory. Originally she was supposed to have had some sort of accident that turned her into Galatica and she had memory loss and forgotten about when she was Air, yeah it was a mess. That eventually just turned into Nebula Corona being a character she made up (bc her one trait was that she was into space and wrote a lot) that she played as when her rides themeing changed. 

She was just..barely a character and her design was abysmal (Her Galatica suit was okay but her Air outfit was an afterthought) She needed a massive visual upgrade. A sleeker flight suit that makes more sense (I used a ref or two for this design!) A different face shape to help her stand out more, my signature they wear glasses they have dot eyes look. Long, wispy, flowing hair to resemble those trails planes make. A bit more lanky and tall. And let me tell you I LOVE her design now. It looks so much more unique and you can just SEE she has so much more character now!  As for her characterization im going full into her being a nerd. A very tech nerd at that! She designed her suit to help her fly at her best, and eventually will be the one that designs and builds all her Galatica tech! Her Galatica design hasn’t been done yet, mostly bc I wanted to focus on her current comic canon design, but not much would change I feel with her upgrade anyways! She is effectively the brains of the group, and the others often turn to her for plans of attack when dealing with a situation, or innovative solutions to problems! I have yet to get a voice claim for her, but im sure one will come to me soon enough! 

Final Notes

Erica/Nebula was a character I struggled to connect with. Everyone else had Airs that were either super plot important, or just much more cool and creative in general. I felt, that with my Air/Galatica she was just there, and I wanted her to be more. So a full character rehaul was done with her and it makes me so happy. She feels much more fleshed out, better designed, and I’m super excited to do more stuff with her, and hopefully you will all see her much more now that I’m a lot happier with her as a character! <3 

Welp that's the end of the updates....wait. Hold on. I have something written here. What could this be? Oh! I remember now! 

Black Hole, AkA Beatrix, will be joining the MAIN CAST of Alton Adventures! 

When I drew my Black Hole design, I knew she was something special. She stands out compared to a lot of my characters, and her design SCREAMS main character. While the biggest main roles will still be held by Mr. S and Rita, I wanted to add another non SW coaster to the main crew, and because Canonically Corkscrew is MIA, Black Hole seemed like a fitting addition to the main crew! As she isn’t human, a species literally only referred to as Black Holes, I thought making her a main character and giving her a big arc would help flesh out the reality of non humans in Alton Adventures! Her powers and design and character and personality are just too fun to shove her into the background. I feel that adding her to the main cast gives them not only another character to support them, but a closer friend! You will all see her much more in the future for certain! 

Well that's about it! In terms of comic updates themselves...its still going to be hiatus as long as I’m being swamped with school work. I hope you all understand. I’ll try to squeeze in updates over the breaks I have IF im not working on assignments for class. As I also said, I wanna do short stories as well, to expand the world and explain it better, as a comic will only develop the world so quickly and lots of you have tons of questions! I also wanna do something animated at some point, that’s my dream. I’ve ALSO mentioned to some people about merch, likely going for making stickers first since that's simple. I got an excited reaction for that so I’ll come up with designs for them soon! I just wanna do a lot with Alton Adventures, because I know how much it means to people, and of course it means so much. Goodness I really need to actually get to this park, I look quiet silly constantly gushing over a themepark I’ve never been to all the time XP  That all aside I thank you all for sticking by me. I promise that even if I don’t do comic updates as frequently during the school year, I’ll still work to push out as much AA content I can outside of that! I’m always open to suggestions to what you guys want to see! ALSO, working on a big google doc spreadsheet with info on all the characters I’ll be posting when its more completed! So be on the lookout for that! 

Again thank you to everyone who’s stuck with me through this, Your support makes me feel nothing but proud of what I’ve created. These characters may have been created out of something some may consider silly or odd, but the only thing that matters to me if that I can make at least someone happy with what I create. 

Patreon (note that patrons got to see all of this content as it was being worked on!) l Ko-fi

#gonna probably post the images all in image posts later #for now have this #alton towers #alton adventures #nemesis #air #i like totally redid forbidden valley didnt i huh #sir gareth nemesis #beatrix #odin miller #mr. s #rita ferraro #erica cloud #esther forest #big update #long post

[study-nsp]

credit for the header image ©

when i was in high school i never ever typed any notes. handwriting is super good cause it helps u remember better what ur writing, and it’s easier to adapt to what u need ur notes to look like. but then i started university and i had to summarize everything that happened in my country from 1860 to 2000 and i was like no, fuck it, i ain’t writing all that bc a) i wouldn’t have time and b) my hand would probably fall off. so typing it saved my life and i learned some stuff and i have a few tips so u can make the most out of ur typed notes!

is it convenient to type?

things u need to think abt:

the context where u’ll be doing it, e.g. in class sometimes it’s actually faster to handwrite if the class is disorganized so u can draw arrows, connect stuff on different parts of the page, make margin notes, etc, but sometimes the teacher speaks really fast and u don’t have time to jot everything down so it’s better to type. if u have time to write down most of the important things i recommend to handwrite. if ur in ur house or library both methods work the same; if ur in a coffee shop or sth probably best to type cause it takes up less space

how much time until u have to study them, if you’re making summaries/guides. if u got lazy and left it to the last moment (happens to the best of us), u’ll be better off typing. ifffff u have the time and ur willing to maybe it’s best to handwrite them bc it helps w memorizing

the subject and what’s gonna be important for the exam, so u know how it’s better to study. when i make summaries and study guides i always mix my class notes and book or other material i have. before u start writing them, go over both and try to think what u want ur notes to look like, if it’s gonna be important for them to be visual, have lots of arrows (in that case, better to handwrite, but it can be done in a laptop, although it may end up taking u more time in the end), or if they’re gonna be lots of bullet points and outlines, charts, diagrams (it’s easier to type these)

this is just a pro of typing over handwriting: u’ll be able to go back and modify/add/delete stuff. so if ur gonna be making study guides super in advance and in class the teacher goes back to topics u already included, u can add more info all the time without ur notes looking like a clutter of post it notes and covered in margin notes

tips and tricks

use shortcuts and make ur own shortcuts to replace regular symbols with symbols u don’t have in ur keyboard per se. u may need a little poking around whichever app ur using, or u can add them to the keyboard “replace” feature. for example, for mine i made -> turn into ⇾, >> into ↳, ^^^ into ↓ (u can tell i use lots of arrows). don’t be afraid to experiment and look through the symbols in ur laptop to see what u’ll find useful!

lots of abbreviations, and this applies to handwritten notes also. i have this bad habit, though, of cutting short long words and then not remembering the conjugation and getting confused when i revise them, so be careful with that (for example, in sociology i used “intern.” for “internalization”, “internalize”, “internalizing” and then regretted it)

if u want ur notes to have colour but don’t wanna waste colour ink from ur printer, u can use highlighters or leave blank spaces to write titles and subtitles with a coloured pen when u print them. but don’t actually leave it blank; write the word in white so u’ll remember what u were supposed to write later. take into account that of course ur handwriting won’t be the same size as the font. this applies if u want cute calligraphy titles, banners, drawings, etc. u can decorate ur notes as much as u want when u print them!

make good use of fonts but don’t overdo it, have a main font for the body and maybe a different one for titles/subtitles if u want

have a system where u use bold, italics and underlined for different things (terms, examples, important definitions, dates, whatever)

be creative in the use of space! use shapes, charts, the diagram function of ur app, anything ur comfortable using and that’s gonna be useful (don’t put in diagrams just bc they look cool if the info in it isn’t really important). but, again, don’t overdo it cause it may end up taking u more time than it’s really worth it

this is gonna sound super millenial, but sometimes emojis r useful in notes (i know i know) to make them more visual. like u can replace a word with its emoji (hand, person, tree, idk), use it on the side to symbolize what ur talking about (i used a bomb next to a part where i was writing sth about WWII), etc. don’t judge me for this please

use an app to block websites and other apps that distract you because that’s the downside of writing on ur laptop: ur laptop is right there. i’ll list some apps on the next part

software + apps

google drive: i’m in love with this. v useful if ur gonna be writing from different devices without downloading anything. also it’s cool that u can download and easily use lots of font. buuuut it doesn’t have many functions. make sure to enable offline mode because otherwise anytime ur wifi acts up it won’t let u edit

evernote: again lets u sync ur notes in many devices but u need to download the app in all of them. personally i prefer google drive but that’s bc i never rlly tried to get used to this one, many people seem to rlly love it

ur laptop’s default text editor: usually microsoft word for windows, pages for mac. i used pages for my history and sociology notes because i knew i was gonna do everything in my own laptop and found it super useful. it’s rlly easy to make charts, shapes, diagrams, and it’s super simple in a good way. i vouch for microsoft word as well, it has a lot more functions but at the same time it can get more complicated.

here are a few masterposts with apps that can help u for both note taking and productivity: x (all free) x x

this isn’t for note-taking but i find it super useful and i urge u to download it if ur gonna be using ur laptop to write notes: f.lux changes the colour of ur computer display to be warm during night or when u don’t have light so u don’t strain ur eyes looking at the blue glow of the screen. it’s explained better in the website. it’s been a total lifesaver and has changed my life tbh

+ masterposts

studyblr-ing 101

apps for ur life

how to mind map

studying better

diy notebooks

highlighting effectively

i hope i was somehow able to help u and give u any good tips! please hmu with requests if u want any specific masterpost to be done 💛

xx sofi

#masterpost #mp #studyblr #studyspo #study tips #academla #intellectys #emmastudies #studyquill

[allenmendezsr]

Gcse Maths In Four Weeks

New Post has been published on https://autotraffixpro.app/allenmendezsr/gcse-maths-in-four-weeks/

Gcse Maths In Four Weeks

 Buy Now    

Make Sure You Watch This Video Till The End Or You Won’t Find Out Where You’re Going Wrong In Your Revision Nor The Key To Scoring An A* Grade In Practically Any GCSE Exam!

Please note, this is a downloadable product. Once you hit the buy button below, you’ll get

instant

access to all of my material and see almost immediately where you are going wrong in your revision.

The same revision schedule I used to get an A* in GCSE maths a year early!

It can be used by any GCSE/IGCSE maths student, regardless of the examining body.

It covers the new UK GCSE Maths specification (9-1) released in September 2015.

The fatal mistake thousands of students make in their maths revision and how YOU can avoid it.

The most important area of your revision yet it goes widely unnoticed. This is where the A/A* grades are achieved.

3 unique memory retention techniques you can use to remember all you need to know for your exam.

What process to follow a few days before your exam and why there is NO need to do any past papers at this point.

A simple technique that will allow you to spend up to 50% of your time doing the things you enjoy!

How to revise for all your other GCSE exams and achieve a top grade in each one.

Tips on how to score up to 100% in your exam.

A neat little trick to eliminate stress & anxiety on exam day.

How to enter the exam if you’re a private candidate with a tip on saving on the entry cost.

Over 8 hours of video footage of me going through the trickiest exam questions of the syllabus

Watch these video tutorials as many times as you like, in the comfort of your own home.

Free Bonuses (RRP £47!)

30 of the greatest shortcuts ever discovered in GCSE maths. Use them to solve questions quicker and look like a genius in front of your peers and teachers!

This guide builds on from all of the exam questions in the main program.

It contains all of the areas a typical student would drop marks on. By being aware of these areas, you’ll achieve nearer the 100% mark let alone your target grade.

Up until now, I gave this guide exclusively to students I tutored in my local area but today I am giving it to you for free!

This guide is crucial, especially in the last few weeks of revision when you need ‘something easy to refer to’.

My 6-step formula for GCSE exam success.

Achieve a top grade in all your GCSE exams whilst spending half of your time doing the things you enjoy.

I explain why note-taking is NOT the way forward and how it can have adverse effect on grades.

Why working back-to-front actually boosts results in the long run.

Student Reviews

“I Followed His Approach And Achieved 90% In My Next Sitting. I Thought It Was A Fluke So I Put It To The Test Again. The Result – 100%”

“After many failed attempts, I almost packed in my GCSE maths altogether. But fortunately I didn’t, thanks to Jeevan’s guide! When I read it, I found out exactly where I was going wrong all this time! I followed his approach and achieved 90% in my next sitting. I was shocked and I thought it was a total fluke so I put his strategy to the test again. This time, I got 100%! Fantastic! If only I came across Jeevan’s strategy sooner.”

– Sim G. (Hillingdon, West London)

“I went from a ‘U’ grade to a pass grade!”

“I’ve been struggling with maths for the past 2 years now. In the first mock paper I took, I got a ‘U’ grade. At this point, I felt hopeless. How was I ever going to pass my maths?! I did a Google search and came across Jeevan’s stuff on Youtube. I was in a desperate situation so I had no choice but to purchase your material…

Jeevan’s resources are amazing. They have really helped me out. I am much more confident with my maths and I am able to answer past papers within the time limit. I recently had a mock exam at school and I achieved a ‘D’ grade! A massive improvement since my last score. If I continue to make this progress, there is no doubt that I will achieve my pass grade in my final exam. Thanks for your amazing resources Jeevan. They are so much better than the other revision guides I wasted money on!”

– Ambereen, Sheffield

“Thank you so much Jeevan… my ‘B’ grade will definitely help me in applying for a ‘Pharmacy’ course at University…”

“I seemed to underperform in my mock exams – achieving D’s/E’s but after following your strategy and advice, I achieved a ‘B’ grade in my final GCSE maths exam. I was chuffed because this result enabled me to study A-Level Chemistry. I’ve used your revision principles again and this has helped me immensely in this subject. Thank you so much Jeevan.. my ‘B’ grade will definitely help me in applying for a ‘Pharmacy’ course at University…”

– Z.B (Northampton)

“After Reading About Your Success And What Your Program Has Done For Others, It Inspired Me To Do Better And Aim For The Best Results…”

“Before coming across your guide, I wasn’t highly motivated to study nor confident that I would achieve the best grades in my GCSEs. However, after reading about your success and what your program has done for others, it inspired me to do better and aim for the best results. At the end of the day, there is no reason why anyone cannot achieve the best grades in their studies…

Your maths revision guide/strategy is fantastic! You have really opened my eyes as to where I’ve been going wrong all this time and what I should focus on, going forward. I’ve also applied your methods to other subjects too such as Science and seen a vast improvement in terms of revision and progress. I cannot thank you enough for sharing your strategy! I am very confident that, providing I follow your plan, I will excel in my final GCSE exams next year and most importantly, make my family proud! :)”

– James Sadler (Nottingham)

“Thank You Jeevan! You Have Potentially Changed My Life!”

“I didn’t think failing my maths back in high school would come back to haunt me but it did! After graduating from Edge Hill University, I was looking to undertake a PGCE in primary teaching. However, one of the requirements was a pass in GCSE maths so I had no choice but to re-take it. After failing it twice, my confidence was very low and I didn’t think I could qualify for the PGCE. After running a Google search on passing GCSE maths, I came across Jeevan’s revision system. The feedback it received looked very good so I decided to give it a try…

And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. After going through Jeevan’s guide, I managed to grasp the entire subject and I passed my next GCSE maths exam, with ease. He (Jeevan) provided me with all the tools I needed to prepare for the exam. Together with his guidance, my pass was a foregone conclusion. Thank you so much Jeevan! You have potentially changed my life. I recommend anyone seeking a pass grade in GCSE maths to purchase this fantastic package!”

– Deborah Farrington (Southport, North West)

“I Got The Highest Grade In My Entire Year Group. I Am Now Going To Take My GCSE Maths Exam Early…

“Before I came across this program, my confidence was a little low. Having achieved a ‘C’ grade in a GCSE mock exam just prior to it, I wasn’t sure how I was going to better this.

However, thanks to Jeevan’s program, I was able to see how I could maximise my grade in a maths exam. At the end of the day, this is the most important thing – the result on the paper! After a month of following Jeevan’s program, I achieved a strong ‘B’ grade (a couple of marks off an A) in my next GCSE mock exam. I achieved the highest grade in my entire year group and I am now being considered to take my GCSE maths exam in November this year, where I would have just begun year 11. My teacher was surprised; how did I make such a big improvement in maths in such a short space of time?!”

– Noah Daniel (Ealing, West London)

“I went from a ‘D’ Grade to a ‘B’ grade within weeks…”

“Jeevan’s guide is great! I followed his advice and jumped from a ‘D’ Grade to a ‘B’ grade within weeks I am now aiming for an A/A* In GCSE Maths. Thanks a lot Jeevan!”

– Mohammad Zaffar (South East, UK)

“Jeevan’s revision guide has helped me understand questions which I did not understand before in class…”

“Jeevan’s revision guide has helped understand questions which I did not understand before in class. It has really helped me learn things the easy way. It’s straightforward and shows you how to get a top grade in GCSE maths, in a step-by-step format…”

– Xhesiana Shabani, Essex

“Jeevan’s Revision Strategy Can Be Used In Other Subjects Too And Not Only Maths…”

“I am very grateful for Jeevan’s program because it taught me many techniques on how to overcome common mistakes made in maths. Also, his revision strategy is unique because the same principles can be used in other subjects too and not only maths. Thank you Jeevan, your techniques are very useful!”

– Sharon Tsungi (International Student, Mozambique)

“It is nothing like your usual revision guide… Jeevan’s has a well-defined strategy…”

“I found this program very useful. The topics are laid out clearly for ease of reference. It is nothing like your usual revision guide because Jeevan’s is a well-defined strategy; he shows you exactly what to do to achieve a top grade in GCSE maths, in a step-by-step format. He addresses issues such as how much time should be spent on revision, exam technique, tips for scoring 100%, motivation, freeing up 50% of your time etc. unlike a normal revision guide which is just packed with theory. He also explains concepts with more detail. For instance, I used to find solving equations tricky but after reading his section on algebra, I fully understand how to solve an equation. The DVDs are great because he teaches concepts both verbally and visually which is always helpful!”

– Kimran Mann (Hillingdon, West London)

“I have no doubt that this programme is the best there is and would have complete confidence in recommending it to anyone studying GCSE maths…”

“My son was struggling with GCSE revision and being a typical boy his desire to stay inside and study was not too high on the agenda! His maths has always been pretty average, and he has always had very little confidence in his mathematical abilities. Jeevan’s programme is excellent. The break down of all mathematical problems has completely changed the way my son approaches his work and he is no longer doubting his ability. I have no doubt that this programme is the best there is and would have complete confidence in recommending it to anyone studying GCSE maths.

On a side note, Jeevan is a perfect gentleman. He is very approachable, kind and generous with his advice. An efficient young man who truly cares about what he is offering. If you purchase this programme, you will certainly not be disappointed.”

– Jill Wilson, [email protected], (Trillick, County Tyrone)

“I Went From A Below-Average Grade In Maths To An ‘A’ Grade In My Final Exam!”

“I was always one of those students who were top of the class for maths during my KS3 years. However, we didn’t have maths lessons for around 6 months in year 10, so I fell behind rapidly, and I was getting below average for my GCSE mocks. This package has really boosted my knowledge in a matter of only two weeks! I am vastly improving in maths and I am confident, given that I follow Jeevan’s principles, I will achieve an A* in GCSE maths…

In the end I achieved an ‘A’ grade in GCSE maths (summer 2014). I was a little disappointed in myself. However, considering the circumstances, I think I did pretty well. I am now taking A-Level maths at a grammar school and wanted to thank you for helping me along the way. You have inspired me to do well in this subject and I’m sure my ‘A’ grade will definitely help me to study Veterinary Medicine at a top University. Once again, thank you so much!”

– A.O (London)

“I was one of those students who was making this ‘silly mistake’ repeatedly and not knowing I was making it…”

“This is a great guide! It is well written and easy to follow. It tells you what you should do on the very first day of revision right up until the day before the exam. I recommend anyone that’s taking their GCSE maths to get their hands on this valuable guide! It showed me exactly where I was going wrong. I was one of those students who was making this ‘silly mistake’ repeatedly, and not knowing that I was making it. No wonder I failed my GCSE maths first time…

Once I addressed this mistake, I scored 90% in my GCSE maths exam”

– A.J. (Hillingdon, West London)

“I Went To Thorpe Park 2 Days Before My Final Maths Exam…”

“It was just over 2 months to go until my final GCSE maths exam, and I’d just achieved a ‘C’ grade in a mock exam I took at school. I knew I had the potential do well in maths but I guess I needed that extra push. With up to 30 students in my class, it was difficult for me to address all of my problems. I had to find an alternative. This is when I came across Jeevan’s stuff…

His manual is great because his notes are presented as ‘cheat’ sheets – summary sheets of all the main concepts/formulas you need to know for your exam. He wants revision to be a comfortable process for you. He explains that a student does not have to work around-the-clock to achieve top grades. As long as they follow his revision strategy, they could still have fun, and he is totally correct; my first maths paper was on the 9th June 2014 and 2 days before, I decided to take a trip to Thorpe Park! 😀

The difference between him and my maths teacher was obviously the approach. My maths teacher would only work on the areas in which the majority of students struggled on; these were usually the more difficult topics. Also, my maths teacher made a small yet devastating error during her teaching. In his manual, Jeevan strongly advises to do the opposite. Looking back now… I guess this is what ultimately got me my ‘A’ grade!”

– Diya Sharma (Hillingdon)

“Jeevan’s guide helped me achieve a level 8 in maths and I’m only in year 8!”

“Although I’m a KS3 student, I decided to give Jeevan’s guide a try because I know GCSE and KS3 are fairly similar. Looking back now, it was one of the best decisions I made. The guide has helped me jump from a level 6A to a level 8C in maths, and I’m only in year 8! Achieving a level 8 in maths is regarded as a gifted individual. Thank you for this terrific guide and I will recommend it to anyone taking a maths exam!”

– Zain Akif (Hale Barns, Cheshire)

“Your GCSE Maths program has helped me immensely in maths…”

“Your GCSE Maths program has helped me immensely in maths. I am much more confident with this subject and I’m striving for better grades. I really appreciate the time you took in making this program because it has boosted many students self-confidence with their exams.”

– Alia Bibi (Bolton)

“I’m even considering A-Level Maths. That’s quite phenomenal for someone who failed their GCSE maths before!”

“The program designed by Jeevan summarise what you need to know for your exam by focusing on the key concepts. The resources are well written and take the complexity out of the topics covered. The shortcuts and tips are especially useful and I’m already reaping the benefits; I can answer exam questions far quicker than I previously did. I achieved a ‘C’ grade in the foundation-tier paper this summer (2015). However, I am not satisfied with just a ‘C’ grade so I’ve entered the higher-tier paper in November 2015, where I am aiming to get an ‘A’ grade overall. Before I came across Jeevan’s program, I would have been really happy with just a ‘C’ grade at GCSE. I now want to aim for the best grade possible because I know I can do it. Thanks Jeevan for giving me the belief that I can do well in in this subject. I’m even considering A-Level Maths! That’s quite phenomenal for someone who failed their GCSE maths before!”

– Purdip B, Birmingham

“Your program is so easy to understand. It makes far more sense than school teachers ever did…”

“I have found your program really helpful. It is so easy to understand. It makes far more sense than school teachers ever did. I desperately need a ‘C’ grade and with your package, I am bang on this pass rate. With a bit more revision, it will be a comfortable pass. Thanks Jeevan!”

– James Atkinson (Leeds)

“You Have Instilled The Belief In Me That I Can Do Well In this Subject…”

“Your strategy is spot on Jeevan. Your revision system helped me achieve a ‘B’ grade in maths last year. I used the same strategy again and together with your fantastic resources, I achieved an ‘A’ in my GCSE maths exam this year (2014). You have instilled the belief in me that I can do well in this subject. That’s why I am planning to study it for A-level and make a career out of it! Thank you for all your support Jeevan!”

– Temitope Ohiani, Kent

“When I used Jeevan’s trick, it allowed me to free up half of my time!”

“I have found this course extremely useful as it creates a stimulation and structure for revision at a very critical time in the run-up to exams. This course gives structure and tuition in the form of Notes and Videos, which are best used as a lead in to the Past Exam Papers, but are also there as a reference if you are having problems with some topics. With your schedule completed, you’re preparatory work and a list of past papers, you are ready to go. You know exactly what you have to do each day.

With regards to time management, not having ‘Jeevan’s routine’ in place would have been a big mistake. I would have lost time; maybe another way of putting it would be, I would’ve wasted time unnecessarily or not getting the best use of the time available. That is why Jeevan’s revision strategy is a must have if want to succeed. Jeevan also provides a small rule of thumb which allows you to free up 50% of your time. It’s so simple yet so effective. When I put it into practise, it allowed me to free up half of my time! At the end of the day, revision is not all about work, work, work!

Lastly, the most important thing I can take out of this program is my results. Before I begun this program, I was sitting on a ‘B’ grade, but after following Jeevan’s advice and strategy, I am now working on a solid ‘A’ grade. After I go through Jeevan’s tips on securing 100% in the exam, I should bump this grade up to an ‘A*’, by the time of my exam in a couple of weeks. With the improved grade, I also find that I am completing the Past Papers in less time. This course has worked for me. It can also work for you!”

– Ivan Morrow, Larne, Co. Antrim

“Woahh!! I’ve learnt so much on lesson 17, 18 & 19 on the higher tier, in just 2 hours!!”

“I’m so glad I’ve found your revision strategy. It’s AMAZING! It could change my whole life! I’ve always struggled with maths and when I did the tasks in the booklet you sent me, I actually knew what I was doing! It’s a great layout…

I started the booklet a couple of days ago and now I’m on lesson 17 which I have now finished. I must say.. Woahhh!! I’ve learnt so much on lesson 17, 18 & 19 on the higher tier, in just 2 hours!! Easier methods, the better!! I highly recommend you!”

– Haleema Zaheer (Staffordshire)

“This is not only far better than a private tutor but amazing value for money”

“My daughter struggled with Maths due to an absence of teachers during year 10. I purchased Jeevan’s ‘home-tutor’ program and she has not looked back. Not only does it explain the basic steps but also how to achieve those top grades. This is not only far better than a private tutor but amazing value for money. I would only have got a few hours of a tutors time for the same money. I am very grateful as this has turned my daughters attitude to Maths around- she now loves it and finds it easy!

My other daughter, who is currently 14-years-old, has already begun your program. After going through your book and DVD’s, she has moved up to the top set in maths. I have no doubt when she takes her GCSE maths in 2 years, she will achieve an A/A* grade! Many many thanks for your help Jeevan!”

– Alison Smith (Devizes, Wiltshire)

“Your resources were amazing Jeevan. They helped me get an A!”

“Your resources were amazing Jeevan. They were nothing like the material we received at school. Thanks Jeevan. They helped me get an A!”

– Jannelle Williams (Haringey, North London)

“I’ve found your course really helpful and it’s saved a lot time so I can focus on my other subjects too!”

“I’ve found your course really helpful and it’s saved a lot of time so I can focus on my other subjects too such as English and Science. Your course has taught me a number of techniques to solve questions quicker. For instance, how to quickly turn recurring decimals into fractions. This has saved a lot of time when completing my mock exams. Thanks Jeevan. Your course is great!”

– Ali Mohammed (Hillingdon, West London)

“I have noticed a significant improvement from getting B and C grades to A and A* grades!”

“Your GCSE maths program has had a big impact on my revision for the better. You have made everything really simple to understand while still keeping all the necessary information. This is vital to my revision as I can quickly understand the key concept of that type of question and then I can apply it to some practice questions, thus saving me time. Your other book “How To Maximise Your Result In Every GCSE Exam” has greatly helped me in all of my other subjects as I can revise effectively which frees up my time and in class tests I have noticed a significant improvement from getting B and C grades to now getting A and A* grades. Thank you very much for these guides, I wish I had found them sooner!”

– Prabhjot Kalsi (Gillingham, Kent)

“Since purchasing your programme, my maths results have improved particularly on the past papers…”

“Since purchasing your programme my maths results has started to improve particularly on the past papers I have done individually. As you can see on the foundation tier I managed to score 60% which I know is a vast improvement compared to my previous foundation past papers.

By reading your revision guide and the advice given in it, this has really allowed me to see an improvement on my grades, as the way it is structured is easier for me to understand. The one I strongly recommend is ‘how to achieve your target grade in maths in four weeks’ as it is very helpful.

This revision programme is different to other revision guides and tutors I have had in the past. Because I feel your programme is tailored specifically in aid of helping everyone achieve well at maths. It’s not just about going through maths textbooks and answering questions which I was previously taught. It’s more about applying what you’ve learned at a particular topic in a true reflection, such as doing past papers and identifying weaknesses so that I could get a better grade and I am more prepared when it comes to the real thing! So thank you very much Jeevan! This programme has been a huge help and will continue to be a huge help!”

– Miss S. A. Palmer (Ashington, Northumberland)

“I was predicted a C but I wanted to go that extra mile… I got an A*”

“Thanks to all your information and revision techniques, I got an A* in my Maths GCSE exam…

I was predicted a C but I wanted to go that extra mile and make my parents proud. I struggled with Algebra but using your resources, I found it easy and conquered the challenge. Thank you so much!”

– George B. K. (Wakefield, West Yorkshire)

“I got 95% on my last 2 maths mock exams… and now I’m being entered for the higher tier”

– F. E. (UK)

“My grades were mainly B’s and A’s. Now they’re solid A*s…”

– Shivaki Suthaharan (Hillingdon, West London)

“I was in the 3rd set for maths and working on a B/A grade but in my most recent mock exam, I got an A*…”

– Sophia Xia (Oxford)

“The advice I was given in this revision guide was phenomenal. I went from a ‘B’ grade to an ‘A’ grade (3 marks off an A*) in my next mock exam.”

– H A Seyyad (Ilford)

“I went from a C to a B. Your program is amazing and the advice is really helpful. I feel like you really want me to pass!”

– R. Cornmell

“I went from a D to a C+ in my next mock exam…”

– Alisa N. (Bradford)

“I recently had a mock exam and I have improved from a D to a B. I am truly pleased and now I’m aiming for an A…”

– Vanessa (Colchester)

“I’m in set 3 for maths and I went from a B grade to an A* grade.”

Click Image To Expand

– Samson Cryan (Cornwall)

“I went from a 5- to a 5+ in just 5 weeks and got 54/55 in my latest school test.”

Click Image To Expand

– Abbie Marsh (London)

“I have made significant progress… I have moved from a 6 (B) grade to a 7 (A) grade in a little over a month…”

Click Image To Expand

– Zuzia B. (UK)

“I went from a grade 4/5 to a grade 7 in a couple of months…”

Click Image To Expand

– Haleema Rashid (Rochdale)

“If it weren’t for your pack, maths would have been the only GCSE I failed!”

Click Image To Expand

– Joseph Duckworth (UK)

Your 60-Day 100% Money-Back Guarantee

Order my ‘Achieve Your Target Grade In GCSE Maths In Four Weeks’ package right now and give it a try. Read through the revision guides and watch the video tutorials over the next 2 months. If your maths grade does not improve in that time, then I don’t want your money. Simply return it to me and I’ll give you a full refund. No questions asked. I will even let you keep the bonus guides just for showing some faith in me.

The Price Is Equivalent To

TWO

sessions With A Private Tutor.

My revision program has helped hundreds of students around the world do better in their maths exams!

It is also being used by dozens of schools in the UK and abroad!

Please note, this is a downloadable product. Once you hit the buy button below, you’ll get instant access to all of my material and see almost immediately where you are going wrong in your revision.  

Note: ClickBank will apply VAT to your order (Reg No. EU826000301).

ClickBank is the retailer of products on this site. CLICKBANK® is a registered trademark of Click Sales Inc., a Delaware corporation located at 1444 S. Entertainment Ave., Suite 410 Boise, ID 83709, USA and used by permission. ClickBank’s role as retailer does not constitute an endorsement, approval or review of these products or any claim, statement or opinion used in promotion of these products.

[sinceileftyoublog]

The Versions of Shannon Lay

Photo by Denée Segall

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The story of how LA-based folk singer-songwriter Shannon Lay came to commit to music full-time is legendary. It’s akin to Radiohead seeing Jeff Buckley live leading to Thom Yorke’s heartbreaking performance on “Fake Plastic Trees”, but this time, it’s a different kind of inspirational folk luminary. Lay watched Jessica Pratt’s quiet, contemplative, yet all-encompassing music dominate a room; if there’s a demand for it, she, too, could do it, she thought after watching Pratt’s set. Lay decided to quit her job of 7 years at a vintage shop in August of 2017, the month being the namesake of her best album to date and one of the finest of 2019.

August exemplifies so much that Lay does well. The surprisingly linear spontaneity of opener “Death Up Close”--which starts with a misstep and eventually features a Mikal Cronin saxophone solo--is contrasted by the flaneur of “Nowhere”, an ode to enjoying the circular journey without an end, where her voice travels in the opposite direction of the song’s lilting melody. “Will I ever see through?” Lay asks, but not too bothered, layered over drums and hand claps. She sees the humor and delight in the smallest moments: Gorgeous and simple standout “Shuffling Stoned” is a scene in a record store in New York City, a customer buying weed from his dealer as small spider crawls on his stack of records. Many people would want the spider killed, but Lay sees it as no less a sign of life than anybody else. Most remarkable is “November”, dedicated to the woman left behind, Molly Drake, the mother of the late Nick. “Molly did you feel the sting / Of November songs gone quiet,” she asks, again not expecting an answer but knowing that asking the question, embodying another’s state of mind, is what’s important. 

Live last month at Lincoln Hall opening for Cronin, Lay and her band members (Denée Segall, Sofia Arreguin, and Shelby Jacobson) were effortlessly good. August songs like “Sea Came to Shore”, in studio just guitar and violin plucks, were much more forceful on stage, while old favorites like “Parked” allowed Lay to show off her finger-picking and English folk chops. The band ended their set with an a capella, almost unrecognizable version of Italo house classic “Everybody Everybody” by Black Box, further cementing Lay’s ability to adapt material to suit her style. The audience, even one prepared for the hell-raiser to follow, loved it. It makes sense; if anybody has experience slaying in front of all types of crowds, it’s Lay, who also plays in Ty Segall’s Freedom Band. She’s thankfully unafraid to call out talkers when necessary, as she told me over the phone earlier this year. “Nick Drake quit halfway through his first tour because people were talking during his set,” she reminded me. “People [who talk] don’t have empathy...they’ve never been up on stage,” she added. Ever the wise reader of people, but one too thankful to let it get to her too much, Lay moves on.

During our interview, Lay shared the stories behind some of the songs, videos, and lines from August, as well as explained her inspiration from The Simpsons, true crime, and Nick Drake and Karen Dalton. Read our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below. 

at Lincoln Hall

Since I Left You: A lot of the context of the album you’ve shared in other interviews or through the bio. Is there something else the listener might not pick up in terms of how August is unique as compared to your past releases?

Shannon Lay: I wanted this one to be overtly positive. Not as moody as my last ones. I think that was the main difference that I felt--this undercurrent of joy I had never really had making a record. There was always a heartache involved or a brooding of the state of the world. Now, more than ever, I feel like you gotta do what you want to do. Being able to experience and appreciate that and encouraging other people to do that too.

SILY: Did doing music full-time help you think about things in new ways?

SL: Yeah, for sure. It kind of freed up so much brain space that was taken up by the usual life stuff. It was cool to put all of my energy into one thing I cared about so much. It was a really amazing experience I had never really had.

SILY: What was your job?

SL: I was working at a vintage store called Squaresville. It was a great little store. I grew up there, working there from 19-26. Really formative years of my life. The store bought clothes from the public, so there were all these new faces coming in. The staff would have been an amazing sitcom. Everyone was just the most incredible character. It was a ton of fun. My boss at the time was just so supportive--always let me go on tour and come back. She was a huge reason I was able to do this in the first place.

SILY: That’s nice to hear. A lot of the time when you hear about these types of stories, it’s about escaping some sort of soul-sucking desk job.

SL: I was very lucky. I had a cool environment to be in.

SILY: Do you still keep up with them?

SL: Yeah, for sure!

SILY: The first song on the record--does that start with a recorded misstep?

SL: Yeah, it was a total accident. As we were going through the tape, I just fell in love with that moment. The song comes in so quick, it was kind of a “Roll it!” moment, and then the record just goes.

SILY: So it was something you just heard and were like, “We should keep that in”?

SL: Totally. When we were doing the mastering, they had taken it out, since they thought it was a mistake--we were like, “Put it back in! Put it back in!”

SILY: Where did you get the idea for the video for “Death Up Close”?

SL: Me and the director, Matt Yoka, we had been talking about that idea for a year. We finally had just enough money to pull it off. Matt’s the best in the sense that when he gets an idea in his head, he’s going to make it happen no matter what, so we just had the most fun ever. We built all of it. Everybody was so nice. Most of the people were just volunteering. The concept behind it was mainly the idea of having a safe space in your mind that’s never changing no matter how much you change. For me, that’s obviously The Simpsons, my total safe haven, end all be all childhood memory show, and something I still watch every day. It was amazing to become yellow.

SILY: Is there a specific line or joke from The Simpsons that you think about all the time?

SL: The one that comes to mind is such a weird deep cut. There are tons of them. [laughs] There’s one where George Bush moves into the Simpsons’ neighborhood...this is not funny to anybody...there’s one point where Bart comes over and George Bush yells to Barbara Bush, “Bart’s here, we gotta get him out of here,” or something, and she’s just like, “I’m making pies, it’ll be a while!” That’s the joke that I think of. [laughs] There’s so many. I also love the one where Lisa starts to play hockey and Marge has Milhouse’s teeth from the show before. I’m just like, “Stop showin’ us those.”

SILY: There are so many good Easter Eggs.

SL: Yeah, totally.

SILY: What was the story behind your video for “Nowhere”?

SL: I did that one with my house mate Chris [Slater]. He’s a great director. We just used our phones for that one. I found an 8 MM app that was available. We just went around our neighborhood taking some footage, and he put his editing magic on it. I really like the way that one came out. It was a cool visual moment.

I wish music videos had more of an impact, but I think they’ve become this weird thing. You remember back in the day, Making the Video, and they had a yacht, and it was this huge thing...the new Missy Elliott video totally harks back to it, like she has different looks and different dancers.

SILY: The song “November” references Nick Drake’s mother. You see a lot of songs about a prolific or important singer-songwriter who left too soon. Why did you decide to explore the perspective of his mom?

SL: I guess sort of the fact that he did live at home. It was just a normal night that he went to sleep, woke up, had a bowl of cereal, and took one too many pills. I just imagine his mom waking up in the morning and feeling this silence in the house. It just must have been such a crazy moment. I don’t think it was any secret he had some emotional problem, but you never expect anything like that to happen. Putting myself in her shoes for a minute, and feeling such a strong presence leave the world, it must have been really emotional and intense. At the same time, what he left behind was incredible. He’ll live forever. He’s more alive now than he’s ever been because of how many people have discovered his music. I was thinking about the inherent sadness of losing a loved one, especially someone where everyone outside of them could see their potential, but maybe they’re struggling. It’s a whole thing. [laughs]

SILY: I love the story behind “Shuffling Stone”. Do you like spiders?

SL: I do love spiders. Not when they’re on me, but I do like spiders.

SILY: “Something On Your Mind” was released before this record was even announced. Had you always planned on putting it on the record?

SL: I didn’t, but it just became clear to me that it sums up what I’m trying to portray and how I’m feeling. The amount of people who don’t know who Karen Dalton is--I’d love to spread more awareness of her. I discovered that song relatively recently and it really hit me, so I started playing it live, acoustic guitar and vocals. Whenever someone did know that song, they’d be like, “Dude, thank you so much for playing that song. I love that song.” I think it’s that kind of a tune. If you have a relationship with it, it’s incredibly special, and to discover it is a really beautiful thing. I hope it points people in her direction.

SILY: What made you want to sign with Sub Pop?

SL: When we first finished the record, I kind of did an email blast and sent the record to all the labels we like. Sub Pop got back so fast and were so stoked. I was surprised because they don’t strike me as an overtly folk label, but that was exciting to me to, to be like, “Hell yeah, let’s bring a new perspective to this established, wonderful thing.” Then I met some people from there, and they were the most wonderful people. I’ve never really experienced the resources they have before. There’s a social media guy, and a PR girl. Everybody is working so hard in their specialized zones. It’s amazing to experience and be a part of. They just seemed so down to earth while also being very professional and serious at the same time. They’re awesome.

SILY: They are pretty stylistically diverse even if they haven’t done much folk. Your sound fits just because of that.

SL: Totally, yeah. It opens a lot of doors in my mind of what I could do.

SILY: I read one review that said Jessica Pratt inspired you to dedicate all your time to music.

SL: The first time that I saw her play, I was super deep in the rock scene. I had always been in really loud bands, considering that people want to see that kind of music. I saw her open for Kevin Morby in LA, and the whole room was silent, and she was just captivating everyone. It was incredible to watch. I immediately went home and booked my first solo show. I had no idea people wanted this kind of music, and I had been making that kind of music, so let’s see what happens, let me book a show. She was totally the catalyst for that. I was so in awe of the simplicity and the beauty of what she was bringing to the table. Music like what she makes has a lasting power and timelessness where you can be anyone and anywhere in the world and people will be captivated. It’s amazing.

SILY: Is it hard for you to switch back and forth between your solo shows and playing in bands?

SL: It’s kind of easy. It’s a matter of mindset and what alcohol you’re consuming. [laughs] I always go tequila for the loud shows, wine for the quiet shows. We’re saying the same things, but in very different ways. It’s kind of nice to have both perspectives.

SILY: What’s the story behind the cover art for the new record?

SL: The guy who took the photo, Matt Reamer, mentioned he wanted to do more portrait photography. He had always a lot of live stuff. We took photos, and as I was going through them, I came across that photo. I love how ambiguous it is. I could be thinking about anything in that photo. It’s whatever you want it to be. I had the idea of getting people to do different versions of it, and it became this cool, unique thing of these different perspectives and the evolution of me in the past year. I’ve been doing a ton of cleaning house, checking in, and learning new things about myself and not taking myself too seriously. It’s been a hell of a journey, and seeing these four versions of me felt really appropriate for the record.

SILY: Are you the type of songwriter who’s always working on new songs?

SL: I’ve been kind of stuck lately, because I’ve had a lot of stuff to work on, but there’s always a ton of voice memos on my phone, little snippets I work on in the car. I look forward to when I have a block of time where I can sit down. I’ve written quite a bit of the next record, but I probably have 5-6 songs to go. I’m excited to get back into it.

SILY: Is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

SL: I just watched Euphoria. That was really good. It really inspired my eyeliner game. I’m always listening to a lot of true crime. I’m a big true crime buff. It fascinates me--the extremity of people’s actions. That’s what that song “Wild” is about on August--the things we’re capable of.

SILY: That line, “We are kind things capable of the most evil,” is very fitting. You kind of nail nature versus nurture in just that line.

SL: Yeah, totally. It’s wild. [laughs] The age old question.

SILY: Are you a Forensic Files fan?

SL: I am! Whenever I’m in a hotel room, I know it’s gonna be on, and I’m stoked.

SILY: My girlfriend and I struggle to find new episodes. It’s always our “before bed” show, and we’ll start one and midway through be like, “Wait, we’ve seen this one.”

SL: Have you ever listened to a podcast called Small Town Dicks? It’s the voice of Lisa Simpson, Yeardley Smith, and she has this podcast. It’s amazing because it sounds like Lisa Simpson doing a true crime podcast, but it’s also amazing stories.

Album score: 8.5/10

#interviews #album review #live music #shannon lay #jessica pratt #sub pop #shelby jacobson #matt yoka #chris slater #matthew reamer #august #denee segall #radiohead #jeff buckley #molly drake #nick drake #lincoln hall #sofia arreguin #black box #italo house #ty segall #freedom band #the simpsons #karen dalton #squaresville #george bush #barbara bush #missy elliott #kevin morby #euphoria

[samuelfields]

How to Start a Blog

Key Takeaways

Find a niche and post consistently to see the best results.

Focus on quality, longer-length posts.

Use your content to build authority and monetize services.

If you’ve been daydreaming about creating a blog during yet another endless conference call, an excellent place to start is right here. 

In case you haven’t heard, content is king. And there are plenty of full-time bloggers who prove it and make a living writing about hobbies, recipes, or workouts.

Writing with authority on a topic provides serious value in an internet landscape, often filled with subpar information.

With that said, starting up a blog doesn’t mean you can put in your two weeks as soon as you press “Publish” on your first blog post. Monetizing your blog and turning a profit takes hard work and dedication.

Like almost everything else in life, you get what you put in.

A great blog involves research, content strategy, and a fresh perspective.

So, if you have a story to tell or a niche to fill, it’s time to learn how to start a blog and unleash your creativity.

Step 1: Pick Your Blog Niche

Although you can simply start a blog based on broad topics, it’s smarter to narrow your focus. A unique point of view and a distinct voice are essential to building an audience.

There are two main questions you should ask yourself when setting up your blog and choosing your focus. The first is, “Do I enjoy learning about this subject?”

Good writing is infused with the passion of the author. If you’re writing something with thought and care, you’re more likely to benefit from actively engaged, inspired readers while building authority. On the flip side, if you don’t particularly like a topic, it’ll quickly surface in your writing and potentially turn readers off.

It’s important to be intellectually curious about the topic – otherwise, your creativity and ideas for new content might run dry.

Still not sure? Think about what your close friends and family come to you to discuss. 

Do you know the best secret hiking spots in your state? Do your vegan recipes on Instagram get the most engagement? Let these answers guide your blog focus.

The second question you should ask is, “Does this already exist?”                                

You might think that a blog centered around crocheting crafts out of found materials is unique. Lo-and-behold, after a little Googling, you find a blog floating around focused on that exact niche.Although your blog will share space with similar blogs, it needs to be different enough for an audience to seek you out. You need to provide value – especially if you want to monetize your blog down the road.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has you worried about money, check out my free guide on Coronavirus-Proofing your Finances with the CEO approach

Step 2: Choose a Blog Name

Finding a name for your blog might seem intimidating at first, but don’t overthink it. Here are some tips to remember when you’re brainstorming your blog name:

Choose words related to your niche

Keep it simple and stick to one or two words

 Don’t pick overly general terms like “travel”

Dotcom domains are preferred

Avoid hyphens or numbers

For a personal blog or branding, consider using a variation of your name

You can keep your domain name as long as you continue to pay your annual fees, which typically run $10 to $15 per year.

Step 3: Choose Your Web Host

So, you’ve chosen a niche around perfecting the art of macramé on a budget and named it. Now, what? The next step is to select your web host.

Web hosting is a service that makes your blog accessible through the web – it has a significant impact on your site’s overall functionality and its performance.

There’s a vast array of web hosts to choose from at all price points, from a few dollars to thousands. Above all, a good web host will walk you through setting up and launching your blog.

Hosted vs. Self-Hosted

You have two options here: hosted (Blogger, WordPress.com) and self-hosted (WordPress.org). “Hosted” blogging platforms, like Wix or Squarespace, offer a hands-off approach to your blog. You deal with one company, and all of your content and files live on the blog platform’s servers. These platforms manage data and web hosting, so you don’t have to.

Unfortunately, hosted platforms can be limiting and slow down the growth of your blog. Some might even put restrictions on how much money you can make from your content. Or you might be prohibited from monetizing at all.

“Self-hosted” platforms require you to install blogging software on your own web server.

Self-hosted platforms like WordPress.org allow you to set up and maintain your blog with a unique domain and web hosting. If you want to sell products, sell a service, or run ads, this is the right choice.

You’ve probably heard of WordPress’s blogging platform already, and there’s a reason for that – it’s easy to use and powerful. WordPress also delivers tons of free plugins you can leverage to customize and optimize your blog.

Step 4: Protect and Secure Your Blog 

New bloggers may not realize they should protect their blog by doing some basic security housekeeping tasks.

Backup Your Blog

Backing up your blog should be one of the first things you do after setting up your blog. While it’s rare that a web host will lose or delete your site, it can still happen. 

But your site suddenly disappearing isn’t the biggest threat to your blog — hackers are.

Hackers and other cybercriminals can infect your site with malicious code. 

If the worst-case scenario occurs, but you have a backup of your blog available, you can restore a clean version of your website. 

Be Careful With Copyrights

Copyrights need to be respected, especially when it comes to the visual elements of your blog. 

Small-time bloggers are often the victims of what is called “Copyright Trolls.” Well-meaning bloggers might accidentally use copyrighted images to add visual interest to their content. 

Copyright lawyers can sue you for damages based on the use of a copyrighted image, even if the lawyer doesn’t own the copyright or represent the entity with the copyright. As a result, bloggers can be bilked out of money. 

How do you avoid this? Never use copyrighted images for your blog posts. If you’re not sure, it’s better to be safe than sorry and choose an image you’re confident that you can use.

It’s actually very easy to find images available for free through the public domain or free stock photo sites. And on that note, it’s good practice to credit the website or artist (or both), however. A step above using free images you find on the internet is to use your own graphics. Smartphones offer basic but helpful editing tools, and you can get surprisingly high-quality photos. Websites like Canva offer free tools you can use to create blog header graphics and other visual elements you can insert into your text to make your posts look more attractive.

Opt for Domain Privacy 

Besides securing your blog, you should also take steps to protect your personal identity. Your web host should offer a domain privacy service that keeps your personal information private.

Besides domain privacy, avoid sharing identifying details in your blog like where you live, your schedule, names, and other similar details.

Use Hard-to-Guess Passwords for Your Blog Login

Although this might seem like a no-brainer, there’s evidence that millions of people still using passwords like “password,” “abc123,” and other easily-guessed combos. 

Here are some basic password tips to keep in mind:

Use 12 characters minimum

Include numbers, capital letters, lower-case letters, and symbols

Don’t use dictionary words

You can use a password manager like Keeper if you’re concerned about forgetting a complex password. 

Bonus: Want to turn your dream of working from home into a reality? Download my Ultimate Guide to Working from Home to learn how to make working from home work for YOU.

Step 5: Design and Customize Your Blog

Now for the fun stuff. Installing a theme for your blog is a straightforward task, but it can take time to accomplish since there are thousands of free themes to explore. While it’s essential to ensure that your blog is attractive and user-friendly, it’s equally important that it complements your blog content. If you’re working on a WordPress site, look for themes that say “SEO optimized”, “responsive” or “fast loading” themes. Many free themes can make sites look odd when viewed on a mobile device, or make for increased page speed (aka the time it takes a page to properly load). For users on sites like squarespace or Wix, you shouldn’t have to worry about these potential issues. 

For example, if you’re starting an urban photography blog, a theme emphasizing visuals is preferable to text-oriented themes.

To get more relevant results, you can apply filters while searching for themes like designs based around your blog subject, for instance.

Step 6: Add Basic Blog Pages

Before you start posting regularly, it’s smart to add a few basic, standard pages to your blog to boost your website’s credibility.

Create an “About Me” Page

Your “About Me” page should explain who you are and the focus of your blog. Spend time making it interesting and fun. 

Readers are often interested in getting to know you and how you started your industry or niche. You don’t have to write an entire autobiography, just describe how you got to the point you’re at now. Over everything else, be relatable. 

For example, show your readers that you’re a credible source. Why should they listen to you? What experience do you have that makes you knowledgeable on this specific topic? If you’re writing a finance blog, are you a CPA? If you’re sharing recipes, what do you bring to the table that will make your audience want to listen to you? A coupon-cutter, perhaps?  Tell your readers how long you’ve been doing it, how much money you save, and why they can benefit from the information you’re sharing.

Add a Privacy, Disclosure, and Comment Policy Page

If you want to monetize your blog, you’ll need to make sure you comply with all laws regarding data collection, privacy, and advertising. Adding standard disclosure language is an essential step if you want to make money.

You should also note your commenting policy. For example, do you allow anyone to comment? Do you ever delete comments? Are there commenting rules?

Craft a Simple Contact Page

It’s important to make it easy for readers and businesses to contact you. Set up a dedicated page with an embedded contact form or just list out your email — speaking of which…

Step 7: Set Up a Custom Blog Email Address

Another step you should take during the initial phases of your blog set up is registering a customized blog email address. At the outset, this may not seem all that important to you.

But details matter — especially to your readership and people who might reach out to you for partnerships, content writing services, and other reasons. 

A professional email that matches your blog looks professional, credible, and helps build up your brand’s authority. An email from an email address with tons of numbers and a mishmash of letters can look spammy. If you’re unlucky enough, any email sent from a suspicious-looking email can be automatically filed to the “junk” category of your recipient’s mailbox.

As a professional blog owner, you don’t want to be confused with a Nigerian prince who needs a one-time investment to set up a new school playground. An email that’s simply [email protected] lends polish to your brand and can help you monetize your blog later. Nobody wants to do business with [email protected].

Step 8: Register Social Media Accounts for Your Blog

When you’ve done all the hard parts on your actual blog, it’s time to branch out to the world of social media. Social media is another channel you can use to alert followers to new posts and attract new visitors and more traffic. 

Many social media platforms also allow you to set up ads that you can use to extend your blog’s reach. 

Have a post on your blog that is performing well? You may want to consider targeting ads for it to get even more people on the page. Or, maybe you have an underperforming post you revamped — you might consider sending more traffic to that post with social media ads.

Below are some basic social media tips and which platforms to target.

Twitter

Set up a Twitter profile for your blog. Add a Tweet button to all blog posts you publish on your blog so followers can easily retweet them. 

Follow other big names within your niche and interact with people in the industry already. Tweet out alerts for new posts.

Facebook

Set up a Facebook page for your blog. Share your content on Facebook, schedule posts, and invite friends and families to like your page.

Instagram

Set up an Instagram page. Find compelling images and use tools that allow for longer, evenly spaced captions to publish snippets of full-length blog posts or even exclusive “mini-blogs.”

LinkedIn

Although this is a platform for building a professional network, almost any blog can still be relevant to a professional audience. Obviously, a blog about marketing is going to be more relevant to a wider group of people on LinkedIn, but don’t write it off if your blog is more niche. 

LinkedIn provides the ability to connect with other bloggers and thought leaders within your industry.

Bonus: Having more than one stream of income can help you through tough economic times. Learn how to start earning money on the side with my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Step 9: Optimize Your Blog

SEO or search engine optimization is crucial, especially if you want to monetize your blog. SEO helps improve your site’s chances of appearing high on Google’s rankings for relevant search queries.

Although SEO can be intimidating at the outset, WordPress actually makes it pretty simple – even for beginners. 

One of the best ways to get started on your blog’s SEO journey is by downloading a plugin called Yoast SEO. Yoast can give you readability ratings, keyword density, and point out pages on your blog that need a little SEO boost.

If you want to do a deeper dive into SEO, you can also conduct some keyword research. In most cases, you’ll naturally be using keywords as a result of providing valuable content around a particular subject. 

But SEO tools like SEMrush, for example, can suggest alternate keywords to incorporate. Just don’t get too hung up on keywords and stuff too many in your posts, because Google can penalize your blog for doing so.

Once you have the keywords you want to target, use them in your title, title tags, first sentence, heading, subheadings, and any anchor text you use (the text you link to related pages on your website).

You can also optimize your images for SEO. When you upload images to your blog, use keywords in the file name, and use the alternate text space to write a keyword-rich description.

Step 10: Choose a Posting Schedule and Write Posts to Build an Audience

In most cases, it’ll take a few years to build an audience. Yes, years.

Here are a few blog tips to help nurture a loyal blog following and audience:

Stay Consistent: Try to post at least once a week and try to avoid skipping weeks. You can write a few posts ahead of time and schedule them out if you wish. In an ideal world, you should aim to post two to three times a week.

Focus on Quality: For every post you write, push for quality. Google tends to rank longer blog posts higher on their results pages, but if you’re writing fluff — that doesn’t help anyone.

Observe Your Competition: What is the focus of other similar blogs? Can you do it better or answer a query more comprehensively?

To Thine Own Self Be True: Find your unique voice – are you funny, heartfelt, honest? Build your brand. Write as if you’re talking to a close friend if you’re unsure of the right tone to adopt.

Get Active in Related Communities: Facebook groups, subreddits, podcast interviews, and speaking engagements can be lucrative opportunities for publicizing your blog.

Tips for Keeping a Strong Content Flow

Not every blog post you write will be award-winning. There might even come a time where you feel like you’ve run out of ideas. To avoid frustration and creative dead ends, consider brainstorming smart blog post content ahead of time. 

If inspiration for a new post doesn’t pop into your head and you’re stuck fighting through a severe case of writer’s block, you can choose from that list of vetted topics you’ve created.

Okay, but what if you’re out of topics, and now you need to create new ones from scratch? 

Read Books, Forums, and Comments: Reading books about your niche or people within your industry. Forums and your own blog comments can also be useful sources of potential inspiration.

Leverage Google: You can mine Google’s “People Also Ask” sections or query suggestions that pop up when you type in a keyword for blog post ideas.

Travel: Some bloggers also find success in coming up with new ideas by traveling somewhere and getting a fresh perspective. A new physical environment might just open up your brain.

Interview Industry Leaders: Can you reach out to other people who can provide insight on a topic? Or maybe you can join a friend in the industry for a cup of coffee and talk shop.

Crowdsource Topics: Use your readership for new ideas. Ask what your readers would like to see with polls on your social media platforms.

Step 11: Promote Your Blog

So, you’re posting regularly, and everything’s set up. Now, how do you encourage people to visit and read your blog? 

Create social media posts immediately after publishing a new post.

Since you’ve already taken the first step of setting up your social media sites, it’s now time to leverage them as the fantastic promotional tools they are. 

By publishing immediate social posts promoting your new blog content, you can get immediate follows, shares, likes, and retweets that can build momentum, so your post to go farther. 

It’s important to remember that your audience is likely to follow you on a few different social media accounts. 

That means you need to customize each snippet or preview text you use when promoting a blog post. 

What you don’t want to do is copy and paste the same verbiage repeatedly for each of your accounts — it comes off spammy and uninteresting. Optimize your messaging for each social stream and audience.

Re-promote Successful Content

Did you hit virtual gold with a blog post that went viral? Don’t be shy about promoting it again after some time passes. 

Re-promoting content that didn’t do well in the first place might not be the best strategy, but posts that have strong stats initially can do well again in the future. 

It’s a good idea to focus your efforts on creating evergreen content that stays relevant over time.

“Evergreen” is just a term that internet marketers use to refer to posts considered timeless. This type of content stays useful years after the initial publication because it tackles a core problem or subject. An evergreen post might be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain.” A non-evergreen post would be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain During a Pandemic.” 

Spice Up Your Blog Post Descriptions

Are you only sharing a blog post’s headline through your social media channels and calling it a day? Well, that gets boring very fast. To keep the interest in your blog higher, change up the messaging, and get inspiration from your own content.

State the Main Takeaways: Was there a “moral to the story” that sums up your post? Use that to give potential readers a basic, exciting summary. 

Reuse Your Meta Description: Your meta description is the preview snippet that shows up in Google search results. (Yoast, that plugin we talked about earlier, will prompt you to customize yours – if you don’t customize it, Google will simply pull the first line or two from your blog.) Reuse your meta description to sell your blog post. 

Use Your Subheadings: Your subheadings help readers navigate through your blog post. You can mine these subheadings for copy that you think might attract traffic to your website.

Pull Interesting Quotes: Did an industry leader, influencer, or celebrity give you a quote in your post? Pull out any interesting, odd, or thoughtful quotes and tag the person who said it in your social promotion post. 

Use Images: Posts with visual elements get much more engagement than those without visual elements. Don’t just rely on boring stock images. Overlay images with text, create your own memes or use GIFs to demand attention. 

Use Hashtags: For Twitter, you can use trending hashtags to see what people are already talking about or focus on hashtags relevant to your industry. For Instagram and Facebook, you can take advantage of pertinent hashtags to your blog. Don’t be afraid to get super specific with your hashtags. 

Use Social Media Regularly: Post at least once a week, engage with commenters, and answer messages.

Guest Post

Guest posting is a way to promote your blog by contributing to another blog within your industry. By providing a guest post to another blogger, you can help build your own website’s credibility. 

Guest blogging can accomplish three different goals for your blog: showing others you’re an expert, pushing traffic to your blog, and building backlinks. 

Quick Explainer on Backlinks: Backlinks serve as a “vote” for your site. But not all backlinks are created equally. Links from relevant, trusted websites pointing to your website can your site move up in Google’s rankings. But, if spammy websites are giving you backlinks, that’s a red flag that may result in a ranking drop.

To pursue guest blogging, you’ll need to find places to submit a guest post. If your blog is about bikes, you’ll want to search for similar blogs focused on your bikes and make sure the blog owner is active with an engaged audience.

You can also use a simple Google search to find blogs accepting guest posts. Just use a keyword relevant to your niche plus “submit a guest post” or “guest post guidelines” and other similar search terms.

Once you’ve found blogs to guest post for, you’ll need to pitch a few content ideas. Make sure you do your due diligence and research the blog’s tone of voice, type of audience, and other information you need to know. Pay attention to guidelines like the required word count. 

Some guest post bloggers allow you to post links to your blog in the content itself, while others will enable you to post your blog link in your byline. Each guest blogging site operates differently.

Step 12: Monetize Your Blog

There are many ways you can monetize your blog, but the two you can most easily leverage are affiliate links and services.

Affiliate programs work through pushing links to products relevant to your audience. When your audience clicks through the link to that recommendation, they get a unique tracking code. If they end up purchasing, you’ll get a portion of the sale.

Another way to monetize your blog is to offer services or intensive information related to your topics of expertise or industry. 

Depending on your blog’s focus, you can provide live workshops, one-on-one consulting sessions, or comprehensive online courses. Your blog serves as the jumping-off point, but your audience will only convert into customers if you’ve demonstrated authority and knowledge. Neither of which happens overnight.

Takeaways: Building a Blog, Step by Step

Creating a blog requires patience, strategy, and the desire to develop quality content. You don’t have to be a professional writer to create a successful blog. Plenty of everyday people have created a blog out stemming from a genuine interest that exploded into a successful brand. If you’re ready to try something new, blogging is a great way to flex your creative muscle and potentially earn some money.

FAQs: How to Start a Blog as a Beginner

Still, have a few remaining questions about starting a blog? Get answers to your blogging FAQs below.

Can I Start a Blog for Free?

While it’s true that you can, if your end goal is to monetize your blog and transform it into a lucrative side hustle, it makes more sense to pay to host your blog on your own server with your own domain name. Not only will this make your blog more “legit” from the outset, but it also gives you much more flexibility for monetizing down the line.

Is it Difficult to Start a Blog?

Yes and no. While starting a blog is a reasonably straightforward process, the key to creating a successful one is consistency. Consistency and developing a strong content strategy are going to be the most difficult parts of maintaining your blog, especially if you have other responsibilities demanding your attention like a day job, kids, or other obligations. 

With that said, writing regularly for your blog is easy once it’s a habit, and you have a running list of future blog post ideas from which to choose.

How Much Money Can I Realistically Make Blogging?

It’s not unrealistic to make a range from just one cent to ten cents per page view through ads. If you get around 1,000-page views each month, you can earn $10-$100! And depending on the success of your blog, it can go up from there. Not everyone will be able to live off their blog income full-time, but there’s still the potential to make a good chunk of change.

Do People Still Read Blogs Anymore?

Yes! Blogs are still critical in the internet landscape. There are a few things to note about how people read blogs that have changed over time. For example, people are much less likely to read a blog post from beginning to end. 

Instead, people tend to skim a post for the information most relevant to them. Keep that information in mind as you’re writing your initial blog posts. 

Well-structured blog posts should utilize headings and subheadings so that information is organized efficiently, and readers can find what they need.

How Do I Make My Blog Stand Out?

Ultimately, you’ll need to provide value. Good information on a particular subject is the best way to set your blog apart from others. But a difficult-to-use site with a lot of great information is unlikely to garner much attention. First impressions matter, in real life and in virtual life.

Your site should be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to skim. And don’t forget to integrate enough negative space to give your readers somewhere to “rest.”

Focus on making a site that even an older relative could navigate.

How Do I Stop Spam Comments?

If you allow comments, you need to be prepared for spammers and trolls. One way to deal with this issue is by turning off commenting altogether. Or you can also moderate the comments yourself or install plugins that can help reduce the frequency of spam.

How Do Successful Bloggers Monetize Their Blogs?

Bloggers may use their blogs to increase their authority within a certain niche or industry, sell things like memberships, sell digital products like e-books or courses, use affiliate links, or monetize with CPC or CPM ads. 

FYI: CPC and CPM stand for “cost-per-click” and “cost-per-thousand-impressions,” respectively.

What Kind of Blogs Make the Most Money?

Before you get your answer, it needs to be said: don’t let the list of blog types inform the choice of your blog alone. 

Why? Well, if you want to start a blog about newborns because that’s a niche that’s historically made money, you can only do so confidently if you’ve had a baby yourself or work with babies. 

If you’re an 18-year-old single college student without a kid, it doesn’t make sense to start a blog about newborns. Keep that concept in mind before pursuing a subject simply because it historically makes money in the blogging world.

Top Blogging Niches:

Crafting

Parenting or newborn 

Health

Lifestyle or family life

Budgeting

Interior Design or home decor 

If your blog doesn’t fall under one of these umbrella categories, don’t panic. Ultimately, these are just basic categories that won’t make or break the success of your blog. Stay authentic to what you’re actually passionate about.

How Can I Better Analyze My Website Traffic For Free?

If you want to know what types of people visit your site, you have a few free tools you can leverage. Two of the best are Google Console and Google Analytics. 

Both of these tools are easy to install and offer training so you can learn to use them. GC and GA can reveal interesting insights into visitor behavior, backlinks to your site, and other pertinent information about your site’s ranking for particular keywords.

How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?

While there isn’t a hard and fast rule about content length, if you’re trying to get ranked on Google, longer is better. Blog posts between 1500 and 2000 words seem to be ideal. Again, your posts shouldn’t be full of fluff for the sake of reaching those word count goals. Instead, try to create comprehensive posts that cover a particular subject in rich detail.

Will I Make Money Off My Blog Right Away?

While instantaneous success isn’t unheard of, you will probably need to blog for a few months or closer to a year before you see any revenue. Your initial year operating the blog should focus on analyzing what’s working and what isn’t working. Here are some questions you should ask (and know the answer to!) after your first few months to a year of blogging.

What are the most popular posts? The least popular?

What are the demographics of my blog visitors?

How long are people staying on my page?

Is traffic trending up, down, or is it steady?

Starting a blog isn’t going to be an overnight project, but with time and patience, you can turn it into a real side hustle.

How to Start a Blog is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-to-start-a-blog/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[ernestsdesign]

Presenting my work

This week I am going to build six slides in order to showcase the work that I have done so far. Although this will be a difficult task since I have more work done than that which can fit into 6 slides, I will focus on showing the "why" and the progress of the project.

86,400 seconds

Every day we get this much seconds and there is no way we can get them back. Although showing this may seem like a lot, it isnt and the important question we need to ask is what did we do today to make progress? Did today help me develop? Did it help my progress? What did or could today change? Watching a movie is something fun to do however doing so all day everyday does not help us develop and grow professionally but it also doesnt help us progress into who we want to become. In saying this once again I believe the 80/20 principle applies because if we spend 80% of our time watching movies we only get 20% back from them, and when I say back from them I mean in terms of learning something because a good movie can teach us too; it can show us different mentalities, ways of conencting however if we watch movies constantly we stop evaluating them and valuing them as much as we would otherwise.

We cannot allow time to slip through our fingers because we can never get time back.

The perfect pitch

The perfect pitch has purpose, and that is to grab people's attention. Understanding that is important because once I began thinking about that, presenting my work became easier in the sense that I knew there should be a fair mix between words and images and because this weeks pitching is related to a slideshow, this will be my focus.

I began realising that my idea's are only half the equation, because I need to be able to present them with confidence and an interesting story.

structuring narrative

My upcoming presentation will be a 10 minute talk, and I am taking this into consideration because it means I should not go above or below thaat time too much. In order to keep within this time I will need to read over the notes I make, set a timer during the presentation so that I know when to switch slides and think how much slides I should have so that I can smoothly switch the pace if I am presenting information either more quickly or slowly than anticipated.

Sun tzu's book "the art of war" states that every battle is won or lost before it is fought and I feel like the same is true of presentations. By saying this, I need to remember that proper preparation is key!

Woodrow Wilson said that “If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.” preparation, if fifteen minutes, three days, of half an hour, two days, if an hour, i am ready now." This suggests that the longer we have to present the easier it is to do so because information does not need to be "squished" into a very limited amount of slides as is the case with my current task where I will be preparing only 6 slides to showcase everything to date. The shorter the speech, the harder it is to prepare as we need to focus on only the most important parts.

Before presenting it is good to get on stage beforehand because going on stage and seing the people before presenting makes it easier to handle once actually presenting.

When sharing any projects or doing speeches, I need to think of the key which is that a good story is the backbone of all things.

For this project to follow this key I will be telling the audience about the significance of reading stories for example by stating how it transport's us to another dimension and I can bring the issue up that not many people read stories anymore.

I will focus on a beginning, middle and end to the presentation as if I were taking the audience through a story, I will show them different content in each slide.

The beginning can be used to tell the audience about what I am going to be saying, it could start as "Im going to cover the following..." During the beginning stage it is important to build empathy, which I could do by asking a shared problem such as "do you struggle to find time for long books?" For the presentation to be striking I must try making the audience think in the same way as me about the problems that I will solve.

In the middle I will show the structure and chunk of my content in an organised manner so that they know what the product/service looks like which will help build familiarity with the project.

During the ending I could decide to to one of two thing; bring the audience back down or make them soar even higher.

If I were to bring the audience back down it would involve going back over the important points that I have made. However, If I were to make them soar even higher then I could include an inspirational quote or some other important note that would make the audience keep thinking about what was said after.

The content being presented needs to be coherent, it needs to be easy to understand which I can do by explaining what certain things mean or how they will work.

The story of the product/service needs to be simple, for example I could say that I want to sell more tickets, because it equals more profits.

I will need to keep the presentation memorable by ensuring I don't overdo it but instead choosee simple and fun wording such as: "well I put the man on the moon and returned him to earth safely instead" of making it more complex as making it complex would make it more difficult to be understood by the people.

For the presentation, starting to think on paper and post-it notes could lead to more idea's that are not limited. It is about going by the numbers and then finding clusters.

Building a "rough cut" is easier and more productive to do before actually decorating the presentation because this will allow me to jam in the stuff on the pages and checking if it flows and makes sense.

Slides and their alternatives

The more the content is in order, the easier it is to create a flow and hence the people can follow the train of thought so they are less likely to get lost. I will put some items up on the board so the people can read and other information I will keep only for myself such as statistics.

By using slides, I am able to divert the gaze from people so that they do not only have to look at me presenting but can look at visual content to help them see the project.

Notes should onlyhowever be used as a safety blanket, I should learn not to put 500 words but instead start presenting from knowledge. I should start using the notes for facts that cant remember instead.

I could use Rands starter slide to see the screen ratio and make sure all colours are working fine.

Until I gain some more confidence with presentation tools, I can use templates however throughout time I should take a look at making my own slide presentation as a designer and developing my own presenting style.

Slides are able to showcase design skills and consistency is king! In presentations one typface should be used with no crazy font styles. Content should be easy to parse, they should break down complex information and ideas and they should be efficient. When adding images, I should use a grid to line them up consistently and keep them the same dimensions.

Diagrams can be used for communicating information.

Transitions are the animations that happen between the transition from one slide to another.

Builds are awesome because they can do multiple actions to show a complex idea in one slide.

When creating my slides I will avoid making too much slides and adding lots of notes.

Using the body

By not sitting down, you open up the diaphragm It is important to use hand gestures to create a passage between people Making eye contact is easier if looking at the audiences' nose or forehead. By doing this it is easier to connect with the whole room thus owning the stage.

If people start getting spaced out, I could tell them all to come closer to the stage.

People in the audience will (reasonably) do what is told to them and so I could tell them to for example stretch out before starting the

Rhetorical techniques such as repetition, rhetorical questions, metaphors, alliteration and humour can be used which would help guiding the audience in such a way that they could see my opinion and understand my points.

I could also create a phrase that would be repeated, for example for my current project I could say "are you short on time but love reading?"

To calm myself before presenting I should "breathe the room" so for example I could focus on colouring a wall in specific colours on every outbreath.

Adrenaline will get anyone through and so all I must do is come prepared, for example by bringign a pdf on a memory stick and a HDMI cable to connect my presentation.

To let the auidence feel how much the presentation means to me I should show my true emotions, such as happiness and pride because Confidence comes from practice.

#ixd302 #site

[paulckrueger]

How to Start a Blog

Key Takeaways

Find a niche and post consistently to see the best results.

Focus on quality, longer-length posts.

Use your content to build authority and monetize services.

If you’ve been daydreaming about creating a blog during yet another endless conference call, an excellent place to start is right here. 

In case you haven’t heard, content is king. And there are plenty of full-time bloggers who prove it and make a living writing about hobbies, recipes, or workouts.

Writing with authority on a topic provides serious value in an internet landscape, often filled with subpar information.

With that said, starting up a blog doesn’t mean you can put in your two weeks as soon as you press “Publish” on your first blog post. Monetizing your blog and turning a profit takes hard work and dedication.

Like almost everything else in life, you get what you put in.

A great blog involves research, content strategy, and a fresh perspective.

So, if you have a story to tell or a niche to fill, it’s time to learn how to start a blog and unleash your creativity.

Step 1: Pick Your Blog Niche

Although you can simply start a blog based on broad topics, it’s smarter to narrow your focus. A unique point of view and a distinct voice are essential to building an audience.

There are two main questions you should ask yourself when setting up your blog and choosing your focus. The first is, “Do I enjoy learning about this subject?”

Good writing is infused with the passion of the author. If you’re writing something with thought and care, you’re more likely to benefit from actively engaged, inspired readers while building authority. On the flip side, if you don’t particularly like a topic, it’ll quickly surface in your writing and potentially turn readers off.

It’s important to be intellectually curious about the topic – otherwise, your creativity and ideas for new content might run dry.

Still not sure? Think about what your close friends and family come to you to discuss. 

Do you know the best secret hiking spots in your state? Do your vegan recipes on Instagram get the most engagement? Let these answers guide your blog focus.

The second question you should ask is, “Does this already exist?”                                

You might think that a blog centered around crocheting crafts out of found materials is unique. Lo-and-behold, after a little Googling, you find a blog floating around focused on that exact niche.Although your blog will share space with similar blogs, it needs to be different enough for an audience to seek you out. You need to provide value – especially if you want to monetize your blog down the road.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has you worried about money, check out my free guide on Coronavirus-Proofing your Finances with the CEO approach

Step 2: Choose a Blog Name

Finding a name for your blog might seem intimidating at first, but don’t overthink it. Here are some tips to remember when you’re brainstorming your blog name:

Choose words related to your niche

Keep it simple and stick to one or two words

 Don’t pick overly general terms like “travel”

Dotcom domains are preferred

Avoid hyphens or numbers

For a personal blog or branding, consider using a variation of your name

You can keep your domain name as long as you continue to pay your annual fees, which typically run $10 to $15 per year.

Step 3: Choose Your Web Host

So, you’ve chosen a niche around perfecting the art of macramé on a budget and named it. Now, what? The next step is to select your web host.

Web hosting is a service that makes your blog accessible through the web – it has a significant impact on your site’s overall functionality and its performance.

There’s a vast array of web hosts to choose from at all price points, from a few dollars to thousands. Above all, a good web host will walk you through setting up and launching your blog.

Hosted vs. Self-Hosted

You have two options here: hosted (Blogger, WordPress.com) and self-hosted (WordPress.org). “Hosted” blogging platforms, like Wix or Squarespace, offer a hands-off approach to your blog. You deal with one company, and all of your content and files live on the blog platform’s servers. These platforms manage data and web hosting, so you don’t have to.

Unfortunately, hosted platforms can be limiting and slow down the growth of your blog. Some might even put restrictions on how much money you can make from your content. Or you might be prohibited from monetizing at all.

“Self-hosted” platforms require you to install blogging software on your own web server.

Self-hosted platforms like WordPress.org allow you to set up and maintain your blog with a unique domain and web hosting. If you want to sell products, sell a service, or run ads, this is the right choice.

You’ve probably heard of WordPress’s blogging platform already, and there’s a reason for that – it’s easy to use and powerful. WordPress also delivers tons of free plugins you can leverage to customize and optimize your blog.

Step 4: Protect and Secure Your Blog 

New bloggers may not realize they should protect their blog by doing some basic security housekeeping tasks.

Backup Your Blog

Backing up your blog should be one of the first things you do after setting up your blog. While it’s rare that a web host will lose or delete your site, it can still happen. 

But your site suddenly disappearing isn’t the biggest threat to your blog — hackers are.

Hackers and other cybercriminals can infect your site with malicious code. 

If the worst-case scenario occurs, but you have a backup of your blog available, you can restore a clean version of your website. 

Be Careful With Copyrights

Copyrights need to be respected, especially when it comes to the visual elements of your blog. 

Small-time bloggers are often the victims of what is called “Copyright Trolls.” Well-meaning bloggers might accidentally use copyrighted images to add visual interest to their content. 

Copyright lawyers can sue you for damages based on the use of a copyrighted image, even if the lawyer doesn’t own the copyright or represent the entity with the copyright. As a result, bloggers can be bilked out of money. 

How do you avoid this? Never use copyrighted images for your blog posts. If you’re not sure, it’s better to be safe than sorry and choose an image you’re confident that you can use.

It’s actually very easy to find images available for free through the public domain or free stock photo sites. And on that note, it’s good practice to credit the website or artist (or both), however. A step above using free images you find on the internet is to use your own graphics. Smartphones offer basic but helpful editing tools, and you can get surprisingly high-quality photos. Websites like Canva offer free tools you can use to create blog header graphics and other visual elements you can insert into your text to make your posts look more attractive.

Opt for Domain Privacy 

Besides securing your blog, you should also take steps to protect your personal identity. Your web host should offer a domain privacy service that keeps your personal information private.

Besides domain privacy, avoid sharing identifying details in your blog like where you live, your schedule, names, and other similar details.

Use Hard-to-Guess Passwords for Your Blog Login

Although this might seem like a no-brainer, there’s evidence that millions of people still using passwords like “password,” “abc123,” and other easily-guessed combos. 

Here are some basic password tips to keep in mind:

Use 12 characters minimum

Include numbers, capital letters, lower-case letters, and symbols

Don’t use dictionary words

You can use a password manager like Keeper if you’re concerned about forgetting a complex password. 

Bonus: Want to turn your dream of working from home into a reality? Download my Ultimate Guide to Working from Home to learn how to make working from home work for YOU.

Step 5: Design and Customize Your Blog

Now for the fun stuff. Installing a theme for your blog is a straightforward task, but it can take time to accomplish since there are thousands of free themes to explore. While it’s essential to ensure that your blog is attractive and user-friendly, it’s equally important that it complements your blog content. If you’re working on a WordPress site, look for themes that say “SEO optimized”, “responsive” or “fast loading” themes. Many free themes can make sites look odd when viewed on a mobile device, or make for increased page speed (aka the time it takes a page to properly load). For users on sites like squarespace or Wix, you shouldn’t have to worry about these potential issues. 

For example, if you’re starting an urban photography blog, a theme emphasizing visuals is preferable to text-oriented themes.

To get more relevant results, you can apply filters while searching for themes like designs based around your blog subject, for instance.

Step 6: Add Basic Blog Pages

Before you start posting regularly, it’s smart to add a few basic, standard pages to your blog to boost your website’s credibility.

Create an “About Me” Page

Your “About Me” page should explain who you are and the focus of your blog. Spend time making it interesting and fun. 

Readers are often interested in getting to know you and how you started your industry or niche. You don’t have to write an entire autobiography, just describe how you got to the point you’re at now. Over everything else, be relatable. 

For example, show your readers that you’re a credible source. Why should they listen to you? What experience do you have that makes you knowledgeable on this specific topic? If you’re writing a finance blog, are you a CPA? If you’re sharing recipes, what do you bring to the table that will make your audience want to listen to you? A coupon-cutter, perhaps?  Tell your readers how long you’ve been doing it, how much money you save, and why they can benefit from the information you’re sharing.

Add a Privacy, Disclosure, and Comment Policy Page

If you want to monetize your blog, you’ll need to make sure you comply with all laws regarding data collection, privacy, and advertising. Adding standard disclosure language is an essential step if you want to make money.

You should also note your commenting policy. For example, do you allow anyone to comment? Do you ever delete comments? Are there commenting rules?

Craft a Simple Contact Page

It’s important to make it easy for readers and businesses to contact you. Set up a dedicated page with an embedded contact form or just list out your email — speaking of which…

Step 7: Set Up a Custom Blog Email Address

Another step you should take during the initial phases of your blog set up is registering a customized blog email address. At the outset, this may not seem all that important to you.

But details matter — especially to your readership and people who might reach out to you for partnerships, content writing services, and other reasons. 

A professional email that matches your blog looks professional, credible, and helps build up your brand’s authority. An email from an email address with tons of numbers and a mishmash of letters can look spammy. If you’re unlucky enough, any email sent from a suspicious-looking email can be automatically filed to the “junk” category of your recipient’s mailbox.

As a professional blog owner, you don’t want to be confused with a Nigerian prince who needs a one-time investment to set up a new school playground. An email that’s simply [email protected] lends polish to your brand and can help you monetize your blog later. Nobody wants to do business with [email protected].

Step 8: Register Social Media Accounts for Your Blog

When you’ve done all the hard parts on your actual blog, it’s time to branch out to the world of social media. Social media is another channel you can use to alert followers to new posts and attract new visitors and more traffic. 

Many social media platforms also allow you to set up ads that you can use to extend your blog’s reach. 

Have a post on your blog that is performing well? You may want to consider targeting ads for it to get even more people on the page. Or, maybe you have an underperforming post you revamped — you might consider sending more traffic to that post with social media ads.

Below are some basic social media tips and which platforms to target.

Twitter

Set up a Twitter profile for your blog. Add a Tweet button to all blog posts you publish on your blog so followers can easily retweet them. 

Follow other big names within your niche and interact with people in the industry already. Tweet out alerts for new posts.

Facebook

Set up a Facebook page for your blog. Share your content on Facebook, schedule posts, and invite friends and families to like your page.

Instagram

Set up an Instagram page. Find compelling images and use tools that allow for longer, evenly spaced captions to publish snippets of full-length blog posts or even exclusive “mini-blogs.”

LinkedIn

Although this is a platform for building a professional network, almost any blog can still be relevant to a professional audience. Obviously, a blog about marketing is going to be more relevant to a wider group of people on LinkedIn, but don’t write it off if your blog is more niche. 

LinkedIn provides the ability to connect with other bloggers and thought leaders within your industry.

Bonus: Having more than one stream of income can help you through tough economic times. Learn how to start earning money on the side with my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Step 9: Optimize Your Blog

SEO or search engine optimization is crucial, especially if you want to monetize your blog. SEO helps improve your site’s chances of appearing high on Google’s rankings for relevant search queries.

Although SEO can be intimidating at the outset, WordPress actually makes it pretty simple – even for beginners. 

One of the best ways to get started on your blog’s SEO journey is by downloading a plugin called Yoast SEO. Yoast can give you readability ratings, keyword density, and point out pages on your blog that need a little SEO boost.

If you want to do a deeper dive into SEO, you can also conduct some keyword research. In most cases, you’ll naturally be using keywords as a result of providing valuable content around a particular subject. 

But SEO tools like SEMrush, for example, can suggest alternate keywords to incorporate. Just don’t get too hung up on keywords and stuff too many in your posts, because Google can penalize your blog for doing so.

Once you have the keywords you want to target, use them in your title, title tags, first sentence, heading, subheadings, and any anchor text you use (the text you link to related pages on your website).

You can also optimize your images for SEO. When you upload images to your blog, use keywords in the file name, and use the alternate text space to write a keyword-rich description.

Step 10: Choose a Posting Schedule and Write Posts to Build an Audience

In most cases, it’ll take a few years to build an audience. Yes, years.

Here are a few blog tips to help nurture a loyal blog following and audience:

Stay Consistent: Try to post at least once a week and try to avoid skipping weeks. You can write a few posts ahead of time and schedule them out if you wish. In an ideal world, you should aim to post two to three times a week.

Focus on Quality: For every post you write, push for quality. Google tends to rank longer blog posts higher on their results pages, but if you’re writing fluff — that doesn’t help anyone.

Observe Your Competition: What is the focus of other similar blogs? Can you do it better or answer a query more comprehensively?

To Thine Own Self Be True: Find your unique voice – are you funny, heartfelt, honest? Build your brand. Write as if you’re talking to a close friend if you’re unsure of the right tone to adopt.

Get Active in Related Communities: Facebook groups, subreddits, podcast interviews, and speaking engagements can be lucrative opportunities for publicizing your blog.

Tips for Keeping a Strong Content Flow

Not every blog post you write will be award-winning. There might even come a time where you feel like you’ve run out of ideas. To avoid frustration and creative dead ends, consider brainstorming smart blog post content ahead of time. 

If inspiration for a new post doesn’t pop into your head and you’re stuck fighting through a severe case of writer’s block, you can choose from that list of vetted topics you’ve created.

Okay, but what if you’re out of topics, and now you need to create new ones from scratch? 

Read Books, Forums, and Comments: Reading books about your niche or people within your industry. Forums and your own blog comments can also be useful sources of potential inspiration.

Leverage Google: You can mine Google’s “People Also Ask” sections or query suggestions that pop up when you type in a keyword for blog post ideas.

Travel: Some bloggers also find success in coming up with new ideas by traveling somewhere and getting a fresh perspective. A new physical environment might just open up your brain.

Interview Industry Leaders: Can you reach out to other people who can provide insight on a topic? Or maybe you can join a friend in the industry for a cup of coffee and talk shop.

Crowdsource Topics: Use your readership for new ideas. Ask what your readers would like to see with polls on your social media platforms.

Step 11: Promote Your Blog

So, you’re posting regularly, and everything’s set up. Now, how do you encourage people to visit and read your blog? 

Create social media posts immediately after publishing a new post.

Since you’ve already taken the first step of setting up your social media sites, it’s now time to leverage them as the fantastic promotional tools they are. 

By publishing immediate social posts promoting your new blog content, you can get immediate follows, shares, likes, and retweets that can build momentum, so your post to go farther. 

It’s important to remember that your audience is likely to follow you on a few different social media accounts. 

That means you need to customize each snippet or preview text you use when promoting a blog post. 

What you don’t want to do is copy and paste the same verbiage repeatedly for each of your accounts — it comes off spammy and uninteresting. Optimize your messaging for each social stream and audience.

Re-promote Successful Content

Did you hit virtual gold with a blog post that went viral? Don’t be shy about promoting it again after some time passes. 

Re-promoting content that didn’t do well in the first place might not be the best strategy, but posts that have strong stats initially can do well again in the future. 

It’s a good idea to focus your efforts on creating evergreen content that stays relevant over time.

“Evergreen” is just a term that internet marketers use to refer to posts considered timeless. This type of content stays useful years after the initial publication because it tackles a core problem or subject. An evergreen post might be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain.” A non-evergreen post would be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain During a Pandemic.” 

Spice Up Your Blog Post Descriptions

Are you only sharing a blog post’s headline through your social media channels and calling it a day? Well, that gets boring very fast. To keep the interest in your blog higher, change up the messaging, and get inspiration from your own content.

State the Main Takeaways: Was there a “moral to the story” that sums up your post? Use that to give potential readers a basic, exciting summary. 

Reuse Your Meta Description: Your meta description is the preview snippet that shows up in Google search results. (Yoast, that plugin we talked about earlier, will prompt you to customize yours – if you don’t customize it, Google will simply pull the first line or two from your blog.) Reuse your meta description to sell your blog post. 

Use Your Subheadings: Your subheadings help readers navigate through your blog post. You can mine these subheadings for copy that you think might attract traffic to your website.

Pull Interesting Quotes: Did an industry leader, influencer, or celebrity give you a quote in your post? Pull out any interesting, odd, or thoughtful quotes and tag the person who said it in your social promotion post. 

Use Images: Posts with visual elements get much more engagement than those without visual elements. Don’t just rely on boring stock images. Overlay images with text, create your own memes or use GIFs to demand attention. 

Use Hashtags: For Twitter, you can use trending hashtags to see what people are already talking about or focus on hashtags relevant to your industry. For Instagram and Facebook, you can take advantage of pertinent hashtags to your blog. Don’t be afraid to get super specific with your hashtags. 

Use Social Media Regularly: Post at least once a week, engage with commenters, and answer messages.

Guest Post

Guest posting is a way to promote your blog by contributing to another blog within your industry. By providing a guest post to another blogger, you can help build your own website’s credibility. 

Guest blogging can accomplish three different goals for your blog: showing others you’re an expert, pushing traffic to your blog, and building backlinks. 

Quick Explainer on Backlinks: Backlinks serve as a “vote” for your site. But not all backlinks are created equally. Links from relevant, trusted websites pointing to your website can your site move up in Google’s rankings. But, if spammy websites are giving you backlinks, that’s a red flag that may result in a ranking drop.

To pursue guest blogging, you’ll need to find places to submit a guest post. If your blog is about bikes, you’ll want to search for similar blogs focused on your bikes and make sure the blog owner is active with an engaged audience.

You can also use a simple Google search to find blogs accepting guest posts. Just use a keyword relevant to your niche plus “submit a guest post” or “guest post guidelines” and other similar search terms.

Once you’ve found blogs to guest post for, you’ll need to pitch a few content ideas. Make sure you do your due diligence and research the blog’s tone of voice, type of audience, and other information you need to know. Pay attention to guidelines like the required word count. 

Some guest post bloggers allow you to post links to your blog in the content itself, while others will enable you to post your blog link in your byline. Each guest blogging site operates differently.

Step 12: Monetize Your Blog

There are many ways you can monetize your blog, but the two you can most easily leverage are affiliate links and services.

Affiliate programs work through pushing links to products relevant to your audience. When your audience clicks through the link to that recommendation, they get a unique tracking code. If they end up purchasing, you’ll get a portion of the sale.

Another way to monetize your blog is to offer services or intensive information related to your topics of expertise or industry. 

Depending on your blog’s focus, you can provide live workshops, one-on-one consulting sessions, or comprehensive online courses. Your blog serves as the jumping-off point, but your audience will only convert into customers if you’ve demonstrated authority and knowledge. Neither of which happens overnight.

Takeaways: Building a Blog, Step by Step

Creating a blog requires patience, strategy, and the desire to develop quality content. You don’t have to be a professional writer to create a successful blog. Plenty of everyday people have created a blog out stemming from a genuine interest that exploded into a successful brand. If you’re ready to try something new, blogging is a great way to flex your creative muscle and potentially earn some money.

FAQs: How to Start a Blog as a Beginner

Still, have a few remaining questions about starting a blog? Get answers to your blogging FAQs below.

Can I Start a Blog for Free?

While it’s true that you can, if your end goal is to monetize your blog and transform it into a lucrative side hustle, it makes more sense to pay to host your blog on your own server with your own domain name. Not only will this make your blog more “legit” from the outset, but it also gives you much more flexibility for monetizing down the line.

Is it Difficult to Start a Blog?

Yes and no. While starting a blog is a reasonably straightforward process, the key to creating a successful one is consistency. Consistency and developing a strong content strategy are going to be the most difficult parts of maintaining your blog, especially if you have other responsibilities demanding your attention like a day job, kids, or other obligations. 

With that said, writing regularly for your blog is easy once it’s a habit, and you have a running list of future blog post ideas from which to choose.

How Much Money Can I Realistically Make Blogging?

It’s not unrealistic to make a range from just one cent to ten cents per page view through ads. If you get around 1,000-page views each month, you can earn $10-$100! And depending on the success of your blog, it can go up from there. Not everyone will be able to live off their blog income full-time, but there’s still the potential to make a good chunk of change.

Do People Still Read Blogs Anymore?

Yes! Blogs are still critical in the internet landscape. There are a few things to note about how people read blogs that have changed over time. For example, people are much less likely to read a blog post from beginning to end. 

Instead, people tend to skim a post for the information most relevant to them. Keep that information in mind as you’re writing your initial blog posts. 

Well-structured blog posts should utilize headings and subheadings so that information is organized efficiently, and readers can find what they need.

How Do I Make My Blog Stand Out?

Ultimately, you’ll need to provide value. Good information on a particular subject is the best way to set your blog apart from others. But a difficult-to-use site with a lot of great information is unlikely to garner much attention. First impressions matter, in real life and in virtual life.

Your site should be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to skim. And don’t forget to integrate enough negative space to give your readers somewhere to “rest.”

Focus on making a site that even an older relative could navigate.

How Do I Stop Spam Comments?

If you allow comments, you need to be prepared for spammers and trolls. One way to deal with this issue is by turning off commenting altogether. Or you can also moderate the comments yourself or install plugins that can help reduce the frequency of spam.

How Do Successful Bloggers Monetize Their Blogs?

Bloggers may use their blogs to increase their authority within a certain niche or industry, sell things like memberships, sell digital products like e-books or courses, use affiliate links, or monetize with CPC or CPM ads. 

FYI: CPC and CPM stand for “cost-per-click” and “cost-per-thousand-impressions,” respectively.

What Kind of Blogs Make the Most Money?

Before you get your answer, it needs to be said: don’t let the list of blog types inform the choice of your blog alone. 

Why? Well, if you want to start a blog about newborns because that’s a niche that’s historically made money, you can only do so confidently if you’ve had a baby yourself or work with babies. 

If you’re an 18-year-old single college student without a kid, it doesn’t make sense to start a blog about newborns. Keep that concept in mind before pursuing a subject simply because it historically makes money in the blogging world.

Top Blogging Niches:

Crafting

Parenting or newborn 

Health

Lifestyle or family life

Budgeting

Interior Design or home decor 

If your blog doesn’t fall under one of these umbrella categories, don’t panic. Ultimately, these are just basic categories that won’t make or break the success of your blog. Stay authentic to what you’re actually passionate about.

How Can I Better Analyze My Website Traffic For Free?

If you want to know what types of people visit your site, you have a few free tools you can leverage. Two of the best are Google Console and Google Analytics. 

Both of these tools are easy to install and offer training so you can learn to use them. GC and GA can reveal interesting insights into visitor behavior, backlinks to your site, and other pertinent information about your site’s ranking for particular keywords.

How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?

While there isn’t a hard and fast rule about content length, if you’re trying to get ranked on Google, longer is better. Blog posts between 1500 and 2000 words seem to be ideal. Again, your posts shouldn’t be full of fluff for the sake of reaching those word count goals. Instead, try to create comprehensive posts that cover a particular subject in rich detail.

Will I Make Money Off My Blog Right Away?

While instantaneous success isn’t unheard of, you will probably need to blog for a few months or closer to a year before you see any revenue. Your initial year operating the blog should focus on analyzing what’s working and what isn’t working. Here are some questions you should ask (and know the answer to!) after your first few months to a year of blogging.

What are the most popular posts? The least popular?

What are the demographics of my blog visitors?

How long are people staying on my page?

Is traffic trending up, down, or is it steady?

Starting a blog isn’t going to be an overnight project, but with time and patience, you can turn it into a real side hustle.

How to Start a Blog is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Surety Bond Brokers? Business https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-to-start-a-blog/

[andrewdburton]

How to Start a Blog

Key Takeaways

Find a niche and post consistently to see the best results.

Focus on quality, longer-length posts.

Use your content to build authority and monetize services.

If you’ve been daydreaming about creating a blog during yet another endless conference call, an excellent place to start is right here. 

In case you haven’t heard, content is king. And there are plenty of full-time bloggers who prove it and make a living writing about hobbies, recipes, or workouts.

Writing with authority on a topic provides serious value in an internet landscape, often filled with subpar information.

With that said, starting up a blog doesn’t mean you can put in your two weeks as soon as you press “Publish” on your first blog post. Monetizing your blog and turning a profit takes hard work and dedication.

Like almost everything else in life, you get what you put in.

A great blog involves research, content strategy, and a fresh perspective.

So, if you have a story to tell or a niche to fill, it’s time to learn how to start a blog and unleash your creativity.

Step 1: Pick Your Blog Niche

Although you can simply start a blog based on broad topics, it’s smarter to narrow your focus. A unique point of view and a distinct voice are essential to building an audience.

There are two main questions you should ask yourself when setting up your blog and choosing your focus. The first is, “Do I enjoy learning about this subject?”

Good writing is infused with the passion of the author. If you’re writing something with thought and care, you’re more likely to benefit from actively engaged, inspired readers while building authority. On the flip side, if you don’t particularly like a topic, it’ll quickly surface in your writing and potentially turn readers off.

It’s important to be intellectually curious about the topic – otherwise, your creativity and ideas for new content might run dry.

Still not sure? Think about what your close friends and family come to you to discuss. 

Do you know the best secret hiking spots in your state? Do your vegan recipes on Instagram get the most engagement? Let these answers guide your blog focus.

The second question you should ask is, “Does this already exist?”                                

You might think that a blog centered around crocheting crafts out of found materials is unique. Lo-and-behold, after a little Googling, you find a blog floating around focused on that exact niche.Although your blog will share space with similar blogs, it needs to be different enough for an audience to seek you out. You need to provide value – especially if you want to monetize your blog down the road.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has you worried about money, check out my free guide on Coronavirus-Proofing your Finances with the CEO approach

Step 2: Choose a Blog Name

Finding a name for your blog might seem intimidating at first, but don’t overthink it. Here are some tips to remember when you’re brainstorming your blog name:

Choose words related to your niche

Keep it simple and stick to one or two words

 Don’t pick overly general terms like “travel”

Dotcom domains are preferred

Avoid hyphens or numbers

For a personal blog or branding, consider using a variation of your name

You can keep your domain name as long as you continue to pay your annual fees, which typically run $10 to $15 per year.

Step 3: Choose Your Web Host

So, you’ve chosen a niche around perfecting the art of macramé on a budget and named it. Now, what? The next step is to select your web host.

Web hosting is a service that makes your blog accessible through the web – it has a significant impact on your site’s overall functionality and its performance.

There’s a vast array of web hosts to choose from at all price points, from a few dollars to thousands. Above all, a good web host will walk you through setting up and launching your blog.

Hosted vs. Self-Hosted

You have two options here: hosted (Blogger, WordPress.com) and self-hosted (WordPress.org). “Hosted” blogging platforms, like Wix or Squarespace, offer a hands-off approach to your blog. You deal with one company, and all of your content and files live on the blog platform’s servers. These platforms manage data and web hosting, so you don’t have to.

Unfortunately, hosted platforms can be limiting and slow down the growth of your blog. Some might even put restrictions on how much money you can make from your content. Or you might be prohibited from monetizing at all.

“Self-hosted” platforms require you to install blogging software on your own web server.

Self-hosted platforms like WordPress.org allow you to set up and maintain your blog with a unique domain and web hosting. If you want to sell products, sell a service, or run ads, this is the right choice.

You’ve probably heard of WordPress’s blogging platform already, and there’s a reason for that – it’s easy to use and powerful. WordPress also delivers tons of free plugins you can leverage to customize and optimize your blog.

Step 4: Protect and Secure Your Blog 

New bloggers may not realize they should protect their blog by doing some basic security housekeeping tasks.

Backup Your Blog

Backing up your blog should be one of the first things you do after setting up your blog. While it’s rare that a web host will lose or delete your site, it can still happen. 

But your site suddenly disappearing isn’t the biggest threat to your blog — hackers are.

Hackers and other cybercriminals can infect your site with malicious code. 

If the worst-case scenario occurs, but you have a backup of your blog available, you can restore a clean version of your website. 

Be Careful With Copyrights

Copyrights need to be respected, especially when it comes to the visual elements of your blog. 

Small-time bloggers are often the victims of what is called “Copyright Trolls.” Well-meaning bloggers might accidentally use copyrighted images to add visual interest to their content. 

Copyright lawyers can sue you for damages based on the use of a copyrighted image, even if the lawyer doesn’t own the copyright or represent the entity with the copyright. As a result, bloggers can be bilked out of money. 

How do you avoid this? Never use copyrighted images for your blog posts. If you’re not sure, it’s better to be safe than sorry and choose an image you’re confident that you can use.

It’s actually very easy to find images available for free through the public domain or free stock photo sites. And on that note, it’s good practice to credit the website or artist (or both), however. A step above using free images you find on the internet is to use your own graphics. Smartphones offer basic but helpful editing tools, and you can get surprisingly high-quality photos. Websites like Canva offer free tools you can use to create blog header graphics and other visual elements you can insert into your text to make your posts look more attractive.

Opt for Domain Privacy 

Besides securing your blog, you should also take steps to protect your personal identity. Your web host should offer a domain privacy service that keeps your personal information private.

Besides domain privacy, avoid sharing identifying details in your blog like where you live, your schedule, names, and other similar details.

Use Hard-to-Guess Passwords for Your Blog Login

Although this might seem like a no-brainer, there’s evidence that millions of people still using passwords like “password,” “abc123,” and other easily-guessed combos. 

Here are some basic password tips to keep in mind:

Use 12 characters minimum

Include numbers, capital letters, lower-case letters, and symbols

Don’t use dictionary words

You can use a password manager like Keeper if you’re concerned about forgetting a complex password. 

Bonus: Want to turn your dream of working from home into a reality? Download my Ultimate Guide to Working from Home to learn how to make working from home work for YOU.

Step 5: Design and Customize Your Blog

Now for the fun stuff. Installing a theme for your blog is a straightforward task, but it can take time to accomplish since there are thousands of free themes to explore. While it’s essential to ensure that your blog is attractive and user-friendly, it’s equally important that it complements your blog content. If you’re working on a WordPress site, look for themes that say “SEO optimized”, “responsive” or “fast loading” themes. Many free themes can make sites look odd when viewed on a mobile device, or make for increased page speed (aka the time it takes a page to properly load). For users on sites like squarespace or Wix, you shouldn’t have to worry about these potential issues. 

For example, if you’re starting an urban photography blog, a theme emphasizing visuals is preferable to text-oriented themes.

To get more relevant results, you can apply filters while searching for themes like designs based around your blog subject, for instance.

Step 6: Add Basic Blog Pages

Before you start posting regularly, it’s smart to add a few basic, standard pages to your blog to boost your website’s credibility.

Create an “About Me” Page

Your “About Me” page should explain who you are and the focus of your blog. Spend time making it interesting and fun. 

Readers are often interested in getting to know you and how you started your industry or niche. You don’t have to write an entire autobiography, just describe how you got to the point you’re at now. Over everything else, be relatable. 

For example, show your readers that you’re a credible source. Why should they listen to you? What experience do you have that makes you knowledgeable on this specific topic? If you’re writing a finance blog, are you a CPA? If you’re sharing recipes, what do you bring to the table that will make your audience want to listen to you? A coupon-cutter, perhaps?  Tell your readers how long you’ve been doing it, how much money you save, and why they can benefit from the information you’re sharing.

Add a Privacy, Disclosure, and Comment Policy Page

If you want to monetize your blog, you’ll need to make sure you comply with all laws regarding data collection, privacy, and advertising. Adding standard disclosure language is an essential step if you want to make money.

You should also note your commenting policy. For example, do you allow anyone to comment? Do you ever delete comments? Are there commenting rules?

Craft a Simple Contact Page

It’s important to make it easy for readers and businesses to contact you. Set up a dedicated page with an embedded contact form or just list out your email — speaking of which…

Step 7: Set Up a Custom Blog Email Address

Another step you should take during the initial phases of your blog set up is registering a customized blog email address. At the outset, this may not seem all that important to you.

But details matter — especially to your readership and people who might reach out to you for partnerships, content writing services, and other reasons. 

A professional email that matches your blog looks professional, credible, and helps build up your brand’s authority. An email from an email address with tons of numbers and a mishmash of letters can look spammy. If you’re unlucky enough, any email sent from a suspicious-looking email can be automatically filed to the “junk” category of your recipient’s mailbox.

As a professional blog owner, you don’t want to be confused with a Nigerian prince who needs a one-time investment to set up a new school playground. An email that’s simply [email protected] lends polish to your brand and can help you monetize your blog later. Nobody wants to do business with [email protected].

Step 8: Register Social Media Accounts for Your Blog

When you’ve done all the hard parts on your actual blog, it’s time to branch out to the world of social media. Social media is another channel you can use to alert followers to new posts and attract new visitors and more traffic. 

Many social media platforms also allow you to set up ads that you can use to extend your blog’s reach. 

Have a post on your blog that is performing well? You may want to consider targeting ads for it to get even more people on the page. Or, maybe you have an underperforming post you revamped — you might consider sending more traffic to that post with social media ads.

Below are some basic social media tips and which platforms to target.

Twitter

Set up a Twitter profile for your blog. Add a Tweet button to all blog posts you publish on your blog so followers can easily retweet them. 

Follow other big names within your niche and interact with people in the industry already. Tweet out alerts for new posts.

Facebook

Set up a Facebook page for your blog. Share your content on Facebook, schedule posts, and invite friends and families to like your page.

Instagram

Set up an Instagram page. Find compelling images and use tools that allow for longer, evenly spaced captions to publish snippets of full-length blog posts or even exclusive “mini-blogs.”

LinkedIn

Although this is a platform for building a professional network, almost any blog can still be relevant to a professional audience. Obviously, a blog about marketing is going to be more relevant to a wider group of people on LinkedIn, but don’t write it off if your blog is more niche. 

LinkedIn provides the ability to connect with other bloggers and thought leaders within your industry.

Bonus: Having more than one stream of income can help you through tough economic times. Learn how to start earning money on the side with my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Step 9: Optimize Your Blog

SEO or search engine optimization is crucial, especially if you want to monetize your blog. SEO helps improve your site’s chances of appearing high on Google’s rankings for relevant search queries.

Although SEO can be intimidating at the outset, WordPress actually makes it pretty simple – even for beginners. 

One of the best ways to get started on your blog’s SEO journey is by downloading a plugin called Yoast SEO. Yoast can give you readability ratings, keyword density, and point out pages on your blog that need a little SEO boost.

If you want to do a deeper dive into SEO, you can also conduct some keyword research. In most cases, you’ll naturally be using keywords as a result of providing valuable content around a particular subject. 

But SEO tools like SEMrush, for example, can suggest alternate keywords to incorporate. Just don’t get too hung up on keywords and stuff too many in your posts, because Google can penalize your blog for doing so.

Once you have the keywords you want to target, use them in your title, title tags, first sentence, heading, subheadings, and any anchor text you use (the text you link to related pages on your website).

You can also optimize your images for SEO. When you upload images to your blog, use keywords in the file name, and use the alternate text space to write a keyword-rich description.

Step 10: Choose a Posting Schedule and Write Posts to Build an Audience

In most cases, it’ll take a few years to build an audience. Yes, years.

Here are a few blog tips to help nurture a loyal blog following and audience:

Stay Consistent: Try to post at least once a week and try to avoid skipping weeks. You can write a few posts ahead of time and schedule them out if you wish. In an ideal world, you should aim to post two to three times a week.

Focus on Quality: For every post you write, push for quality. Google tends to rank longer blog posts higher on their results pages, but if you’re writing fluff — that doesn’t help anyone.

Observe Your Competition: What is the focus of other similar blogs? Can you do it better or answer a query more comprehensively?

To Thine Own Self Be True: Find your unique voice – are you funny, heartfelt, honest? Build your brand. Write as if you’re talking to a close friend if you’re unsure of the right tone to adopt.

Get Active in Related Communities: Facebook groups, subreddits, podcast interviews, and speaking engagements can be lucrative opportunities for publicizing your blog.

Tips for Keeping a Strong Content Flow

Not every blog post you write will be award-winning. There might even come a time where you feel like you’ve run out of ideas. To avoid frustration and creative dead ends, consider brainstorming smart blog post content ahead of time. 

If inspiration for a new post doesn’t pop into your head and you’re stuck fighting through a severe case of writer’s block, you can choose from that list of vetted topics you’ve created.

Okay, but what if you’re out of topics, and now you need to create new ones from scratch? 

Read Books, Forums, and Comments: Reading books about your niche or people within your industry. Forums and your own blog comments can also be useful sources of potential inspiration.

Leverage Google: You can mine Google’s “People Also Ask” sections or query suggestions that pop up when you type in a keyword for blog post ideas.

Travel: Some bloggers also find success in coming up with new ideas by traveling somewhere and getting a fresh perspective. A new physical environment might just open up your brain.

Interview Industry Leaders: Can you reach out to other people who can provide insight on a topic? Or maybe you can join a friend in the industry for a cup of coffee and talk shop.

Crowdsource Topics: Use your readership for new ideas. Ask what your readers would like to see with polls on your social media platforms.

Step 11: Promote Your Blog

So, you’re posting regularly, and everything’s set up. Now, how do you encourage people to visit and read your blog? 

Create social media posts immediately after publishing a new post.

Since you’ve already taken the first step of setting up your social media sites, it’s now time to leverage them as the fantastic promotional tools they are. 

By publishing immediate social posts promoting your new blog content, you can get immediate follows, shares, likes, and retweets that can build momentum, so your post to go farther. 

It’s important to remember that your audience is likely to follow you on a few different social media accounts. 

That means you need to customize each snippet or preview text you use when promoting a blog post. 

What you don’t want to do is copy and paste the same verbiage repeatedly for each of your accounts — it comes off spammy and uninteresting. Optimize your messaging for each social stream and audience.

Re-promote Successful Content

Did you hit virtual gold with a blog post that went viral? Don’t be shy about promoting it again after some time passes. 

Re-promoting content that didn’t do well in the first place might not be the best strategy, but posts that have strong stats initially can do well again in the future. 

It’s a good idea to focus your efforts on creating evergreen content that stays relevant over time.

“Evergreen” is just a term that internet marketers use to refer to posts considered timeless. This type of content stays useful years after the initial publication because it tackles a core problem or subject. An evergreen post might be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain.” A non-evergreen post would be “How to Clean Your Bike Chain During a Pandemic.” 

Spice Up Your Blog Post Descriptions

Are you only sharing a blog post’s headline through your social media channels and calling it a day? Well, that gets boring very fast. To keep the interest in your blog higher, change up the messaging, and get inspiration from your own content.

State the Main Takeaways: Was there a “moral to the story” that sums up your post? Use that to give potential readers a basic, exciting summary. 

Reuse Your Meta Description: Your meta description is the preview snippet that shows up in Google search results. (Yoast, that plugin we talked about earlier, will prompt you to customize yours – if you don’t customize it, Google will simply pull the first line or two from your blog.) Reuse your meta description to sell your blog post. 

Use Your Subheadings: Your subheadings help readers navigate through your blog post. You can mine these subheadings for copy that you think might attract traffic to your website.

Pull Interesting Quotes: Did an industry leader, influencer, or celebrity give you a quote in your post? Pull out any interesting, odd, or thoughtful quotes and tag the person who said it in your social promotion post. 

Use Images: Posts with visual elements get much more engagement than those without visual elements. Don’t just rely on boring stock images. Overlay images with text, create your own memes or use GIFs to demand attention. 

Use Hashtags: For Twitter, you can use trending hashtags to see what people are already talking about or focus on hashtags relevant to your industry. For Instagram and Facebook, you can take advantage of pertinent hashtags to your blog. Don’t be afraid to get super specific with your hashtags. 

Use Social Media Regularly: Post at least once a week, engage with commenters, and answer messages.

Guest Post

Guest posting is a way to promote your blog by contributing to another blog within your industry. By providing a guest post to another blogger, you can help build your own website’s credibility. 

Guest blogging can accomplish three different goals for your blog: showing others you’re an expert, pushing traffic to your blog, and building backlinks. 

Quick Explainer on Backlinks: Backlinks serve as a “vote” for your site. But not all backlinks are created equally. Links from relevant, trusted websites pointing to your website can your site move up in Google’s rankings. But, if spammy websites are giving you backlinks, that’s a red flag that may result in a ranking drop.

To pursue guest blogging, you’ll need to find places to submit a guest post. If your blog is about bikes, you’ll want to search for similar blogs focused on your bikes and make sure the blog owner is active with an engaged audience.

You can also use a simple Google search to find blogs accepting guest posts. Just use a keyword relevant to your niche plus “submit a guest post” or “guest post guidelines” and other similar search terms.

Once you’ve found blogs to guest post for, you’ll need to pitch a few content ideas. Make sure you do your due diligence and research the blog’s tone of voice, type of audience, and other information you need to know. Pay attention to guidelines like the required word count. 

Some guest post bloggers allow you to post links to your blog in the content itself, while others will enable you to post your blog link in your byline. Each guest blogging site operates differently.

Step 12: Monetize Your Blog

There are many ways you can monetize your blog, but the two you can most easily leverage are affiliate links and services.

Affiliate programs work through pushing links to products relevant to your audience. When your audience clicks through the link to that recommendation, they get a unique tracking code. If they end up purchasing, you’ll get a portion of the sale.

Another way to monetize your blog is to offer services or intensive information related to your topics of expertise or industry. 

Depending on your blog’s focus, you can provide live workshops, one-on-one consulting sessions, or comprehensive online courses. Your blog serves as the jumping-off point, but your audience will only convert into customers if you’ve demonstrated authority and knowledge. Neither of which happens overnight.

Takeaways: Building a Blog, Step by Step

Creating a blog requires patience, strategy, and the desire to develop quality content. You don’t have to be a professional writer to create a successful blog. Plenty of everyday people have created a blog out stemming from a genuine interest that exploded into a successful brand. If you’re ready to try something new, blogging is a great way to flex your creative muscle and potentially earn some money.

FAQs: How to Start a Blog as a Beginner

Still, have a few remaining questions about starting a blog? Get answers to your blogging FAQs below.

Can I Start a Blog for Free?

While it’s true that you can, if your end goal is to monetize your blog and transform it into a lucrative side hustle, it makes more sense to pay to host your blog on your own server with your own domain name. Not only will this make your blog more “legit” from the outset, but it also gives you much more flexibility for monetizing down the line.

Is it Difficult to Start a Blog?

Yes and no. While starting a blog is a reasonably straightforward process, the key to creating a successful one is consistency. Consistency and developing a strong content strategy are going to be the most difficult parts of maintaining your blog, especially if you have other responsibilities demanding your attention like a day job, kids, or other obligations. 

With that said, writing regularly for your blog is easy once it’s a habit, and you have a running list of future blog post ideas from which to choose.

How Much Money Can I Realistically Make Blogging?

It’s not unrealistic to make a range from just one cent to ten cents per page view through ads. If you get around 1,000-page views each month, you can earn $10-$100! And depending on the success of your blog, it can go up from there. Not everyone will be able to live off their blog income full-time, but there’s still the potential to make a good chunk of change.

Do People Still Read Blogs Anymore?

Yes! Blogs are still critical in the internet landscape. There are a few things to note about how people read blogs that have changed over time. For example, people are much less likely to read a blog post from beginning to end. 

Instead, people tend to skim a post for the information most relevant to them. Keep that information in mind as you’re writing your initial blog posts. 

Well-structured blog posts should utilize headings and subheadings so that information is organized efficiently, and readers can find what they need.

How Do I Make My Blog Stand Out?

Ultimately, you’ll need to provide value. Good information on a particular subject is the best way to set your blog apart from others. But a difficult-to-use site with a lot of great information is unlikely to garner much attention. First impressions matter, in real life and in virtual life.

Your site should be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and easy to skim. And don’t forget to integrate enough negative space to give your readers somewhere to “rest.”

Focus on making a site that even an older relative could navigate.

How Do I Stop Spam Comments?

If you allow comments, you need to be prepared for spammers and trolls. One way to deal with this issue is by turning off commenting altogether. Or you can also moderate the comments yourself or install plugins that can help reduce the frequency of spam.

How Do Successful Bloggers Monetize Their Blogs?

Bloggers may use their blogs to increase their authority within a certain niche or industry, sell things like memberships, sell digital products like e-books or courses, use affiliate links, or monetize with CPC or CPM ads. 

FYI: CPC and CPM stand for “cost-per-click” and “cost-per-thousand-impressions,” respectively.

What Kind of Blogs Make the Most Money?

Before you get your answer, it needs to be said: don’t let the list of blog types inform the choice of your blog alone. 

Why? Well, if you want to start a blog about newborns because that’s a niche that’s historically made money, you can only do so confidently if you’ve had a baby yourself or work with babies. 

If you’re an 18-year-old single college student without a kid, it doesn’t make sense to start a blog about newborns. Keep that concept in mind before pursuing a subject simply because it historically makes money in the blogging world.

Top Blogging Niches:

Crafting

Parenting or newborn 

Health

Lifestyle or family life

Budgeting

Interior Design or home decor 

If your blog doesn’t fall under one of these umbrella categories, don’t panic. Ultimately, these are just basic categories that won’t make or break the success of your blog. Stay authentic to what you’re actually passionate about.

How Can I Better Analyze My Website Traffic For Free?

If you want to know what types of people visit your site, you have a few free tools you can leverage. Two of the best are Google Console and Google Analytics. 

Both of these tools are easy to install and offer training so you can learn to use them. GC and GA can reveal interesting insights into visitor behavior, backlinks to your site, and other pertinent information about your site’s ranking for particular keywords.

How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?

While there isn’t a hard and fast rule about content length, if you’re trying to get ranked on Google, longer is better. Blog posts between 1500 and 2000 words seem to be ideal. Again, your posts shouldn’t be full of fluff for the sake of reaching those word count goals. Instead, try to create comprehensive posts that cover a particular subject in rich detail.

Will I Make Money Off My Blog Right Away?

While instantaneous success isn’t unheard of, you will probably need to blog for a few months or closer to a year before you see any revenue. Your initial year operating the blog should focus on analyzing what’s working and what isn’t working. Here are some questions you should ask (and know the answer to!) after your first few months to a year of blogging.

What are the most popular posts? The least popular?

What are the demographics of my blog visitors?

How long are people staying on my page?

Is traffic trending up, down, or is it steady?

Starting a blog isn’t going to be an overnight project, but with time and patience, you can turn it into a real side hustle.

How to Start a Blog is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-to-start-a-blog/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[iasmelaion]

Yuletide 2017

Don’t mind me, just crossposting my Yuletide letter here. Fandoms are The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt (has nothing to do with that Tom Cruise movie), Sense8, 17776, and Moonlight. Sorry to everyone on mobile where I guess read mores still don’t work?

Another year, another Yuletide! Thank you for signing up to write in one of my fandoms! I can't wait to see whatever you come up with, and with these fandoms, chances are I'll love whatever it is you choose to write. If my requests/prompts/details don't catch your interest, just remember that Optional Details Are Optional, and that I will be thrilled to get fic in any of these fandoms at all. As far as my basic preferences go: I am okay with gen, het, slash, and femslash. If I've indicated a pairing preference in my request, don't feel pressured to write it! I'm a big gen lover, and I'll specifically note if there's a pairing I don't want to see with the characters I've requested. Also, a confession: I usually skim through sex scenes. I know, I know, what am I doing in fandom if I skim past the porn. But I am almost always way more interested in character interaction than in sexy times. Feel free to include sex scenes! I'd just really prefer that porn not be the whole point of the fic. Things I love: banter, subtle but meaningful declarations of love and/or trust, pining, characters finding home and family with each other, the smaller moments of domesticity or the calm before the storm, crossovers, detailed worldbuilding, lolz, feelings, women being complex and sometimes assholes, dudes being stoic yet simmering with repressed emotions, any number of forced intimacy situations (fake married! Undercover relationship! Surprise soul bond! Huddling for warmth! Oh no there’s only one bed! Sex pollen! I could go on, really), threesomes/sedoretu-style moresomes, and indulgent emotional hurt/comfort. Things I don't love: dark fic, character bashing, character death, non-con, infidelity, incest, alpha/beta/omegaverse fic, mpreg, harm to children, being mean to robots, unhappy endings, issuefic. Also, while I generally love AUs, I love these fandoms for their settings and the characters in those settings, so I'd prefer no total AUs (canon-divergent AUs okay though).

1. The Last Samurai - Helen Dewitt (Ludo, Sybilla) My desires in terms of Last Samurai fic are simple: I just want to know what happens to Ludo and/or Sybilla, after the book. Especially Ludo. Who does he end up being, when he grows up? What does he do with his brilliant mind? Hell, what name does he choose to go by? I'd really just love to see something about an older Ludo interacting with the world and the interesting people in it, a sort of extension of the kind of adventures he got up to in the book. I'd also love to know more about Sybilla, whose character arc I thought ended up getting somewhat short shrift. How does her life change as Ludo grows up? Does she enter the world again, academic or otherwise? How does she continue to deal with her depression? This is my third fourth fifth sixth SEVENTH, holy shit, year requesting this, and I live in hope! I’m pretty sure the book is even in print again now! Here is what I said in years past: I wrote about my thoughts on the novel here, if that interests you. Anyway, like my request says, I more or less want straight up future fic about Ludo and Sybilla. I want to know what kind of man Ludo becomes, what happens to Sybilla as Ludo grows into an adult, what happens to their relationship. In short, I just want to know more. Whatever you do to fill my insatiable desire to know more more more about these characters will make me happy. Don't feel like you have to match the style of the novel. I will be very impressed if you do, but it's not a dealbreaker for me. Anyway, Ludo and/or Sybilla future fic! That's my Last Samurai request in a nutshell.

2. Sense8 - Any I basically just have a lot of EMOTIONS about the cluster and the experience of being sensate, and would love a fic exploring that. What exactly does it mean, to be part of a cluster? Our main cluster seems to have had a somewhat unique/traumatic experience of being “born,” how does that make their take on being sensate different? The show did a pretty good job visually showing it, but I'm super fascinated by what the interiority of the experience is like. The members of the cluster seemed to feel a pretty instant empathy and understanding of each other, what's that like? By now they must know each other better, what was that process like, learning all the mundane stuff about each other in non-life or death situations? How does being a sensate influence their relationships with the other people in their life? What happens when, say, Will tells Diego or Lito finally tells Hernando and Dani (on the way to rescue Wolfgang perhaps)? I know Season 2 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, but feel free to just jump ahead to some nebulous future where everything’s resolved if you want. You by no means have to answer all or even any of these specific questions, they’re just guides for the kind of thing I’m interested in here. I picked Any characters here, so go wild. I'm most interested in the main cluster, but I'm overall fascinated by the whole sensate experience and what it means for any given character's relationships and experience of the world. Any fic exploring that would be great. Shipwise, I'm into all the canon pairings and basically any permutation of the members of the cluster. My tl;dr thoughts on Sense8 are here and here. This is a fandom where I sort of feel spoiled for choice in terms of characters I'm interested in, so I picked Any for this request. I love the main cluster and their relationships with each other, you basically can't go wrong picking any given combination of them and smushing them together. I'm also very interested in all the non-sensate side characters and how they interact with the cluster. I really just want more more more in this universe.. 3. 17776 - Any I am so utterly FASCINATED by the improbable and amazing and weird utopia Jon Bois has built with 17776. It’s a world that seems to be positively teeming with stories, and I’m wildly interested in reading about any and all of them. I do not actually care about football qua football; I like the country and centuries-spanning version of the game Jon Bois has extrapolated here, but you don’t have to make it the focus of anything you write. What I’d love to know more about are those first few decades after humanity realizes they can no longer die. Or, heck, who first realizes people have stopped dying, and how do they approach that mystery? How do other parts of the world deal with immortality, what games do they play? I know Jon Bois thinks that humanity is alone in this universe, and won’t be able to overcome the practical roadblocks to long-range space travel, but what if they did? What if humanity’s not alone? Who are the kinds of people who’d fling themselves out into the big, wide dark of space, with no expectation of returning, and eternity stretching out in front of them? What other bits of electronics or AI have gained their own sentience or significance, and who do they talk to? Honestly, I’d be thrilled with you exploring just about any nook or cranny of this fascinating universe. I’d only ask that you maintain the source’s absurd yet optimistic and loving tone. Bittersweet and even a little elegiac is fine, I just don’t want anything grim or dark here. The world we’re living in right now has plenty of that. Also, do not feel the need to try any wild format/coding stuff the way Bois did if you don’t want to. A vanilla text story is more than enough for me. A quick primer on 17776 in an effort to snare more people in, and also just elaborate a little more on why I love it: 

You can find 17776 here. It is...hard to explain. Maybe impossible to explain. For one thing, it's a sort of multimedia storytelling experience, composed largely of text, but also some video and audio, and some website weirdness. Jon Bois of SB Nation wrote this, ostensibly, as a series on the future of football. It is not what you might expect, given that starting point. The premise is this: humans stopped dying and aging as of April 7, 2026. Any other risk of injury or illness has been mitigated by a worldwide network of nanobots that will fix anything. It’s a post-scarcity utopia, all pressing problems fixed Having reached this pinnacle, and having hit the hard limits of ability and resources that leave them unable to meaningfully explore space, the humans of 17776 are left with some weird ways to pass their endless supply of time, one of which is playing football. Only it’s not football as we know it, it’s football blown up so the field crosses states and the timespan crosses decades, centuries. 17776 opens with the space probes Pioneer 9 and Pioneer 10 trying to talk to each other, many years in the future. As 17776 slowly unfolds, Pioneer 9 is shepherded into sentience and learns about what’s going on on Earth from Pioneer 10 and JUICE (the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer). Pioneer 9 learns about football, and the people who play it now, and some people who don’t play it, but are passing their endless amount of time in different ways. Really, the whole experience is worth a read/watch, I’m not doing it justice here. I’ve always been fascinated by fictional takes on immortality, and 17776 offers a pretty new take on it, one where everyone is immortal, not just a few people, so humanity has to figure out how to deal with it together. It would be easy to turn this premise into a horrifying dystopia, a sort of endless hell for all the humans stuck on Earth together with eternal life and no escape. What I love about 17776 is that Bois turned this premise into a utopia, a bittersweet sort of heaven. There are things and experiences that the humans of 17776 mourn and miss (no more children seems like an especially bitter loss, ouch), and they seem to be a little obsessive about cataloging and exploring the past. But it’s so meaningful to me that, when free of want and hardship and death, this vision of humanity buckles down to do ridiculous, wild, fun, sweet things like play century and country-spanning games of football, or travel around learning every minute detail of every place, or travel around meeting each other to share stories. Here is a quote from Jon Bois that really gets at why I’m so fascinated and in love with the 17776 universe: Humanity’s technological advancement over the last 150 years has been almost frightening, but that’s a very small speck of time. I think we’ll eventually hit a wall, and that wall will be, “we can’t travel into deep space ourselves.” Too much distance, too much radiation, and too little incentive. If that ends up being the case, we’ll have nothing to do but solve our problems on Earth. I’m being really optimistic when I guess that we might someday. After we do that, we’re gonna want our games, our art, and each other. One day, we might see those as the only reasons we’re here. In a world where there is no death, where the biggest human problems have been solved, there's something beautiful about those things that still hurt, those things we still lost: the dream of space, children, childhood, endings. And what sweet hope, to distill down our reason for being here to games, art, and each other. There’s a real love of people that runs through all of 17776, and that's one of my favorite things about it.

4. Moonlight (2016) - Chiron, Kevin Just give me Chiron and Kevin’s happy ending. The world hasn’t been kind to them, but I want to believe in the possibility of it being kinder, of them being tender and kind with one another, after everything. I want to believe that they can build a life together, even if it’s not the kind of life they or anyone else would have expected. Trevante Rhodes said, “I like to think they’re together, walking in Central Park hand-in-hand when they’re 90 years old,” and yeah, that’s what I hope for them too. So I’d love a story about how they get there, or how they start that journey. Another possible prompt, this one from something Andre Holland (who plays Kevin) said: “I have this image of them walking along with Kevin’s son and teaching him, either overtly or experientially, about what masculinity is and what it means to be a man, in all the variations that are possible. That, to me, is the magic of it, that there’s a young boy in the world who will grow up with a different idea of masculinity than either of them had.” The thing I loved most about Moonlight was how incredibly intimate and tender it was, how quiet and clear-eyed. It felt like living in Chiron’s skin. And I love it as a love story too, even though the ending was bittersweet. I took it to be hopeful, and obviously, I’m a lover of happy endings. Ultimately, as sad as parts of Moonlight were, as hard as life obviously is for Kevin and Chiron, Moonlight healed some wounds in me that Brokeback Mountain and so many other unhappy queer love stories left, by showing all that hard stuff, but offering a way forward anyway. Kevin, calling Chiron to reconnect. Chiron, taking a risk, making that nine-hour drive to see Kevin. Kevin and Chiron letting themselves be vulnerable to and with each other. Both of them, ultimately, reaching for one another.

#yuletide #sense8 #17776 #moonlight