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nehilistuniverse · 3 years

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I DUNNO

How do I explain people that I actually do not know the reason why I can’t be strong in front of women sexually and give in to easy because my bitch ass was groomed by a bunch of females so I have no boundaries there and do the most hyper sexual things.

I do have my suspensions on pride’s hypersexuality he talks like every person who ever got violated as a kid...

Maybe I am assuming and wrong and men are naturally on that level but I do worry about him and envy but maybe it’s the hormones.

I need to stop being so nosy and curios especially about an asshole that’s now had a whole ass funeral in my mind. Though death by infinite number of slaps but still.

I NEED TO KNOWWWWWW

I OVERTHINK A LOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

IMMA DIE OVERTHINKING

BITCH GO STUDY

Naah me still more hyper sexual lmaoooooo I am just too good at controlling myself because I anyway fear men and don’t trust them because they aren’t worth the trust anyway.

Yeahhhhh

I am running away aren’t I?

But the curiosity regarding these things is infinity I just need clarity and I won’t sleep properly until then because genuinely something funny is going on AND I NEED TO KNOW.

I am more of a go with the flow kind but I needddddd tooooo know or I am going to go bonkers. I swear I have not been able to study just because I have useless questions and I CAN’T CONCENTRATE I JUST CAN’T IT’S LIKE THAT ONE MANGA CHAPTER THAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR FROM THE PAST 6-7 YEARS

I HAVE NO PAITINCE I USED TO HAVE IT BUT I INVESTED IT ALL IN WAITING FOR MANGA RELEASE AND ONE THING I HAVE LEARNT FROM THAT IS NEVER WAIT FOR THEM FUCKING MANGA RELEASES THERE MIGHT NEVER BE ONE AND YOU WILL END UP MISSING OUT ON BETTER MANGAS.

IT REMINDS ME DID THEY EVER UPLOADED WALLFLOWER’S NEW CHAPTER BECAUSE I WILL REREAD IT IF NOT

FUCK REAL LIFE SUCKS ASS I WANT MY MANGAS BACK AND HOW DARE THEY STOP THEM FUCKING FREE SITES?!

I AM LOSING MY MIND SLOWLY AND DESENTING INTO MADNESS I AM VERY CLOSE

naah I am just being overdramatic and writing just for the heck of it. Isn’t that what I always do? Write whatever I want just for the heck of it because I like how it makes me feel less useless and how I am able to communicate without hesitation. I do take it too far at times because I enjoy it a lot BUT

I am never making this my profession it’s my sanity. If it becomes the very thing I run away from again I will break someone’s neck.

I do not want to be dictated what I have to write and what I should do in order to come up with the idea and how I am supposed to research

and I very specifically remember asking manjhi’s writer his process for coming up with the character’s personality and the way he went into details. Bruh. Also what do you mean the whole story should come in that 4 page that’s your script and only that’s accepted.

I swear my college made me hate writing. It just did. Somehow it made me realize the moment this becomes my profession and I start or go into technical writing or PR or anything of that kind I will lose my coping mechanism, my escape, my little heaven and I would not be able to forgive myself for that ever.

I am genuinely writing just for the heck of it and feels so free. I do imagine how beautiful and calming it must be typing on a typewriter.

I will buy myself one. Some day I will. I do not know but after watching the little woman I suddenly started missing writing but I am scared. It’s like I am never able to figure out what I want my character’s personality to be like and how do I keep it consistent through out and how do I channelize different voices for different characters?

And how does one do that? That too consistently because the only way to ever pull that off is to write consistently. Consistency suckssssssss. That’s one thing I genuinely want to learn. The art of being consistent without taking anyone’s help.

I am genuinely tired. Imagine being sponsored by a company that sells typewriters. I remember how I used to be crazy about writing once upon a time and was so determined to make it my “profession” what a silly child I was.

My dreams demand more and so does my family at least for now and I genuinely can’t write without having to suffer through the pain of a monotonous life because writing is essentially my escape. If it stops being that ever again I will lose it.

I mean I have seen how other writers live as book bloggers on youtube. The highly notorious “BookTube” is filled with those who can afford expensive books and the goddamned book shelves. Book heaven and almost all have those tiny what is that company’s name Branes and nobles? I guess? The have their tiny harry potter figurines. Also everyone just suggests expensive books. I though still adored illumine files. I am yet to read the other two books in the series.

You know what I miss the most? Metro rides to my college. I genuinely miss being sleep deprived shaky and standing waiting for a seat to clear so I can sit. Even that used to be a game. Always stand near the pole in the middle so you can see in the front but also see the seats behind you in the reflection of the mirror.

The being the first one to be able to grab that seat, taking out your earphones turning the music on loud and taking out a book from your bag so you can hide your face and forget about the crowd. I miss the yellow light.

I miss metro so much. It used to be my second home. My ticket to freedom. I remember coming home late at 8 and running from the metro station till the gate to my “campus”

There was a distance of 1 km approx.? I remember freaking out only to find out that my parents were out shopping. I don’t think they know the amount of times I have reached home by 8-8:30

You see my parents are strict and will never let me be out when it has started to get dark. I miss my freedom.

I don’t want to go out and explore the society there way too many people always walking at any given time. I miss empty streets. I miss being forced to walk for 3-4 kms just to save money by kushal. I miss how he used to act like my big brother in this awful place where I was left to fend for myself.

I even miss that one birthday I missed. I was not awake on my 19th birthday xD I technically was. Actually it was supposed to be my first birthday so I had spent the whole night before planning but suddenly there was this message to submit fees at my college. So I went to my college with a poorly made check. Mind you my college is 30 kms away from the place where I used to live. It took me 45 mins to reach my college. I went there with no cheque book. They straight up refused to take it so I had to travel back and get my cheque book xD I did the whole thing and bought myself a bottle of milkshake.

I went back to hostel and asked this “Friend” of mine to wake me up after this time in case I don’t come out because I really want to celebrate my birthday. Technically either the friend group or your floor mates are supposed to make you cut cake at 12 but I didn’t realize this back then and this bitch she knew but didn’t care she was using me as a person she could cry to. She didn’t care at all this selfish prick that I used to call my “friend” she made me feel so alone and then she also didn’t wake me up. I woke up and cried so much I had even missed dinner. I took warden’s permission watched some animated movie made myself Maggie (it has always been my comfort food) and just cried myself to sleep.

I sometimes do wish somebody out there cared because all my life I have met selfish people who would rather use me. I keep meeting them and I have learnt to never give such kind a second chance and even if I do I only feel hate. I still hate that person. I hate each and every selfish person out there. There is a difference between being someone who loves themselves and someone who is way up their butt. I know people who love themselves. I adore them.

Where as selfish people have no place in my life. It’s the stupidest thing but I genuinely do not know how to forgive someone. I mean it took me years to forgive my own parents and they care. Once I get resentment in my heart I don’t care how much I care about you or love you I will harm you. I will make sure you go insane slowly and surely with more hurt you place upon my shoulder.

I sometimes do think I made my parents life a living hell for a few years. On the daily I used to make them count all the horrible things they have done. Each and every day and it went on for years. I am a little cracked in that department. I hold on too tight and no one can make me let go of it. I will end up hurting you again and again and again for years before I actually get the proof you are no longer a threat to my mental health and you are no longer selfish.

I have handled way too much in my life but disrespect and selfish behavior is one thing I can no longer tolerate and the fact I did try to tolerate it just because I needed answers is so damn crazy to me.

The fact it even induced flashbacks/nightmares from my past. It’s so fucked up that I was trying to look for some kind of clarity. Some kind of closure and honest to god I still want it because I really want to know and I do not know how to stop my overthinking. I genuinely do not know. It’s almost like somebody has power to my mind and I do not like it or the person. I am officially at my breaking point and hate the guts of the person. HOW LOW CAN ONE STOOP?

What did I ever do to deserve this? I want the answers so badly. I need clarity. It’s not a want it’s a need and I want it on text. So I can remember and put things together. I just want that. 6 Fucking months.

Just to get my answers. I got so involved that I actually tried to chase a dude I knew was emotionally unavailable. I even tried to befriend. I literally reached my limit. I have always been in it for the answers. The fact I have to make peace with the fact I might not get them until maybe years later sucksssss. I dunno from where to where I went but this is just me ranting it all out and taking all of my frustration out and reminding myself. I will keep reminding myself of the hurt and the pain we went through just so we don’t repeat the cycle ever again with someone else.

This was an experience but never again. The fact I got so involved that I had even started to give life advice lmao. We could have been awesome ass friends. It’s shitty how it had to come to this point that now I actually hate him and don’t ever even by mistake want to cross paths with him, don’t want to see his face or anything.

Not even the online presences I don’t even want that in my life. I just want freedom from this pain. It’s way too painful. I have went through way too much bullshit that I didn’t even deserve and I have never stooped so low for anyone. I genuinely feel like I betrayed myself aging and again and again on repeat just for the tiny clarity.

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burnouts3s3 · 5 years

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Anthem, a review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Bioware Platform Required: Origin Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 59.99 USD How much I paid: 14.99 USD for Origin Premiere Access, a subscription service for Electronic Arts Rated: Not Rated as of the writing of this review. Can I play offline: No. Anthem requires a constant online connection to play. Controller Support: Yes. It was compatible with my Rock-Candy Xbox 360 controller. Keyboard and Mouse controls are also available. How long I played: 16 Hours to complete the main story mode on Easy mode while watching the (skippable) cutscenes. Microtransactions: An in-game Store to purchase skins, individual paint jobs or emotes for various Javelins, suits in the game. Purchases can cost up to 20 USD. What I played on: My PC. Performance Issues: I would use many words to describe Anthem, but "optimized" is not one of them. With V-Sync turned on, the Framerate dips wildly between 30-60 FPS. Several instances of clipping and pop-in textures. 3 Game crashes requiring me to restart the game. One instance of the game not loading the forge yet and me walking into the bottom pit while the forge spawed up ahead and I got stuck so I had to reset the game. But hey, the facial animations are pretty passable this time around. My Personal Biases: I am a Biodrone/Bioware apologist. I’ve played every Bioware game since Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. However, I’ve been having doubts on the company since the buggy release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. My Verdict: Less like a complete game and more like a prologue to hook early adopters in, Anthem feels like the first time in a long time that doesn't have Bioware's roleplaying there. With no romance options, very few conversations with side characters with limited choices and a ho-hum story, Anthem feels sorely lacking in several areas. Wait until Bioware puts in more content and a price cut before picking this one up. Anthem, a review

And so it's finally here. After years of Development, Bioware finally releases its new IP: Anthem. After the critical and financial flop that was Mass Effect: Andromeda from even hardcore Bioware fans, will the developer be able to get back into the good graces of their fanbase? Let's find out. This is a review of "Anthem". You are a Freelancer. Riding around in your mechanical jet suit, a Javelin, you adventure outside the world collecting artifacts of, what else, the remains of an ancient and mysterious race of creators that shaped the world through the Anthem. Alongside your friends, a veteran Javelin pilot Haluk and a Cypher (psychics who can listen and understand the Anthem), Faye, you adventure into the Heart of Rage, a dangerous location where even the most hardened of veterans fall. But when the expedition goes horribly wrong and most of the other Freelancers have been killed, you pull Haluk out of the Heart of Rage and retreat to Fort Tarsis. While I can safely say that Anthem isn't nearly the disaster Mass Effect: Andromeda was, it leaves a lot to be desired. It's less of a full game than it is a prologue to something else. Then again, in the age of the ongoing dumpster fire that is Fallout 76, I suppose a less than optimized game isn't nearly as terrible as a continuing PR disaster. Two years pass and you are finding any sort of work given to you. People have begun to lose faith in Freelancers and you and your new friend, Owen, try to make ends meet. However, Tassyn, an informant from the Capital, comes with you with a job offer. However, as you continue your adventure, you meet up with the enemy faction, the Dominion (those who believe they can control the Anthem and reshape the world) as well as its bloodthirsty leader, Monitor. In order to defeat the Monitor, you'll have to reunite with your estranged friends, Haluk and Faye, improve your Javelin, pass trials and re-enter the Heart of Rage. Can you finish the mission you ran away from two years ago? Anthem is a third-person shooter in which you complete quests to earn gear. As you level up and do more difficult missions, you'll receive better gear. This is where Anthem shines: the level of customizing your Javeline is immense and there's a lot of room for originality. There are 4 classes of Javelins: the Ranger, an all-around, versatile mech, the Interceptor, a light mech focusing on Melee attacks, the Storm, a mage type class that can fire elemental attacks and the Colossus, the tank class capable of soaking up damage. While each of the 4 Javelins can equip any weapon, specific Javelins are limited to certain parts. You'll gather and accumliate parts and salvage the parts to get components. You can use components to craft new parts ranging from Common to Uncommon to Rare to Legendary. If you earn a blueprint, you can craft some Legendary gear. Earning items can be done by playing story missions, doing side-quests, participating in Strongholds (this game's version of Dungeons) or going into Freeplay, an open world element in which you fly around the vast world and look for 'World Events' random missions that have specific objectives and reward a treasure chest full of loot. Flying around in the mech is a highlight. Being able to soar through the air and water while watching for overheating is probably the best we'll get to an Iron Man experience. Combat and mission objectives aren't quite as compelling. It's mostly doing the same thing over and over again: defeat waves of enemies, collect echos or fragments, wait until the Signal is decrypted, etc. And while the Javelins have different playstyles, abilities and Ultimate attacks, it does little to change defeating wave after wave of enemies for the umpteeth time. While Customizing your Javelin is vast, customizing your player avatar is sorely lacking. There's no character creator as the game only gives you preset faces to pick from. Worst yet, the majority of the game while in Fort Tarsis is set in first-person, meaning you'll almost never see your character for the majority of the game. The lack of roleplaying bleeds out into Fort Tarsis. Frankly, compared to the vast world to explore in Anthem, Fort Tarsis is claustrophobic. It makes Dragon Age 2's Kirkwall seem big by comparison. There's very little to explore and not helping matters is the snail's pace you're forced to walk while traveling around it. For Tarsis is filled up with NPC's in which you can have conversations. To advance certain conversations, you'll either have to do missions or enter freeplay. Unfortunately, your dialogue options are VERY limited. The infamous Bioware Dialogue Wheel is nowhere to be found and you'll be left with two choices to respond. Not helping matters is that most of these conversations go nowhere and do very little to define your character. (Though there are some exceptions. For example, I liked listening to Zoe talk about her son and why her motherly instincts lead her to take extra care of Javelins or helping an old woman who confuses you for her dead child). While the results may differ depending on what choices you choose, all the major stuff is being done off-screen. It's one thing to have a veteran Javelin pilot reminisce about the old days but when other characters are having adventures and bringing you up to speed on taking your advice, you can't help but feel a disconnect. The main story doesn't really help either. You don't even get to pick dialogue choices at all and you watch as your Player Character does all the acting. It truly feels like the first time the game is on-rails and you're not voicing any input at all on how to react. Worst yet, certain points in the main questline FORCES you to do tedious grinding to advance. When Faye asks you to do trials, they can only be accomplished by doing in-game achievements (i.e. Kill X enemies with a Melee Attack or Revive X players). It feels needlessly tedious and only bogs the game down. This is (and I'm speculating here) only there to extend the playtime so that gamers who payed for the 10 hour trial do not blitz through the main storyline.

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After that, you need to craft the Dawn Sheild and must help either Matthias, an Archanist who might be seeing triple or Sentinel Dax, a princess turned guard who's recklessness might get you killed, in order to do so. Worst yet, even after helping one of them, the game insists you help the other one to lower the crafting cost of the shield. The main questline is short and full of cliches. Not helping matters is that the Monitor is a completely generic big bad with no real personality and idiotic reasons for wanting to access the Anthem. I know Bioware is hardly the arbiter of original characters, but the Monitor is woefully lacking after the specific threats that were Mass Effect's Saren and Dragon Age's Loghain. And after it's done, the game 'teases' you with an after-credits scene that only exists so that Bioware can state "Don't worry; we have more content coming soon". Even after you complete the story and unlock the two other Strongholds, there's a woeful lack of content. You can repeat missions and do quests on higher difficulty levels to gain better gear, but it quickly becomes repetitive. Who is the audience for this game? In a world where Warframe is free to play, Borderlands 2 has a healthy player population and Destiny 2 has had its price cut, Anthem feels like a latecomer to the genre. But, even loyal Bioware fans (i.e. the people who bought Mass Effect: Andromeda on the first day and still defend said purchase), aren’t feeling this game. In fact, one of the Youtube creators I follow quit the game after he received a bug in which after unlocking his second Javelin, he was unable to access the account.

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Why would Bioware change its formula now? And it's not as if Anthem is a priority for Electronic Arts, either. With Apex Legends continuing to dominate Twitch ratings and Playerbase, Anthem will probably be pushed to the sidelines. The game requires constant online connection and has an in-game store. Fortunately, said microtransactions are purely cosmetic and do not feature loot boxes plaguing the industry. And while it isn't as rediculous and allows you, the player, to buy the items with in-game currency, it's still a bad precedent. But I could even forgive the game as a service model as long as I got to roleplay. For example, (and I’m aware this is a very subjective opinion that is not shared by other people), I really like Star Wars: The Old Republic. Even though many gamers criticized the game of being a World of Warcraft rip-off (and rightly so, I might add), there was a sense of roleplaying and seeing my character on screen. Plus, it was cool seeing how different the class stories differed from one another. I could tell you how my Twi'lek smuggler who romanced Akaavi differed from my Pureblood Sith Inquistor who romanced Ashara. If you asked me what differentiated my Male Javelin Pilot from my Female one, I couldn't possibly tell you. (I suspect that the game will inevitably follow the footsteps of Star Wars: The Old Republic, go free to play when the playerbase dwindles while walling off things such as Strongholds for subscribers). And it's very telling how developers and animators were pulled from Mass Effect: Andromeda to help work on Anthem. CAVEAT: As a developer, Bioware has always put things like inclusion and diversity first and foremost, even at the cost of things such as quality assurance or facial animations. "Strong Alone, Stronger Together," says Haluk. And for a lot of consumers, myself included, they feel conflicted on criticizing something they view as a positive force for the games industry. But whatever the consumer is, whomever they love, whatever the color of their skin or what they identify themselves as, Electronic Arts is pulling out scummy tactics to milk them out of their money. There’s still an ongoing debate of where things like representation, inclusion, exclusion, diversity and egalitarianism have in the industry. But wherever you find yourself on the culture war, the one thing we can agree on is that the last thing required are for giant publishers co-opting those social issues in order to scam its customers out of their money. Verdict: Wait for a sale or Rental.

#bioware #ea #Electronic Arts #origin #freelancer #haluk #faye #owen #tassyn #dominion #sentinel #dax #matthias #colossus #interceptor #storm #ranger

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topicprinter · 6 years

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Yesterday my friend and I were chatting, he’s the founder of an article writing company and he’s been publishing a lot of new blog content - but failing to see the lift and traffic that he (and everyone else!) desires.After chatting with him and looking at his blog, I immediately realized that he was making a common blogging mistake and that adding just a few potential methods could drive a lot more traffic to his blog.At the core, he was spending a lot of time publishing content, but not enough time promoting it.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Let me give you some context:I am the founder of a non-traditional PR agency that takes a digital perspective on gaining exposure for startups, entrepreneurs, founders, and other small businesses.I have worked with a multitude of clients from different industries and have helped them to drive more traffic to their site ---> by approaching PR with a blend of SEO and Content Marketing skill sets.Not only have we had clients placed in multiple top tier publications like Forbes, Inc., etc - but we have also leveraged our strategies to take dusty ol’ blogs and put a serious 250% increase in traffic behind them.I say this not to brag. All that to say, I’ve been around the block when it comes to driving traffic to blogs and websites.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The BIG Mistake That Most Blogs MakeDuring my time, I’ve found that BY FAR the biggest mistake people make is that they focus all their efforts on creating content and practically zero efforts to promote it and drive traffic back to the blog.People that succeed with their blogs do two things very well:1, Publish quality contentANDPromote it in effective waysI’m sure you heard it a million times that you need quality content ---> I don’t need to tell you that again.Let’s focus on the promotion aspect which is what most people miss or straight up ignore.So how then do you promote?Here is a brief overview of a few general strategies that I recommend - and one actionable tip for each strategy!There’s a million ways to do this - but for the sake of brevity...Here are a few actionable tips/strategies that will help you drive traffic to your blog:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Find out where your target persona is and engage there!“If you want to find a seagull, go to the beach shore” that is a wise tip from WordstreamThere are dozens of ways to identify and interact with your target audience but here’s one actionable example you can start with today.Step 1: Sign up for Quora and fill out your profile extensively (include your title and link to blog)Step 2: Choose a blog post to link to in your answerThe best type of blog posts are ones that are highly actionable and comprehensive in your given field.Step 3: Find a recent or high volume questionsFollow topics relevant to your industry in the search bar and quora will populate recent questions under the “write” bar.Step 4: Answer Question with helpful advice and link back to your blog postThe principle is to be straightforward with your answers and to provide lots of value through highly practical suggestions.Include the link to your blog in a subtle fashion and not in a promotional way.This will generate traffic to your blog through the link and through your profile.That’s just one example amongst many for targeting a community.Some other tactics you can consider:Find a directly industry related platform and interact there (DeviantArt for Art subculture, Activerain for real estate…etc.)Consider Facebook groups or LinkedIn groupsDive into relevant social platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and more)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Leverage Influencer MarketingThere’s a beauty company called Ipsy Studios that leveraged Michelle Phan’s audience (she owns a ridiculously successful beauty vlog/ youtube channel) directing her followers to purchase their $10 glam bags.This helped the company grow to 1.5 million monthly subscribers with an $800 million dollar valuation.Insanely smart growth hack for any beauty company considering that Michelle Phan has over 18 million monthly views on her videos.You don’t need to collaborate with an influencer on that scale for your blog, but there are influencers out there that fit within your niche and your spend.Here’s one way you can reach out to those influencers:Step 1: Use Buzzsumo to search for Influencers.Buzzsumo offers a free trial. Use their tool and input in the search bar terms relevant to your industry and Buzzsumo will populate suggested Influencers. It will also show the reach of the influencer so you can decide if that level of influence suits your campaign strategy.Step 2: Build a relationship with the influencerSubscribe to their blog, follow them, comment and like on their content, share their content, tell the influencer if they have any errors.Step 3: Send a soft pitch emailAn example of an email may have wording such as “knowing you love writing about [insert topic], I thought I’d show you a topic I’ve also written.”Or if you’re willing to put some skin in the game, you can work out a lump sum or commission basis for each post or conversion that the influencer references you in!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. Use Guest Posting to your advantageGuest posting is near and dear to my heart because this was my bread and butter building my blog, accounting for a majority of my traffic increases.So what is a guest post?Simply put, a guest post is an article written and submitted to a publication by someone who is normal contributor to that website.You can include a link to your website within the post, and that ready-made audience will enjoy your post and click through to learn more about you.This is a great way to leverage an existing audience on an authority site and point people back towards your blog.Here’s an example of how I would approach acquiring a guest post:Step 1: Find Guest Post targetsThere are different type of publications that accept guest posts such as niche blogs, company blogs, industry specific publications, mainstream publications… the list goes on.One of my favorite tip is to insert your primary competitor in to the tool Ahrefs and it’ll show you a list of backlinks and where they have published their guest posts.Step 2: Get Your Guest Post readyYou don’t need to have your Guest post written at this point.One good way to discover a new topic that people care about is to go on Udemy and see which courses are more popular in your industry. Since people are paying for the course you have proof of demand!Step 3: Send Your PitchThis is the hardest part.My personal outreach approach is to build relationships with an individual in the publications. This means following their content. Asking quora questions that reference the other writer’s work. Sharing their work on social media.Once you’ve warmed up the relationship, then you can send your pitch. Some example wording: “I’ve noticed you haven’t written about [insert topic], I’ve recently conducted a 30 day experiment and I think this would be a perfect place to publish it.”Step 4: Write your guest postFocus on delivering VALUE in your guest post. Self promotion shouldn’t be the focus.Have highly actionable advice in your post as practicality is a consistent theme of top shelf content online.When inserting the link, put a link to your website in your author bio, or include the link as a relevant article within the post.That was a high level snapshot of my strategy. There’s a lot more intricacies that can generate you guest posts almost anywhere. I wrote a comprehensive step by step guide to guest posting, feel free to DM me if you'd like me to share it with you.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. Convert your blog into Infographs and post on Pinterest!People are very visual and love seeing a simple, visual summary of your content.Say you publish a new blog post such as “5 ways to start saving money today”, take a few minutes to take those 5 steps and build it into an infograph.This takes little time and can generate extra traffic.Here’s how you create and share your infograph:Step 1: Use a tool like PiktochartYou don’t need to have a design background to use these simple tools. Summarize the main points on your blog and add some icons.Make it look nice by keeping consistent with your brand colours.Step 2: Post it on PinterestGive a caption that explains why your content is useful. Include your brand name and a link back to your blog!------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. Become an author of a E-booksNeil Patel’s first tip to increase your blog traffic was to publish an e-book on Kindle Select.Self published books now represent 31% of all e-book sales in the Amazon kindle store.Link back to your blog in your e-book and that will generate some additional traffic.Step 1: Compile your content through your blog and other content and consolidate it into an e-book.I know it sounds daunting to be an author but don’t under value your content. You are an expert in your field. It just takes some repackaging of your content and knowledge.Step 2: Include a link to your website blog or newsletter in the bookPlace the link in the e-book. A call to actions may look like this “You can download the free report by going here” or “If you’d like to learn more tips on [insert topic], we have a free newsletter you can sign up for here, where we send exclusive tips on [insert topic].”Step 3: Publish the e-book on the Kindle Direct Publishing Select ProgramIsn’t it wonderful that we’re in the age where don’t need to connect with a publisher printing thousands of hard copies?Run a free promotion for the first 90 days so that the readers can read it for free to gain traction.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I hope this was of value to some of you. Starting a blog and growing it through outreach is no walk in the park but it is well worth the investment!I will be tracking my friend’s journey on their blog and recording our progress as we go! Feel free to DM me if you want to be updated on the progress.Stay tuned for more posts :)

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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perfectirishgifts · 3 years

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Netflix Rolls Out Playback Speed Control—So Who’s The Real Director During Our Ambient TV Era?

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/netflix-rolls-out-playback-speed-control-so-whos-the-real-director-during-our-ambient-tv-era/

Netflix Rolls Out Playback Speed Control—So Who’s The Real Director During Our Ambient TV Era?

The company is letting viewers go warp speed

This past summer it was reported Netflix NFLX was experimenting with the ability to control the playback of any show or film— from 0.5x slower to 1.5x faster.

While the feature was primarily tested on Android mobile devices, the feature is now being spotted on desktops across the country.

The creative community has been pushing back since the rumors. Judd Apatow, an outspoken critic, replied to the early headlines, ”Distributors don’t get to change the way the content is presented. Doing so is a breaking of trust and won’t be tolerated by the people who provide it.” He added, “Don’t make me have to call every director and show creator on Earth to fight you on this. Save me the time.”

Aaron Paul also joined early, “There is NO WAY Netflix will move forward with this. That would mean they are completely taking control of everyone else’s art and destroying it. Netflix is far better than that. Am I right Netflix?…I love Netflix. Always have. Always will. This simply can not be true.”

It is.

Paul’s tweet is now unavailable and close to 195,000,000 Netflix subscribers will soon be getting a taste of this control.

In a previous statement from Netflix, Keela Robison, VP of Product Innovation, justified the test, “It’s a feature that has long been available on DVD players – and has been frequently requested by our members. For example, people looking to rewatch their favorite scene or wanting to go slower because it’s a foreign language title.”

The context of controlling speed on a DVD player is different than our present moment. Culture changes. We’re in a market landscape where Netflix infamously “competes with sleep” in addition to now HBO, Hulu, Apple and Disney. This is about being able to better understand a foreign film as much as it’s about crunching more consumption numbers for shareholders. “Are you still there?”

How do you increase viewership metrics quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year? Approaching the equation by attempting to increase subscribers is myopic. Saturation is tough. You also can’t increase the time frame for people to watch Netflix, there are only so many hours in the day. But what you can do, and what Netflix has done, is shrink the content to fit more of it within subscribers’ existing time frames. Same timespan each night, but more content watched… all without growing subscription numbers. Brilliant… for the stock.

Netflix is signaling: Consumption volume is prioritized over artistic intent. What’s disturbing yet unsurprising is that we’ve mistaken the figure for the ground. Where metrics were once leveraged to understand the resonance of a piece of work, we’re now solely optimizing for the metrics themselves, forgetting why we’re here. We’re undermining the material for stats. Have we really experienced the work, or have we merely seen it?

For Team Human, author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff shares, “Any art that asks its viewers to slow down or, worse, pause and reflect is hurting a market that depends on automatic and accelerating behaviors.” Netflix doesn’t want to play in the slow and ambiguous space. However for the creatives, it’s the deal with the devil.

This figure-ground reversal is what Apatow and Paul are concerned about. The distributor, Netflix, now controls the priority: numbers over art. This means Netflix also controls the watch experience—or at least empowers viewers to control their own watch experience, different than that of what was intended. Fairly, who are we to make such directorial decisions over Apatow, the creator? If he wanted a shorter film, his editors would have done so. And as any fan knows, that’s not what Apatow wants.

The trigger for all is that we’re beginning to widely remix an established and sacred medium: film. The chaotic spirit of TikTok is getting mapped onto the nearly 100-year-old Motion Picture Association. Or better yet, YouTube’s existing playback controls can now be applied to a Best Picture.

This is 2020—power dynamics are changing. The crowd now determines if Sonic the Hedgehog gets re-animated, or which actors get canceled. Further, with the pandemic, films like Wonder Woman 1984 are bypassing bottleneck theaters and hitting laptops first. In this relationship, it means Sam gets to decide how they want to view the blockbuster: on their iPhone or at 1.5x the speed. After all, they are the one paying. No one needs to flash their B.A. in Cinematic Arts from USC to sign up for Netflix.

Defenders of the feature flaunt the benefits for the deaf and blind community, in addition to many others requiring such accessibility options. Longer time to read subtitles, or quickened audio for those who can’t see well, allows freedom. It’s applaudable and overdue. But can this truly be the fundamental motivator? Netflix wouldn’t have first tested on Android, but first fostered a PR-worthy partnership with the American Council of the Blind. Or at least that’s how they should have framed it.

This feature also signals what television’s role is in the zeitgeist. Markets once proclaimed the arrival of “Second Screen Viewing”, where phone screens accompanied the big screen and acted as the outlet for Tweet reactions and live group chats. However, there’s been another reversal. The TV is now the second screen. The real attention is on the phone: TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube is the foreground. Netflix’s Emily In Paris, dubbed Ambient TV, runs in the background. Many approach their Netflix shows as they would a digital Yule Log, a calming stream of colors and sounds to fill the void.

“At its core, Ambient TV is about modulating our split attention,” says Sean Monahan, founder of the new trend consultancy 8Ball formerly of K-HOLE. “Speeding up certain content for focused turbo-ingestion or lowering the complexity of plot so it can be more ambient background noise are two sides of the same coin. Split attention isn’t only a workplace problem. We also multitask while we consume entertainment.”

Our debate shouldn’t be about the speed and length of an Apatow film, but what Ambient TV and a speed feature symbolizes: our content glut, and how we can’t seem to escape it. Every nook and cranny is filled with content. We multiply our screens to get through.

Entertainment—or even better, art—is now framed as a task to complete hastily, defeating its primary purpose: timeless escape. Our watchlists have become Sisyphean. There is no progress. Yet there’s still a mirage of completion. Our new 1.5x speed can get us there. Or so we hope.

What we need is a movement, a figure or organization, to declare: we don’t need to watch, read or listen to it all. This is that early and modest rallying call.

We are suffocating in content, all competing for our attention—family, friends and co-workers meanwhile attempt to prioritize the list on our behalf, only making it worse. Completed content has become our all-access social pass. Your opportunities for conversation accumulate as hours slept shrink.

But are we watching because we want to or because we feel compelled to?

If we’re watching at 1.5x speed, missing nuance and timing all while disrespecting the creator, perhaps we truly don’t want to. And that’s okay.

From Media in Perfectirishgifts

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cafezimmermann · 5 years

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The Image

(Moscow, 1995 – me (right) in front of the dormitory of the Moscow Conservatory)

“We might say now that chewing gum is the television of the mouth. There is no danger so long as we do not think that by chewing gum we are getting nourishment. But the Graphic Revolution has offered us the means of making all experience a form of mental chewing gum, which can be continually sweetened to give us the illusion that we are being nourished.”

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image

Last Tuesday, after a meeting in Berlin with the director of a PR agency, I found myself standing on a train platform next to two American men who were probably in their mid-30s. Americans seem to pop up everywhere these days in Berlin, and it was impossible for me not to listen to their conversation. "Hey Dave," said the one to the other, "Did you see Comedy Central last night?" He then took out his iPhone, pulled up the video from YouTube, and held his phone under Dave's face so that Dave (and everyone else in their vicinity) could hear what turned out to be the opening monologue of Trevor Noah. The two chuckled along, happy to be in their world and oblivious to the dour faces of the Berliners looking at them for being so obnoxiously loud.

It was a fairly innocuous moment, one that you will encounter anywhere these days, but for some reason it made me stop in my tracks. The irony of turning 50 this past year is not only the realization that I have been on this planet longer than I wish to admit but the memory that there was a time in my not-too-distant past where such a moment would have been impossible.

Not that I wouldn't have done the same as Dave and his friend. As an expat living in Europe for nearly three decades, I too have embraced digital technology over the past years to reconnect with America – downloading ebooks, signing up for a digital subscription to the New York Times, enrolling in online writing programs, Skyping with my parents, signing up to a VPN provider to watch YouTube without the proprietary restrictions, and maintaining the entire experience with a high-speed Internet provider so that this “nonstop virtuality” doesn't come to a crashing halt.

I have been grateful for this digital lifeline. Nowadays, one doesn’t need to be home to “be home.” And yet, I often find myself thinking back to my stone-age past, wondering how I survived back then and wondering if Dave and his friend would have fared so well had they not had their iPhones at their side all of the time. Not to say that "things were better back then" for me, far from it. When I was a student in Basel, pretty much all I had access to (apart from a limited supply of books, which were expensive) was the BBC on shortwave radio and the occasional copy of The Herald Tribune from the newsstand (again, too expensive). But I do wonder if this lack of virtual access to America 24/7 allowed me to experience life differently, and perhaps more intensively. Would I have taken so many evening walks along the Rhine? Would I have spent so much time in the art gallery, standing hours on end riveted in front of Hans Holbein's Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb while thinking about how Dostoyevsky used it in his novel The Idiot? Would I have written so many entries into my diary with a leaky copperplate fountain pen, lost in my thoughts, happy of the smudges of ink on my fingertips? Would I have made an effort to copy out Stephan Zweig’s Schachnovelle by hand to improve my German? And whenever I think about that, I am taken aback at how much of a limb I was going out on when I came over to Europe in 1990. Communication, in the modern sense, was practically non-existent back then. I had no laptop, obviously. The Internet meant nothing to me and placing a call to the States was horrendously expensive. I was effectively cut off from the world as I knew it, living as a self-imposed castaway in a Loony Tunes land of Swiss German.

But somehow, I did survive. And I had memorable experiences – experiences which I think made me the person I am today. A case in point: back in 1995, I was invited by a Russian recorder player to perform at the Moscow Conservatory together with a trio I had formed with two fellow students of mine at the Schola in Basel. Without getting into the specific (and sometimes embarrassing) details of the trip, it was one of those moments in life where I found myself at the mercy of my keepers – specifically the interpreter, who in turn was nothing more than the mediator of a half-baked, badly-organized project that stumbled from one mishap to another in a country teetering on the verge of anarchy. Sadly, her English was all but useless, but she was pretty and seemed more than willing to take us everywhere (we visited the Lenin Mausoleum, the inside of the Kremlin, and several bars) and answer all of our questions before she passed out on a couch at a party the night before we were supposed to fly back to Switzerland. How we got back to the dormitory remains a mystery – somehow, at 2:30 in the morning, we managed to hitch a ride back in a car that had driven by the apartment where we left the party.

Rachmaninov Hall - Moscow Conservatory

Fast forward to 2014, when I returned to Moscow for 48 hours with Akamus. Rather than a pretty interpreter at our disposal, we had a young, well-educated man who had attended high school in Alabama for a year and was fluent in English. When I asked him how far it was to the conservatory from the hotel, he located it on my smartphone and dropped a pin before I set off in the direction he told me to go. I walked to the conservatory with ease, navigating my way through the side streets using the ubiquitous blue dot found on Google Maps, trying to find my past self in a transformed society.

That blue dot, apart from being an indicator that we are being tracked all of the time, seems paradoxically symbolic of what our lives have turned into over the past twenty years. It allows us to orient ourselves without the necessity of taking in our surroundings in full, which in turn effectively pulls us away from the possibility of "getting lost" and experiencing auratic moments. Not that I minded when I was in Moscow five years ago – I didn't have the time or the muse for a repeat performance of what I had gone through in 1995. But the juxtaposition in my mind of past and present – not only to see just how much Moscow had changed over the past two decades but also to see how I was seeing the city now against how I had experienced it back then – struck me as odd. Granted, I was seeing more on my own and risking more than I probably would have had I been left to my own devices twenty years earlier. But I noticed that I was experiencing less, that what I saw was something that was being filtered through “the screen.”

This idea of "more but less," which the American historian Daniel Boorstin refers to in his book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, is a point that keeps on popping up in my mind. And to be honest I don't know which is better – experiencing less, but with greater intensity, or getting a taste of everything without the memorable experience. For example, I have pictures of the 2014 trip stored on an external hard drive, which – like the hundreds of other digital pictures stored safely away in the 1TB plastic box, I look at now and then. But they don't evoke half the memories I get whenever I see the few pictures that my colleague took of us with her camera.

Boorstin, who was responsible for coining the term “pseudo-event,” was far ahead of his time when he wrote the book in 1962. He writes about how the propagation of images in media has succeeded at altering our sense of reality, creating an alternative world that not only do we compare ourselves against, but use for “reshaping our concept of truth”:

“More and more accustomed to testing reality by the image, we will find it hard to retain ourselves so we may once again test the image by reality. It becomes ever harder to moderate our expectations, to shape expectations after experience, and not vice versa. For too long already we have had the specious power to shape “reality.” How can we rediscover the world of the uncontrived?”

It is a disturbing thought, particularly if one thinks to how much modern society has grown used to buying into the world of illusion on a daily basis to achieve a sense of belonging. Boorstin, who died in 2004, was able to foresee what was coming, but I think even he would have been aghast to see how quickly the epidemic has spread in the last decade, and how readily we have given up our privacy for the privilege of taking part in that illusion.

We know full well that companies such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify are tracking us, taking the information gained from our online activities and targeting it to manipulate everything from our purchasing habits to our political opinions. And we know the consequences of this – not merely through the erosion of democracy in the past several years, but, perhaps even more frighteningly, the erosion of a certain “quality of life” – the mere ability to think for ourselves, be creative, read, and engage in deep and meaningful conversations with each other. Instead, we (like the information we provide to such companies) have become nothing more than a “disposable commodity.” And if you really want to carry that thought one step further, could not one argue that the ultimate aim of “deepfake” technology, which is being used these days to get the better of our core values as a society by blurring the line between fact and fiction, isn’t all that much different from the approach taken by the Tyrell Corporation in Ridley Schott’s 1982 science fiction film Blade Runner? In the film’s futuristic world of 2019, "replicants" - the slaves of the film's dystopian society – were implanted by the corporation with false memories to create "a cushion or pillow for their emotions." Indeed, we may not be replicants at birth, and our memories may be ours – but could it that the barrage of information, misinformation, and desire is now weaning a generation who, in the future, will be even less resistant to the difference between fact and fiction?

“There is no cure for illusions. There is only the opportunity for discovery.”

If there were a credo for finding our way through the 21st century, it should be this. Maybe it is time for us to think about the second half of Boorstin's sentence and consider what we are missing by not taking the chance to discover life on our terms. The New York Times recently published an article titled "In Search of Lost Screen Time": "More than three-quarters of all Americans own a smartphone. In 2018 those 253 million Americans spent $1,380 and 1,460 hours on their smartphone and other mobile devices. That’s 91 walking days; that adds up to 370 billing waking American hours and $349 billion." The alternatives presented in the op-ed article offer food for thought, so much so, that when I read the article I considered my own dependency for a moment and thought about all of the other things that I would like to do with the remaining years of my life – listen to music with the intensity I did as a teenager, read more, go to museums again, go for long walks. At any rate, what I don't want is to be hooked. And yet, the paradox of my own life is the realization that the laptop in my hand is my means of communication to the outside world. But still, I cannot let it get the better of me.

At this point, I see that it's 5:30 in the morning. The first light of the morning has cast the garden on the other side of my window in soft, pale greys, blues and yellows while the birds engage in their morning ritual of welcoming the day. And yet, I have been so wrapped up in writing this essay that I didn’t notice it. It’s time for me to close the laptop and start the day.

“We must awake before we can walk in the right direction. We must discover our illusions before we can even realize that we have been sleepwalking. The least and the most we can hope for is that each of us may penetrate the unknown jungle of images in which we live our daily lives. That we may discover anew where dreams end and where illusions begin. This is enough. Then we may know where we are, and each of us may decide for himself where he wants to go.”

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therealdanadistortion · 7 years

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HOW TO BECOME A MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHER

I get this question a lot, More than any other question.

The short answer, as Nike said: “Just do it.” ��I said it better: Just (fucking) do it!!

And now for the longer answer…

THE BEST CAMERA IS THE ONE YOU HAVE

To shoot shows, you will need a camera (anything other than an iPhone!) and maybe few lenses. I know that not everyone can afford a great camera right away. It’s okay to start with what you’ve got. The best camera is the one you have. Anything from a point-and-shoot to a cheap DSLR. And I’m a big believer in used cameras. If that’s all you can afford, go for it.

I started on a Nikon D60 and it’s one of that company’s cheapest DSLRs. I got it for free after collecting points from my credit card company. It served me very well and I shot a great portfolio with it in less than a year.

Another question I get a lot is: Canon or Nikon? Those are the two big players in the world of professional photography, and I honestly think it’s a matter of personal taste. Usually the brand you start with is what you’re gonna keep using, and I think you should know your playground before you go out there and play.

A good way to figure out what equipment you might like best is to rent. Rent different cameras— Canon, Nikon, whatever. And then rent different lenses and explore. Find what works for you. Cameras and lenses are fairly cheap to rent so it’s a good way to try out equipment without making a huge financial commitment.

From my own personal experience, I will say that Nikon has a faster focus motor, while Canon has more a rich and vivid color palette. All brands have their pros and cons, and a big part of photography is a developing your own style. The best way to do that is try out different options and see what you like. No one knows better than you.

I also think it’s true that using a cheap camera is like driving a stick shift. It’s harder, but it will make you a better photographer. If you can get nice clear images on a cheap camera, can you imagine what you will be able to get with a professional one?

LEARN HOW TO USE THE DAMN THING

When I just started I knew nothing about how to use a camera. Photography is both an art and a science, and knowing what you’re doing is a big plus. You don’t want the camera to control you, you want to control the camera. Since music photography is full of the unexpected—from the venue to the lighting to the movement—you really want to be ready for what might happen. Knowing your equipment will help you be ready.

If you can afford to take photography classes, go ahead—but it’s not a must. The Internet is the beginning photographer’s best friend, and there is a YouTube tutorial on almost any photography topic you can imagine. Read about photography, watch videos, ask questions, and most important—practice, practice, practice. The best knowledge comes with experience. Just grab your camera and shoot your little heart out.

I always recommend avoiding the automatic settings on a camera. There is no reason to use automatic settings if you are planning to become a professional photographer (and yes, aperture and shutter priority ARE automatic settings). If you won’t learn how to use manual settings, you will always stay in the same place with your photography. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, that is how you learn. It took many black frames for me to know what I was doing, but eventually I got the hang of it and I can’t even describe the satisfaction I felt when I realized I finally knew how to use the damn thing!

If you want full control of your images, don’t be afraid to switch your dial to M. Now let’s see—do you have it in you???

OK, OK I GOT THE HANG OF IT…NOW HOW DO I GET INTO THAT PHOTO PIT?

Dream big, but start small. A good friend (a powerful person in the music industry) told me when I just started, “I’m not gonna help you, Dana. You need to start at the bottom and work your own way up.” As much as I hated this answer and rolled my eyes thinking, “Why can’t this bastard help me, dammit?” I now think it’s one of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten in my life. I’m not a patient person, but now that I have actually accomplished a thing or two with my work, I understand where he was coming from. This advice didn’t make me work hard—it made me work harder. If he had helped me back then I would probably not appreciate where I am now half as much I do.

So you have a decent camera, you’ve learned a thing or two about how to take pictures, so now how the hell do you get that precious photo pass? Well, you probably won’t…not when you’re just starting out. Space in the photo pit is very limited, so why would a band/PR company/magazine editor wanna issue a photo pass to you when you have nothing to show yet? Yes, that leads me to the next thing…..

DEVELOP YOUR STYLE

After taking photos for a while, you will develop your own style. Don’t try to shoot like your favorite photographer. Unless this person is dead they are probably still shooting, so why would you want to copy their style?

Photo editing is a huge part of a photographer’s style. I spend hours and hours editing my images. I love the contrast between shooting out in the crazy field and then sitting in my studio, relaxing and listening to music while editing my photos.

When using editing software, I don’t recommend using presets and please don’t go crazy with effects. Create your own look and style. Experiment and play with contrast, colors, and brushes. And just like with cameras and lenses, find what editing software works best for you.

I use Lightroom, as it’s easy to be organized (which is not a great quality of mine; I’m pretty messy). I also use Photoshop. These two programs work well together. Many of my fellow photographers use Adobe Bridge and Aperture. Don’t limit yourself. Watch online tutorials, read reviews, and ask yourself what is it that you’re looking for and need. Most editing software packages offer a free 14-day trial, so you can download and try before you buy.

BUILD A FANTASTIC PORTFOLIO

The best way to get yourself out there is to have a memorable and outstanding portfolio. Start shooting whatever/whenever you can. Your uncle’s band, that local band who really needs new photos for their Facebook page, a festive parade (it’s not music, but parades are colorful and full of unexpected movement). These are all great places to start building a photography portfolio.

As for bands and artists, buy tickets for the shows you wanna shoot. There are many venues that are not restricted about cameras, and the venues that do restrict them usually have a bag check. So even if you bring your camera and the venue won’t let you shoot, just check your camera and enjoy the show. You will learn which venues you can shoot in as you go.

Go to as many shows as you can. Get there early with all those fanatic fans, stand in line for hours, and get to the first row. I sometimes get better photos standing with the crowd than from the actual photo pit.

Remember, a camera is not a gun. No one will call the cops on you. If they catch you, they will ask you to stop shooting and put the camera away. In this case, be respectful (or go to the back of the room and continue shooting from there). I have been kicked out of several venues for shooting when I wasn’t supposed to. Hey, you gotta work hard and do crazy things to get your photos, so if you don’t have the balls for it find yourself something else to do!

The more you shoot, the better you get, the more you have for your portfolio. One great shot from each show is all you need when you’re starting, but you’re gonna feel amazing once you can choose from the many great shots you’ve taken.

When you have at least ten different photos of ten different artists that you are completely satisfied with, you have the beginnings of a portfolio. Later on, when you have more variety, your portfolio should be a combination of big names and great moments you’ve captured. You want to show energy, composition skill, and anything else that will make you stand out from other photographers. Be creative and try show as much variety as possible. Most likely when someone looks at your portfolio, they will look only at the first few shots, so these matter the most. Try to avoid using the same artist within the first twenty photos.

There are many free portfolio sites such as Zenfolio, Portfoliobox, and others. Choose a template and start uploading your work. Don’t be lazy, what are you waiting for?

THE MOMENT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

Now that you have decided you are serious and have the talent, you can start asking for “real” photo passes and shoot from the golden photo pit…that magical place all music photographers strive to get to. E-mail the bands and PR companies directly. Introduce yourself and your work and ask kindly to shoot the bands you like. If they don’t respond, don’t be afraid to follow up, but don’t nag. Annoying people are not welcome anywhere.

Usually press credentials are given to photographers shooting for specific outlets, but you never know, and how will you know if you don’t try?

When I first started, I heard Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth was playing a small venue in Brooklyn. I knew that Sonic Youth was playing Terminal 5, a bigger venue in the city, a few weeks later. I went down to the Brooklyn show and when I spotted Moore hanging out in the crowd I went up to him and with no shame introduced myself and said: “Thurston, I’m a huge fan of your band—is there any chance I can photograph your show at Terminal 5?” He said right away, “Of course, contact my manager and I’ll take care of it.” So that’s how one of the very first bands I shot was Sonic Youth. Not only that, but Thurston was kind enough to get me an “All Song” pass, so I shot the whole set AND I got to shoot the opener Dinosaur Jr. Double success! Sometimes you can’t leave things to chance. I say go ahead—get what you want.

GO GET ‘EM TIGER

Now that you’re photographing on a regular basis, it’s time to shop for a publication.

It took me about a year to create a decent portfolio. I used photos taken on my D60 and my point-and-shoot. Don’t rush it; you need to be ready before you approach a publication. Everything has its own pace and you will know and feel when you’re ready to work for someone other than yourself.

Now that you have work to show, it’s time to get professional and start sending your stuff out there. Get “real” access. E-mail the bands, PR companies, venues, and publications. Your ultimate goal as a music photographer is to regularly shoot on assignment for blogs and magazines. Do your research first—figure out which blogs/magazines you like best. Most likely they all have people who are already fighting for those photo passes, but if you have something new and fresh to offer (not to mention loads of talent), they might consider using your fabulous skills.

DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER

The competition is enormous. In the world of music photography, you constantly have to fight for your spot and prove yourself over and over again. Many of your e-mails will be ignored. Don’t take it personally, just keep trying.

For instance, I knew I wanted to shoot for BrooklynVegan.com. I was a reader and a big fan of this blog way before I even started shooting shows. I e-mailed the editor many times and was completely ignored until I had a set of photos I thought he might want to publish. I used my photos as an undeniable winning card and found my way into the blog. BrooklynVegan is still my number one publication for my photos. I love everything about that blog, and I’m very proud to be a regular contributor.

So to sum up: be respectful, but don’t take no for an answer. Let your talent speak for itself. Setting goals is always helpful. Knowing exactly what you want is an important first step. Now that you know the steps, go get ’em tiger!

NOW THAT YOU ARE AN OFFICIAL MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHER

A few last tips:

* Get a good health insurance! The pit and music venue can be a dangerous jungle.

* Be nice and respectful to your fellow photographers. Be aware if someone is behind you if you lift your camera. Look to both sides before you reposition yourself as you don’t want to shove your lens in someone else’s frame

* Be kind to the fans! I have made quite a few friends and met wonderful people talking to those awesome people in the front rows. Don’t forget—they waited a long time in line and spent good money to see their favorite artists. Introduce yourself, tell them about your website and what you do. They are the ones who are the most interested in your photos. And you never know who you will meet!

* Come early and shoot the opening bands. They need your coverage and it’s a great way to get introduced to new music. And it’s more than likely you’ll soon be shooting them as the headliners.

* Wear comfortable clothes and shoes. The photo pit is not a catwalk. You don’t want your hair in your face or sore feet after standing and waiting for the show (which can be hours if you’re shooting Lauryn Hill!)

* Have your business cards handy; you never know who will be standing next to you at a show.

* Don’t rant about the lighting. It is what it is. The show is not for you, it’s for the fans and the music is the most important thing. Some bands prefer red lights or playing in the dark. You can’t change it. Go with it. It is what it is.

* WORK OUT on a regular basis. Being a music photographer requires a lot of running around and carrying heavy equipment. Working out sure gets you in shape and keeps you going, especially at festivals where you will be running from stage to stage. I used to hate working out but once I started I can never go back! I work with a trainer and also do Soulcycle, which is a fun way of combining two of my favorite things: biking and great music. Now that I work out regularly, I lost weight and festivals are all of a sudden much easier. It’s healthy and you don’t take up as much space in the photo pit. How can you argue with that?

And the last and most important tip: LOVE WHAT YOU DO!

There is not much money in music photography, so if you don’t like music, why on earth are you doing this? Enjoy the music, enjoy the show! At the end of the day, music is the best thing about music photography.

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amtopmthoughts · 4 years

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FINN DOESN’T DIE

Finn Hudson

After returning from his short (stay at?) the Army he went backpacking through Georgia before he was ready to go back home (back) to Lima and face everyone. When he went to visit Rachel, the two of them eventually broke up. He went back to Lima and helped coach the Glee Club and eventually realised he wanted to become a (music) teacher. At Mr. Schue’s wedding he and Rachel slept together and got (even) closer after that. They got back together a few months after that and he moved to New York with Blaine and the four of them were/started living together. Enrolled in NYU in September of 2013.

After getting his teaching degree he got a job as a music teacher at a high school in New York and started his own Glee Club there.

Some years later he and Rachel bought a house in the suburbs outside New York.

Changes from the series:

Finn didn’t enrol in the University of Lima, when he realised he wanted to be a teacher, he applied to colleges in New York and started living with Rachel, Kurt and Blaine.

Rachel Berry

Changes from the series:

Rachel didn’t get the part in the Funny Girl play and never went to L.A.

Kurt Hummel

Changes from the series:

Blaine never proposed so they didn’t break up and they didn’t have a double wedding with Brittany and Santana either.

Blaine Anderson

Changes from the series:

Blaine didn’t propose so they never broke up and never dropped out of NYADA. Didn’t get married.

Quinn Fabray

Quinn leaves Lima after being accepted into Yale. She chooses a/to major in English Literature. Her plans after college are to work for a publishing company and maybe writing a book or two. She also sings in a jazz club/pub. Very dark and moody, where her “tremulous alto”, as Rachel once described her voice, fit perfectly.

Changes from the series:

She attended Brittany and Santana’s wedding.

Santana

Santana went to the University of Louisville already with her sights set in New York so it was likely/predictable that she would eventually drop out. So she did, a few months later/in. She wanted to be famous. Adrift for some time, not really sure of what she’d do next, she comes back to Lima, gets back with Brittany and eventually she proposes and the two of them get married. After the wedding, the two move to NY, along with Rachel, Kurt and Blaine and they get their own apartment. Finally, Santana decides to enrol in Parsons to study Fashion Design. Some years later, Santana Lopez is a world renown fashion designer, based in New York.

Brittany S. Pierce

After leaving MIT realising she didn’t like the life of a math genius, she returns to Lima. After getting married to Santana, they both move to NY to their own apartment. After 5 years growing, her famous internet talk show “Fondue for Two” gets more popular by the day and she eventually creates a youtube channel, starts doing podcasts and becomes a social media queen.

Mercedes Jones

Right after graduation, Mercedes was off to LA. The video Sam posted on youtube was a hit with over 2 million views and she got so much attention she eventually was offered a recording contract. Although things didn’t work out perfectly as she struggled to stay true to her values in the shady business that is the music industry, she eventually thrived, getting to open up for Beyoncé’s world tour. After the tour was over, she started working on her third album and it was such a sales success she went on a national tour of her own this time.

She also attended a couple classes at UCLA but eventually couldn’t keep up with her studies and recording an album. She eventually dropped out, she was already doing what she wanted and college isn’t for everybody, anyway.

Sam

After getting/arriving to/in New York and realising he didn’t belong there, he came back to Lima. As he said, New York is too fast, too loud. When he came back, Coach Beiste offered him a job as her assistant coach for the football team. After McKinley was turned into an arts school and Mr Schue was named Principal he chose him to teach the New Directions, one of the glee clubs of the new school. After a while he met one of the dance teachers, asked her out and they eventually started dating.

Artie Abrams

After NYU, Artie moves to LA because Hollywood is where movie magic happens. He starts making a few short films, pitching it to production companies and eventually succeeds. A few/some years later he starts making real movies and eventually wins an Oscar.

RACHEL

Broadway Actress NEW YORK

FINN HUDSON

Music Teacher NEW YORK

KURT HUMMEL

Fashion Editor in Chief NEW YORK

BLAINE ANDERSON

NEW YORK

QUINN FABRAY CONNECTICUT/LIMA/NEW YORK

Book publisher (and author)/Lawyer

NOAH PUCKERMAN

Air Force

SANTANA LOPEZ LA/LIMA/NEW YORK

Publicist/PR Agent, Executive

BRITTANY S. PIERCE LA/LIMA/NEW YORK

Social Media Queen

SAM EVANS LIMA

Glee Club “the New Directions” Director/Coach

ARTIE ABRAMS LA

Film Director

TINA COHEN-CHANG LA

TV/Movie Actress

MIKE CHANG CHICAGO

Dancer

MERCEDES LA

KIDS

FINN AND RACHEL:

Olivia/Charlotte "Charlie" (a lawyer)

Theo (a singer and piano player)?

Christopher

?, even though she did have a beautiful voice and knew how to place

KURT AND BLAINE:

Henry

Lily

SANTANA AND BRITTANY:

Lola

(Sofia)

QUINN AND PUCK:

(Beth)

Grace?

ARTIE AND TINA:

MERCEDES AND ROCK JESUS:

MIKE AND

SAM AND ALEX:

Archie

Ben

Lexi

WILL AND EMMA:

Danny

Ava

Charlotte "Charlie"

It was Friday night. She and Kurt were home binge watching Golden Girls and eating popcorn.

Another episode ended. “Well, that’s my cue. I’m going to bed, I’ve got to be up early tomorrow.”, Kurt said.

“Oh, yeah?”, Rachel asked.

“Isabelle is having an important early important and she said she wants me there.”

“Well, that’s a big deal.”

“Yeah, I’m excited. It feels good knowing she believes in me this much.”

“Of course she does, you’re amazing.”

Kurt and Rachel both reached for each others hands. “Well, I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow, love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Rachel was left alone in the living room with her thoughts. Lately she hadn’t been having time for a lot of that, lately. She was pretty busy with her NYADA schedules and then at home she was almost never alone. But whenever she was her thoughts were traced back to him. Finn. Every time she thought about

Helping with the Glee Club while Mr. Schue was gone really helped me see the light. I want to be a teacher. And hopefully be for other kids what Mr. Schue was for me. A role model. Someone I could look up to.

“All these years people telling me I should be a leader and more often than not that actually worked. In some way, I did lead the Glee Club/New Directions. For some reason, they all trusted me so maybe this is what I should be doing. What Mr. Schue did for us. Teach. He taught us good music and to better people. I want that, I want to be (a part of) that, too.”

“Finn, I think that’s perfect.”

“I think so, too. It feels right.”

“Mr. Schue, can I have a word with you?”

“Of course, what’s up?”

“You know how most of the Glee Club wanted to be artists? Like Rachel and Broadway, Mercedes wanting to be a Pop Diva… Being here and falling in love with music and singing and my almost career in football being a total fail/flop, it kind of made me think that’s what I should be doing/wanted to do. Being on a stage, performing. But (for some reason) it didn’t feel right, going to New York, to the Actors’ Studio, even attending some of Rachel’s classes at NYADA. I didn’t understand why, I had no direction, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I felt so lost I joined the army…”

Mr. Schue chuckled, “Yeah…”

“But I think I do now. I think I’ve figured out what I’m meant to do. (I’m) getting a teaching degree. I want to teach. I want to be a music teacher. Like you.”

“Wow… Finn… That’s-that’s amazing.”, he hugs Finn.

“It’s all because of you, Mr. Schue. You’ve changed my life. You showed me what it was to be a man before anyone else. You gave me someone to look up to.”

“That makes me so happy.”, the two of them hugged. “Oh, I can totally see you teaching at McKinley. I’d be honoured to teach along side you, Finn.”

“That’s the thing. I’m thinking of applying to schools in New York.”

“To be with Rachel…”

“Well, yeah…”

“But are you two back together?”

“No. But we did got together on your wed- almost wedding… And we’re going to get back together. I just know it.”

“You guys have faced a lot of ups and downs and always came through so I don’t see why not.”

“So you think I should do it?”

“I think you should be honest with each other about what you feel and if that’s being together/wanting to be together, why not? You guys are young, take a risk/take a chance.”

“I'm going to New York with Blaine this weekend. He's visiting Kurt (before graduation) and I'm tagging along. And I'll talk to Rachel then. Maybe check out some colleges, the campus."

"Do that."

"Thanks, Mr. Schue.”

“I’m so proud of you, Finn. I’ve watched you grow from a ? boy into a strong, mature and kind human being. You’re going to be great at whatever you do.”

“We both deserve to be happy. We both deserve to do what makes us happy.”

“Being with you is what makes me happy.”

“That’s not enough. You need other things in your life. I can’t be the only one who gets to do what she loves, to be fulfilled career wise.”

“You know that (that) are schools with education programs in New York too, right? If I didn’t know you loved me I’d actually say/think you’re making excuses for us not to be together.”

“Of course not! I just don’t want you to make a mistake, I don’t want you to move here, make this big change in your life for me and then resent me for it for the rest of your life. We almost did that senior year, you applied to PACE and you ended up joining the army and I went/came to New York alone. Without you. And we ended up broken up for months/a year.”

“I’m doing it for you, yes, but it’s for me, too. It’s because I can’t stand being away from you anymore. We’ve waisted too much time./It would never have worked me coming here without a plan, not having a live (for myself), but it’s different now. I was lost then, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I do now. (I want to teach). I could never ask you to give up your dream because it’s not just a dream, it’s your destiny and you can’t fulfil your destiny in Ohio, but I can live mine here. I’m doing it for you, yes, but it’s for me, too. It’s because I can’t stand being away from you anymore. We’ve waisted too much time.”

“...But you hate New York.”

“I don’t hate New York.”

“You told me it was too big and too loud for you.”

“(It is.) So we’ll buy a house just outside of New York. In the suburbs. You'll be an hour drive away from the city and I'll have a garage space and a backyard I can have Sunday barbecues on."

“It’ll take years until we’ll be able to buy our own house.”

“So we’ll wait. We’ll work and we’ll save. Rachel, I want to do this. With you. It’ll be hard for me to adjust, sure, but I will. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I’m not doing this to make you happy, it’s because the only way I can be truly happy is if I’m with you. The girl of my dreams.”

They kiss

“So, we’re actually doing this.”

“We are.”

At diner

“So, guys, we have news to tell you.”

“Finn’s moving to New York!”

“What?! Are you serious?”, Kurt hugs Finn.

“That’s great, guys!”

“I haven’t told anyone yet besides my mom and Burt - and Rachel - but I actually got accepted into NYU. I’m starting next fall.”

“Oh my god! I’m so happy! All of us together. In New York. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“That’s so great, Finn.”

“So I’m guessing you two are back together.”

“Yeah…”

“I’m so happy for you two. As long as you’re not planning on getting married anytime soon.”

“Kurt…”

“They know I say this with love. I think they have other things to focus on right now, churches will still be open in a few years.”

“Don't worry. We're not rushing (into) anything this time."

“I only have one condition.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t want any of that I won’t let you pay for that. We both know an actress gets paid more than a high school teacher. I want you to know that my money is our money just as your money is our money, too.”

“Because I know it’d be okay for you to buy us house but you would never let me buy us a house. Finn, of all of the arguments we’re going to have over the years, I don’t ever want them to about money. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“My co-star from the play I’m working on now gave me his real estate agent/realtor and I gave her a call and told her we were looking to a buy a house outside the city. She showed the most beautiful houses…”

“But…”

“You know Finn is proud, he would never let me buy us a house. He wants us to buy a house together, so we have to slip it.”

“So try to find a middle term. Not too big, not too small.”

“Babe, I found us the most amazing house.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s a chateau.”

“Let me see.”

“It’s by the lake, beautiful landscape. Tons of space for a barbecue station, swings, a pool?”

“Rach, the house is beautiful.”

“So.. Should we buy it?”

“Let’s go for it.”

“I joined a company and got to perform in so many amazing places - even at Carnegie Mellon - but then I met my wife and I suddenly I felt the need to stop, to settle. It didn’t feel right anymore to be all over the place. So we moved in together and I decided to open my own dance studio. I teach and dance and I’m a choreograph dances for some artists, too.”

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lilac-milk-moon · 5 years

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Learn How to Retire Early — on $40k Per Year

Note from Mr. SR: As the modern early retirement movement is gaining momentum, there is now a variety of philosophies and jargon. It can be intimidating and difficult to feel “in the know” about all of this terminology. I’m excited to share this post with you today, that covers all of the basics.

Even though I’m personally planning a semi-retirement approach, these foundational concepts will be worth considering — whether you are a fan of traditional retirement, FIRE, or early semi-retirement.

If you’d like to learn more about Cashflow Cop, you can find him on his home site or read the Sitting Poolside interview we did recently.

Ignore all of the noise and fancy words like tax-loss harvesting and geo-arbitrage. They can be off-putting and make things sound more complex than they need to be.

I’m going to show you in four steps how it can be possible to reach financial independence by the time you’re 40 years old while earning $40K per year.

This is the ultimate beginner’s guide to financial independence!

FIRE has a PR problem

But first, let’s take a step back.

There is this thing called “FIRE” that’s been mentioned in some mainstream media outlets lately. This is happening both in the US where it originates from and also across the pond in the UK. It’s actually spreading quickly and there is now a global FIRE community.

So what is FIRE?

“FIRE” stands Financial Independence, Retire Early. However, there are those who prefer Financial Independence, Recreational Employment instead.

Surely this is a good thing. Knowledge is spreading that there is another way to live the life you want. People can learn to improve their finances. They can provide in the present whilst also preparing for the future. Great right?

Not so fast.

The reception towards the FIRE community has so far has been mixed, to put it mildly. Just check out most of the comment sections and you’ll see what I mean.

The reasons people can be annoyed with the concept vary. Sometimes, they are literally keyboard SHOUTING as they vent their frustration.

It has been labeled too upper middle-class, to male, too white, too unrealistic, too impractical, and even selfish. That’s right. Selfish. How dare people withdraw themselves from the workforce at such an early age!

Truth is, I’m part of the FIRE community and I believe it has a PR problem.

I try to avoid the term and I dare not utter the words ‘retire early’ when talking to colleagues or family. It’s as if there is a degree of shame attached to it.

“FI” and “RE” are two different things. FI being the enabler and the RE being one of many different options you could pursue. The problem is that they are lumped together and to anyone new to the idea, it can be a massive turn-off.

I think it’s time the acronym ‘FIRE’ took early retirement.

It did its job by being catchy. It ignites the imagination and provides a hook for people to be intrigued.

We now need to be able to relate to the average Joe. Those who might not want to retire early. Those not earning six-figure salaries. People who might have children and childcare costs to contend with.

This article will do just that. It will show you in four steps how you can have the option to retire by 40 while starting on $40K a year.

Bear with me here. $40K is not a small change. I get that. However, it is far from six figures and a more realistic figure to aim for as a starting salary for most. The reason why I want to just get that point made now is so that you can read the rest of the post with an open mind.

Since I live in the UK, I will compare the numbers between the US and the UK.

The Four Steps To Financial Independence Are:

Earn

Budget

Protect

Invest

Step 1 – Earn

Aim: Maximize your earnings and develop multiple income streams.

Here’s the situation then. Let me introduce to you Amy and Adam. They are 25 years old and both earning an after-tax income $40K a year. Amy lives in the US and Adam lives in the UK.

They have a student loan debt balance of $40K.

For the first few years out of university they were getting themselves settled. They managed to pay off all their credit card debts, bought a used car for cash and lived with parents to save some money.

Amy and Adam both annihilated their consumer debts by using the ‘debt snowball’ method.

They don’t start their financial independence journey until 25 years old with an after-tax income of $40K.

Amy and Adam clearly had parents who taught them how to manage money and not to take on too much debt.

Amy Adam Location US UK Age 25 25 Student Loans Debt $40,000 £40,000 After-tax Annual Income $40,000 £40,000 After-tax Monthly Income $3,333 £3,333

It’s safe to say, they are far from rich, but not poor.

How did they secure such an income?

Action – Preparing to get a job

They both placed themselves in the best position to be employable in a competitive job market. This does not always mean getting a degree, although for some trades that’s a necessity.

I wouldn’t want someone to do brain surgery on me by learning through Youtube videos!

You could seek out internship programs, volunteer your time to shadow someone who works in an area you’re interested in, read and go on training courses.

The list is endless.

It is about self-development and improving yourself so that you have skills that are in demand.

Skills which someone is willing to pay for.

“Make sure you have a very particular set of skills. Skills you have acquired over a very long time. Skills that make you invaluable to employers.”

That last part sound familiar?

Action – Getting a job

This is the traditional route to earning money. A contract between yourself and your employer; you sell your time and effort in exchange for money. It’s a straight forward transaction.

However, this first step can feel disheartening at times. Be prepared for the rejection letters or never hearing back after you send your resume (CV) off.

Remember, you only need one job out of the millions out there. Don’t give up!

After finishing university and waiting to join the Police, I needed a job to tie me over. I applied to lots! I even got turned down for a job as a binman (garbage collector). A large part of why I kept getting rejected for jobs was because I didn’t tailor each resume to the job I was applying for.

Why would a graduate of finance want a job as a refuse collector? Surely this person isn’t serious or there is something wrong with him.

Looking back, I can completely understand why I got rejected so much.

Amy and Adam were smarter than me. They were better prepared and practiced the art of crafting a resume. They knew they had to stand out from the crowd and were confident and comfortable doing so.

Once they were happy with their main resume, they went out on the job hunt. I use the word ‘hunt’ deliberately.

Unless their skills were highly in demand and they already created a solid reputation for themselves, they knew that sitting at home in their sweatpants just wasn’t going to work.

A job was not going to look for them. They were far too inexperienced to be head-hunted.

They got out there. Networked, used social media, let friends and family know they were looking for work. They were being proactive and intentional about.

They were hungry for a job!

Once they found a job that could be the right fit, they researched the company. They tailored their resume to be specific to that particular job and that particular company.

They did this for every job they applied for.

Once they got offered an interview, they did more research. Joined forums, found people who were already with the company, got to understand the company culture and found out about the individuals who were likely to be interviewing them.

This helped them to be better prepared and be confident at the interview.

Amy and Adam clearly put in the work, smashed it out the park and got offered their jobs.

Action – Do some overtime, get promoted or a pay raise

Many people on the path toward financial independence can quickly become distracted with new money making ideas. The reality is that our ‘job’ is likely going to be the source of most of our income for a while.

One other thing Amy and Adam weren’t shy about was working when there was paid overtime on offer. They were doing their employer a favor and not only were they getting more money, they were storing away goodwill for when the next promotion or performance review came up.

Not all jobs offer paid overtime, but if they are available, they are a great starting point to earn extra income.

They also adopted a growth mindset. A strive for continual personal and professional development. This way, when it came to the annual performance review, both Amy and Adam were in a much better position to ask for that pay raise or promotion.

It is not about doing the minimum required and generally coasting along. If they can demonstrate that the value they add exceeds the amount that is paid to them, then it greatly improves their odds at the annual review. It places them in a much stronger negotiating position for a pay raise.

It seems so straightforward, but I see people everyday expecting a pay raise just for turning up to work on time.

Action – Never turn down free money!

Amy and Adam understood the terms and benefits of their employer pension scheme. Yawn! Yeah, it’s downright boring!

However, they wanted to make sure that they were not missing out on any free money from employer matching. For example, Amy put 5% of her salary into her company pension and her employer did the same. The exact percentages vary between employers and pension schemes.

If they’re in the public sector, then the amount that is contributed by their employer is likely to be even more generous compared to the private sector.

When faced with the choice of opting out of a company pension scheme; Amy and Adam thought about it very carefully.

They were both very tempted to opt out of the scheme because it meant more money in their bank account at the end of each month. After a momentary weakness, they snapped out of it and said to themselves:

“I’d be stupid to turn away free money!”

They didn’t want to get used to the extra money because they knew what they would be like. They’d no longer be able to go without it and the chances of them joining the pension scheme later on would be pretty much zero.

They started contributing from day one and learnt to live with slightly less money each month in exchange for much more money in the future.

Action – Generate a second income (a.k.a the side hustle)

Amy and Adam were killing it at work. They were getting pay raises and contributing into their pension schemes.

However, they were young and there was only so much Netflix they could handle before their brains turned to mush. They decide to start looking for a second income.

Amy decided to find a flatmate and started to make some pretty good money from it.

Adam on the other hand was a bit of an introvert and couldn’t stand the idea of having a stranger living with him. Instead, he started to look for a side hustle that would allow him to work from home. He’d actually become somewhat of an eBay expert.

As a result, once they were in their 30s, they were both making an extra 20% on top of their salary. This was in the form of paid overtime, bonuses and side hustles.

They might even decide to charge their kids rent later on in life!

Summary of Step 1

Prepare well to get the job you want.

Get a job.

Stand out from the crowd.

Maximize your salary through sales commission, bonuses, overtime, pay raise or promotion.

Understand your pension scheme and take advantage of the benefits.

Diversify your income through other business interests (a.k.a the ‘Side Hustle’).

Step 2 – Budget

Aim: Reduce your expenses, optimize your taxes and increase your savings rate.

From my experience, the word ‘budget’ can send shivers down many people. People see it as:

1) too restricting. We all work so hard, who wants to live life constrained?

2) too boring. I’m weird and love spreadsheets. Most people hate them.

3) too time-consuming. Life is busy enough as it is. Sitting down once a month to go through the budget? Ain’t no one got time for that!

4) too honest. We like to bury our heads in the sand. Ignorance allows us to continue spending. Tracking our expenses is such a buzz kill!

5) too difficult. The truth is, budgeting is a skill which needs to be taught and practiced.

Action – Spend with intention

Every time Amy and Adam spent their money, they do so intentionally. There were no accidental or spur of the moment purchases. They had an idea of how much they spent on average each month for different things.

It looks like this:

Type of Expense Amy (US $) Adam (UK £) Transportation 150 150 Rent / Mortgage 700 700 Utilities 225 225 Home Repairs 50 50 Communication 50 50 Groceries 240 240 Household Goods 50 50 Clothing 25 25 Eating Out 50 50 Recreation 75 75 Healthcare 450 0 Student Loans 425 180 Monthly Total 2,490 1,795 Annual Total 29,880 21,540

Amy and Adam’s expenses are low compared to the typical American or Brit. But typical people do not have the option to retire by 40.

Amy and Adam sure as hell don’t want to be typical!

They intend to avoid lifestyle inflation. So as soon as they get that bonus or pay raise, most of it is immediately invested.

Lifestyle inflation is when spending increases with income. Before you know it, the food bill is over $1k a month for a single person and you’re buying a new car every few years!

Action – Giving money a clear job description

They both budget to ensure that they do not take on any more debt.

Amy uses YNAB (You Need a Budget). It’s a budgeting app which I’ve personally used myself and recommend when first starting out.

Adam on the other hand made his own spreadsheet which at first he updated on a weekly basis, but over time found he only needed to refer to it once a month.

The process of keeping a budget is especially vital in the early stages of building wealth. Amy and Adam are effectively giving the money they earn a performance review.

They treat money like an employee. They make sure every pound or dollar earned is working hard to create value with minimal waste.

To come up with the above budget, they had thought about what they ‘need’ and what they ‘want’.

Needs are things like a roof over your head; food on the table, electricity and so on.

Wants are things like eating out, socializing and holidays.

The goal in setting a budget is to strip away all the noise; all the wants. Then slowly add them back in one by one until they have reached a balance that is right for them.

Interestingly, it would appear that Adam has the upperhand by living in the UK due to zero medical costs and lower student loans repayments. This is because student loans debt in the UK is repaid based on the amount a graduate earns. In fact, 83% of graduates never repay their loans before it is written-off by the government.

Action – Tax optimization

With their income maximized and expenses minimized to a level they are comfortable with; that alone is not enough. Amy and Adam makes use of all the tax-efficient accounts.

For Amy, they are accounts such as ROTH IRA and 401(k).

For Adam, they are account such as ISA, LISA, and SIPP.

Once they begin to accumulate assets and their net-worth starts to grow, they will be considering the implications of inheritance tax and estate planning.

Action – Staying out of debt

Like Amy and Adam, I don’t prescribe to the notion of ‘good’ debt vs. ‘bad’ debt. I am of the view that debt carries a certain degree of riskiness, from low risk to ridiculously crazy risk of losing money.

Getting a car on finance would be classed as being ridiculously crazy when framed this way. As soon as someone drives that car out of the forecourt, they have instantly lost money.

Getting rid of the idea of there being such a thing as ‘good’ debt from their mindset has helped Amy and Adam make better spending decisions.

Be careful of using the term “it’s an investment” to self justify a spending decision that is a “want” and is a depreciating asset. It’s okay to want something and to buy it. Just do it intentionally.

Action – Geo-arbitrage

It’s a fancy word which basically means move somewhere else that’s cheaper to live. Amy and Adam have decided to do just that. They live in a LCOL (low cost of living) area. For some, this could also mean moving abroad. Here are a few highlights when it comes to geo-arbitrage:

Housing Costs – this is the main cost for most. This is about moving to an area or country where accommodation is cheaper. It could also mean moving in with parents for a few years even if they charge a bit of rent.

Taxes – in some countries and states, you simply don’t get taxed as much. Of course, this might mean public services aren’t as good but that’s not always the case. It would depend on what you’re used to since everything is relative.

Childcare Costs – these costs can truly delay early financial independence dreams. But it doesn’t have to be that way. A country or state which subsidize childcare costs or even moving closer to family who can help with childcare can save thousands.

Education – it is an unfortunate reality that the quality of teaching can differ widely depending on the school and area. When contemplating private education, it is worth bearing in mind that they rarely provide value for money. It also holds true that education in many LCOL countries are actually much better than in the US or UK.

Medical – the US is infamous for its medical costs. I’m based in the UK and consider myself very lucky to not need to worry about this cost. It definitely makes reaching financial independence less complicated. The UK is not alone here; there are many countries with universal health care.

Safety – a LCOL area does not have to mean danger. It’s about striking a balance. Moving to a country that is on the government black list is not something I would consider no matter how low the cost of living is. It’s about finding the right balance for you and your family.

Earning – sometimes geo-arbitraging to a LCOL area can actually result in earning more. My point earlier about standing out and providing value to an employer can give immense leverage. Picture this. Earning a city salary, but able to work from home in the countryside, or move to the far east.

Quality of life – what is important to you and your family? Are there public parks nearby? Will geo-arbitrate result in less time spent commuting? Is the air quality good? Is there a community spirit?

Action – Turbo-charge savings rate

The ‘savings rate’ is a number that provides a snapshot of how much someone saves as a proportion of their income. The higher the rate, the less they spend relative to their income and the quicker they will reach financial independence.

Due to Amy’s health insurance and student loan repayment, her savings rate is much lower than Adam. This is a clear example of geo-arbitrage in action. If Amy moved to the UK for work or through marriage, she could eliminate her medical costs.

Amy (US $) Adam (UK £) Age 25 25 EXPENSES Monthly Total 2,490 1,795 Annual Total 29,880 21,540 SAVINGS Monthly Total 843 1,538 Annual Total 10,120 18,460 SAVINGS RATE 25% 46%

Summary of Step 2

Be intentional with your spending – don’t be typical.

Budget – give your money a clear job description.

Be tax efficient – keep more money in your pocket!

No such thing as ‘good’ debt.

Geo-arbitrage your way to financial freedom.

Maximize your savings rate.

Step 3 – Protect

Aim: Protect your path to financial independence with an emergency fund and insurance.

This step is often neglected or missed out altogether. Amy and Adam learnt from their parents that having adequate protection is important to safeguard their path to financial independence.

As a Police Officer, we are taught to have multiple contingency plans. In other words: what’s your backup plan to your backup plan?

The last thing Amy and Adam wants is to start making good financial progress only for it to come crashing to a halt, or worse go back to square one because something unexpected happens. Unfortunate events in life such as losing a job and a sudden long-term family illness not only drastically increase your stress levels, but could seriously scupper plans for financial independence.

There are a number of ways to mitigate against some of these risks.

Action – The emergency fund

Start off with an emergency fund worth three months of expenses before overpaying on any debt. This gives Amy and Adam an invaluable safety net for surprise expenses without the need to take on any more debt.

Once that’s done, consider increasing it to six months worth of expenses. This will help cover for larger unexpected expenses such as a period of unemployment.

The money saved needs to be what is called “liquid”. This means it can be easily accessible. If it isn’t then it’s not much use in an emergency.

Don’t get back into debt because of an emergency!

Action – The Freedom Fund, a.k.a The FU Fund

The Brit in me prefers the more toned down terminology of the Freedom Fund as opposed to the F U Fund. For me, this is one or two year’s worth of expenses saved.

This is when Amy and Adam can start to feel truly liberated. A boss not giving you the time off to be with your family? Company won’t give you a sabbatical to care for an elderly relative?

Say hello to the freedom fund.

It gives you the power to hand in your notice. It’s amazing how differently employers treat valuable staff who they know are willing to walk away. They will do all they can to keep them.

There is no such thing as idle threats with a freedom fund. They can sense it in your confidence and body language. Having a freedom fund can completely change your outlook on life.

Action – Ignore the insurance myths

There are some in personal finance who are against insurance. Their reasons are many, but it mainly boils down to the following points:

Myth 1 – Money down the drain if a claim is not made.

Myth 2 – Better to self-insure by having an emergency fund and a freedom fund.

Myth 3 – All policies are expensive and provide poor value.

Myth 4 – Insurance companies can’t be trusted – they will try to avoid paying out by referring to tiny clauses hidden somewhere in the terms and conditions.

Let’s quickly tackle each of these myths.

Myth 1 – remember that insurance is not an investment or a savings plan. There are certain hybrid products which try to do a bit of both, but they are generally poor value for money. Understanding what the product is aiming to achieve will help you come to terms with the fact that if you don’t claim, it has still done its job. It was there to cover you in the event of a disaster. Be grateful that you didn’t have one. Don’t wish for one!

Myth 2 – what would you do if you had a young family and your partner was struck down with a long-term illness or worse? What size of emergency fund or freedom fund would you need to cover such an event? Six figures at least. That money should ideally be liquid, but even if it was invested, you would be at the mercy of the markets. Maybe forced to sell during a crash.

Myth 3 – certain policies certainly cost more than others. That’s because they cover more eventualities and therefore increases the probability of paying out. For some, it might be totally worth getting a policy that is more expensive because their circumstances are more unpredictable than most. Someone who goes skydiving every weekend will have a more expensive insurance policy. A policy that costs more than others does not necessarily mean it will always provide poor value. For some, a policy might be over-insuring whilst for others it could be just right.

Myth 4 – everyone will have heard stories about how someone had their insurance claims denied. For the most part, the story has been sold by the claimant to the news outlet. Chances are, they either failed to be truthful on their application or did not read the terms. The insurance company cannot defend themselves in the article because the information is confidential.

How many people do you know go to the press to tell them about that time they made a successful insurance claim? Stories about insurance claims are biased and unreliable.

Even if a claim has been unfairly turned down, there are appeals procedures and they are rare.

Action – Get life insurance

This is the main protection so I will go into a bit more detail about it. This type of insurance pays out in the event the person insured dies.

You can go for a term level policy which pays out a set amount if you die within a certain period of time for a set premium.

There are increasing term policies which increase the potential payout each year in line with inflation. However, your premiums will go up by at least the same percentage.

There are decreasing term policies, which are usually taken out with a mortgage. This is when the life insurance pays out just enough to pay for the outstanding balance of your mortgage.

Finally, there is also something called whole life police. As the name implies, they are guaranteed to pay out because it covers the whole of your life until you die. These are generally poor value for money and should be avoided. They tend to be used to cover any potential inheritance tax, but there are other avenues to explore first because this is considered.

Once you have decided on the type of policy you want: 1) Term Level; 2) Increasing Term; and 3) Decreasing Term, you then need to decide on how long you would like the insurance to run for.

Longer term policies are more expensive. This is because as you get older, the chances of you dying increases due to ill health.

Unless you are choosing a decreasing term policy to cover a mortgage, you will then need to decide how much you want to be insured for. This is the amount that will be paid out.

There is no set rule to decide on this, but a general loose guide is 10 times the main earner’s income. You need to decide for yourself what amount would help your family get through what would be an already difficult time. A few points to help:

Cover mortgage debt.

Cover other debts

Cover dependent expenses, such as children until they are adults

Cover education expenses for kids

Cover loss of income

When taking out a life insurance policy, there are so many add-ons. These include:

Indexation – this is when you choose to have the amount of cover that increases every year based on inflation. By choosing this option, your premiums will increase by at least the same percentage as your cover increases. Any life policy with an indexation option is also called an ‘increasing term’ policy.

Waiver of Premium – this allows you to stop paying your insurance premium if you become seriously ill or disabled. In other words, you continue to be covered by the life insurance even when you cannot work.

Guaranteed vs Reviewable Premiums – guaranteed premiums mean that the premium you pay will not change for the entire duration of the policy (unless you select indexation). Reviewable premiums mean the insurance company reserves the right to review your policy every few years and adjusts the premiums you pay. Reviewable premiums tend to start off lower than guaranteed premiums but can increase significantly. It may be suited if you are currently very price sensitive but expect your income to rise significantly in the future.

When taking out insurance as couple, the natural tendency is to take out a joint policy. This is a policy which insures two lives, for example for yourself and your partner.

However, this type of policy will only pay out once. So, in the event one of you dies, the policy pays out once and then terminates. However, when taking out single life policies instead, it means that each person being insured have their own policy. So, in the event your partner dies, the insurance pays out, but your life remains insured. This is perhaps useful if you have children.

What I have found is that getting two single life policies works out just the same as a joint policy.

On occasions, it has even been cheaper!

Action – Consider critical illness insurance

This is a type of insurance which pays out when you fall very ill.

What does very ill mean?

They call is a critical illness.

The list of critical illness changes quite regularly based on medical advances, but think of it as a very serious medical condition. An add-on you can have to this type of cover is called ‘Total and Permanent Disability’ cover. This means the insurance company will pay out if you are unable to work in an occupation which you are suited due to training, education or experience.

Action – Consider income protection insurance

This is a type of insurance provides a regular payout until you retire, die or return to work in the event you become too ill to work. There are several differences between income protection and critical illness. The three main ones being:

Critical illness payout a lump sum whereas income protection provides a regular income.

Critical illness is usually a permanent illness whereas income protection will pay out even if the illness is recoverable.

Critical illness cover will allow one claim whereas income protection can continue even after a claim.

Action – Consider an insurance broker

I used to think insurance brokers do not work in their client’s best interest. Surely, their interests are aligned to whoever provides the best commission.

Whilst this can be true, it is up to you how you manage this relationship to your advantage. You would want to look for an all of market broker or a fee only broker (does not work on commission).

I used an insurance broker when we were arranging protection for our family.

I did my research and asked prospective brokers questions. If they stumbled on any of them, I knew they weren’t the broker for me. The terms above will hopefully give you a good head start.

Remember that if you are interested in any of the add-ons, to ask about them. I found adding them on did not affect my premiums but every provider is different. Check!

They can also secure deals even cheaper than going direct. It was significantly cheaper for me, so much so the underwriter was surprised they offered me such a price. I negotiated hard!

They can also liaise with underwriters directly to resolve any problems. If you find that you will be ‘rated’ (industry term for policies involving an individual with medical conditions requiring much higher premiums), your broker will explain everything to you and tweak your policy to make it affordable.

A broker is worth their weight in gold by ensuring that the policy taken out is suitable for you and will pay out in the event of a genuine claim.

Finally, if your insurance broker does not talk about a Trust, then find another. A trust is treated as a separate legal entity. Life insurance policies in the UK can be written into a Trust so that it remains outside your estate. This means it is not be subject to inheritance tax calculations. It is free to do with most big providers if you ask.

This alone can potentially save your family thousands in tax should you need to make a claim in the future.

If your employer provides insurance as part of your compensation package, or your pension has a ‘death benefit’ make sure you know the details. You don’t want to over-insure. However, it is worth remembering that the older you get, the more it costs to insure. So if you leave the company and go to one that no longer provides a similar level of benefit, then adding more cover onto your private policy will cost much more as you age.

Summary of Step 3

Have an emergency fund

Save for a freedom fund / F U fund

Ignore the insurance myths

Get life insurance

Consider critical illness cover

Consider income protection cover

Consider using an insurance broker

Step 4 – Invest

Aim: Invest wisely and with minimal fees.

Now we get to the really juicy bit. Some people skip the earlier steps and jump straight to here.

That would be a bad move!

Amy and Adam understood the importance of getting their financial house in order and having a solid foundation before they even considered investing.

FI Life Stages

To achieve financial independence, Amy and Adam needed to look at life as two distinct periods (FI Life Stages):

Period 1 – time period when work is a necessity.

Period 2 – time period when work becomes optional.

Period 1 is the wealth accumulation phase of life.

To be FI, Amy and Adam will need to have net-worth of at least 25 times their annual expenses. This net-worth number is also called the FI number.

The number 25 comes from what is referred to as the 4% rule of thumb. This percentage is also known as the retirement withdrawal rate, sometimes referred to as the ‘safe’ withdrawal rate. The idea is that they have invested enough so that they can spend at the withdrawal rate and not run out of money.

Net-worth is calculated by taking to value of total assets minus total liabilities (debt).

The number 25 is a loose guide and acts as a starting point. The number required for each individual will depend on a number of factors such as:

Asset allocation (the mix of assets that make up their net-worth)

The types of assets owned

Length of retirement

Investment costs

Taxes

Risk tolerance

Once someone has accumulated enough wealth by reaching their FI number, they are considered to have reached Period 2 of their life and is financially independent.

Action – Where are you on the path to FI?

The FI Life Stage could be broken down further in 18 checkpoints. This provides an opportunity for Amy and Adam to celebrate smaller milestones and to keep themselves motivated.

See where you are and track your progress towards financial independence by taking the FI Score Test [FIST].

Action – Understanding risk

There will always be an element of risk when investing. Risk is the probability of sustaining a loss.

The return Amy and Adam get from an investment is the reward for the risk they were willing to accept. Some types of assets are riskier than others.

The riskier the asset, the greater the potential for higher returns and losses.

This is the risk and reward trade-off.

When talking about risk, there are two components to consider. The first is something called risk tolerance and the second is risk capacity.

Risk tolerance is the emotional ability to remain calm and stay the course during periods of falling prices. It is how someone copes with the ups and the downs of investing.

I consider investments to be medium to long-term. I don’t invest expecting a return in one year.

Both the stock and property market goes through cycles of highs and lows. Knowing and expecting a crash at some point in the future helps to psychologically prepare for when it happens.

Someone’s tolerance for risk will determine their investment portfolio. If they are risk averse (someone who think they will lose sleep at night and sell at the slightest dip), then they should own relatively less volatile assets (they that don’t fluctuate in price much).

The cycle is inevitable and it happens because of human behavior.

To understand why that is, I encourage you to watch the video by Ray Dalio – How the Economic Machine Works.

Image Credit – Wall St. Cheat Sheet

Risk capacity is someone’s financial ability to survive an investment loss. Being able to tolerate a loss but not having the capacity (having enough money) will only result in financial ruin. A proper understanding of both tolerance and capacity are absolutely essential before anyone begins their investment journey.

So how does risk differ from volatility?

It is really easy to conflate the two things and even I am guilty of sometimes using volatility as a proxy for risk.

Risk is the likelihood of you losing your investment because you sell at a loss. One of the main controllers over risk is you. A loss is only ever realized if you sell.

Volatility, on the other hand, is a measure of how often and how much the price or value varies over time.

A stock or fund can be very volatile but not that risky once time horizon is factored in. This is the benefit of investing for the long-term and having an emergency fund. You are not forced to sell when market conditions are against you.

“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” – Warren Buffett

Action – The art of simplicity

Some of the best things in life are simple.

Introducing complexity comes with it increased costs, time and stress.

Amy and Adam don’t own any individual shares. If they changed their minds in the future, any individual stocks they own would only form a tiny portion of their net-worth. It’s what they call their ‘fun money’ to invest with. Money they can afford to lose.

Even veteran fund managers do not outperform the market in the long term. For the average person, we do not have the time, nor the knowledge to choose the right company and buy it at the right price.

So what does Amy and Adam invest in?

They invest in funds that track the performance of the entire world’s stock markets. They own the world.

It is like buying a tiny piece of every major company in the world.

Funds which track the performance of the world’s stock market are called index tracker funds. They are passive rather than actively managed. That’s because they aim to copy the performance of a particular index or indices using predominantly computer software and algorithms.

Active investments on the other hand use teams of people to actively manage the fund. They spend time researching, use forecasting models and their own judgement to try and deliver higher than average returns.

As a result, active investments are much more expensive compared to passive investments. Half a percent may not seem like much, but when compounded over time; it makes a huge difference.

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett

Action – Diversification: spreading your money

Amy and Adam are investing in the stock market through an index fund. This tracks the world markets so they are engaging in diversification. It means they are reducing their risk by not putting all your eggs in one basket.

In other words, the impact of one company going bankrupt or a country going through political turmoil will only likely make a negligible effect on their overall performance. .

They could apply this same principle by investing in other types of assets on top of the stock market, such as property, bonds or building their own business.

This way, their wealth is not entirely reliant on one particular asset class.

Now that I have mentioned bonds, it may benefit to briefly explain what they are.

Bonds are like an “I O U”; a debt obligation. The return on bonds is generally much lower than stocks and shares because there is less risk.

Bonds can be issued by companies or by governments. The more stable and trustworthy a company or government, the safer the bond will be. The safer the bond, the lower the return.

Remember the risk and reward trade-off I mentioned earlier.

As people approach retirement, it is not unusual to see them allocating a greater proportion of their wealth towards bonds. That is because the returns are much less volatile.

Once retired, people tend to need the stability of not waking up the next day with 50% of their investments wiped out and having to return to work because they no longer have enough money.

They do not have the luxury of time to wait for recovery phase of the cycle.

Action – Minimize costs

Compound interest can work for or against you.

No matter what you decide to invest in, keeping the initial and ongoing costs to the minimum will ensure that you do not erode any future returns. Just a 2% difference in cost can reduce your return by six figures!

“The trick is not to pick the right company, the trick is to essentially buy all the big companies and to do it consistently and to do it in a very, very low cost way” – Warren Buffett

Action – Review your investments

Amy and Adam reviews their investments at least once a year to see how they are performing. They don’t do it everyday, because the idea is to ‘set it and forget it’.

Two main considerations when reviewing their investments: 1) costs changes; 2) market changes.

The first is self-explanatory. The platform they’re using may have increased their fees or the funds they are buying into are charging more. This could mean there could be better value alternatives out there. One thing to bear in mind are any exit and set-up costs.

The second element relates to rebalancing their portfolio of investments. The process of rebalancing involves buying or selling assets to get back to their preferred level of asset allocation.

This is important to ensure that the overall desired risk has not changed.

For example, imagine they had a 40/40/20 asset allocation, 40% stocks, 40% property and 20% bonds at the start of the year.

By the end of the year, the value of stocks have increased and the value of properties have also increased. This will mean that the percentage value of the bonds proportion would fall because of the gains made in the stocks and properties. Your new asset allocation could end being something like 45/45/10.

As a result, their overall portfolio would be riskier than it was a year ago. They would need to either buy more bonds or sell some stocks or properties to bring their portfolio back to the original desired level.

Action – Don’t time the market

Don’t try to time the market. This is when someone makes a decision to buy or sell based on trying to predict the future market price of an asset (such as stocks or property). When this happens, what they are doing is speculating. They are effectively saying that they know something that the market does not already know.

Lets say Amy and Adam receive an inheritance or have a large lump sum to invest. What would they do with it?

Keep hold of it as cash and wait for a crash to buy?

Invest a smaller fixed amount on a monthly basis (also called Dollar / Pound Cost Average)?

Do they invest the whole lump sum?

Option 1 – I believe that most investors are not experts, and even experts cannot predict the future (heck, they struggle to predict the weather a few hours ahead of time!). This is not a strategy I would recommend. If they invest for the long term, even by investing at the peak would still provide healthy returns based on historical data. Time in the market is better than timing the market.

Option 2 – this strategy is called Dollar / Pound Cost Averaging. There are benefits and drawbacks to it. Investing a large sum of money all in one go requires Amy and Adam to overcome a psychological barrier: the fear that the price will drop soon and they could have bought it for cheaper.

Instead, they split the lump sum up into say 6 or 12 equal amounts and invest on a monthly basis.

The idea is that should the markets fall over the next few months, they would have only invested a portion of your lump sum instead of all of it.

Option 3 – whilst Option 2 has its main benefit of overcoming a psychological barrier, it is not the mathematically optimum strategy. That is because studies have shown that on a month by month basis, the market is more likely to go up than go down. As a result, the best financial decision here is to invest the whole amount in one go. Only hindsight will tell you if that was the perfect time; but in the long term, it doesn’t really matter.

Summary of Step 4

Track your progress towards financial independence

Understand your risk profile

Keep things simple

Diversify

Review your investments

Don’t time the market

How Amy and Adam can retire by 40

Using all the above principles, this is how Amy and Adam can retire by 40 or reach financial independence really early.

Assumptions for both Amy and Adam

Age Starting FI Journey 25 Annual After Tax Starting Household Income 40,000 Annual Income Increase 5.0% Age Start Earning Side Hustle Income 30 Percentage Value of Side Hustle Income Compared to Base Income 20% Inflation 2.0% Investment Growth Rate 8.0% Withdrawal Rate 3.5%

You’ll notice that I’ve used a conservative withdrawal rate of 3.5% instead of 4% to factor in a potentially longer period of retirement.

Results

Amy reaches financial independence at 40 years old with a net-worth of almost one million. Her average savings rate during this period was 49%.

Adam reaches financial independence at 38 years old with a net-worth of almost 900k. By the time he is 40, he has nearly 1.2 million. His average savings rate during this period was 60%.

Adam could afford to spend more and still reach FI by 40 if he chooses to.

The reason for the drastic difference between Amy and Adam are due to medical costs and student loans debt. Although they had the same amount, Adam was lucky due to the way student loans are repaid in the UK.

Final thoughts – a life worth living

The individual steps to reach financial independence are easy. What’s hard is having the perseverance and patience to complete the journey.

Earn: Maximize your earnings and develop multiple income streams.

Budget: Reduce your expenses, optimize your taxes and increase your savings rate.

Protect: Protect your path to financial independence with an emergency fund and insurance.

Invest: Invest wisely and with minimal fees.

Following these four steps consistently and over a long period of time will pretty much guarantee a comfortable retirement.

Whether or not this will be early will depend on when you start. You can be sure of one thing though: starting now will ensure an earlier retirement then not starting at all!

We could spend all day debating the expenses and assumptions used for Amy and Adam. They are not living a life of luxury, nor would anyone consider them to be living in poverty with those expenses.

For anyone earning more or in a dual income household, then it certainly makes the journey easier.

Remember, Amy and Adam are used to this low level of spending. They haven’t succumbed to lifestyle inflation.

Our expenses are also around 20k a year despite now earning much more. I’m so used to living on our current expenses that it does not feel like deprivation at all. Every time I got a pay raise, work overtime or get some extra income, I immediately put the money to work.

Getting to this mindset will take time and practice. I promise you, it will be worth it!

The whole point of the exercise was this:

Introduce the main concepts which could allow many people to reach financial independence earlier than originally planned.

If on a low income, the principles here can still help build wealth slowly over time. Just because I can’t run a marathon, it doesn’t mean I don’t try to keep fit!

You don’t have to aim for FI by 40. Choose a savings rate which you are most comfortable with.

Time is precious. I hope the article provides you with a solid foundation to kick start your journey towards financial independence.

No one said this would be easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. It’s really important that you decide for yourself why you want it and your plans beyond FI.

Don’t end up with regrets that you spent too much time at work instead of spending time with the people you love.

It’s your life, your money and your time. It’s your choice to make work optional sooner, rather than later.

Retire by 40 calculator

Have a play with the numbers yourself to see how you too can retire by 40. Change the fields in white.

This post was written by Cashflow Cop. It originally appeared on The Money Mix and is republished with permission.

The post Learn How to Retire Early — on $40k Per Year appeared first on Semi-Retire Plan.

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How to Retire Early – The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To FI

How to Retire Early In 4 Easy Steps [Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a Guest Article from Cashflow. He’s a police officer dedicated to blog about Financial Independence (FI) and retiring early. His goal is to reach FI by the age of 40.]

Ignore all of the noise and fancy words like tax-loss harvesting and geo-arbitrage. They can be off-putting and make things sound more complex than they need to be.

I’m going to show you in four steps how it can be possible to reach financial independence by the time you’re 40 years old while earning $40K a year.

This is the ultimate beginner’s guide to financial independence!

FIRE has a PR problem

But first, let’s take a step back.

So what is FIRE?

“FIRE” stands Financial Independence, Retire Early. However, there are those who prefer Financial Independence, Recreational Employment instead.

Not so fast.

The reception towards the FIRE community has so far has been mixed, to put it mildly. Just check out most of the comment sections and you’ll see what I mean.

The reasons people can be annoyed with the concept vary. Sometimes, they are literally keyboard SHOUTING as they vent their frustration.

Truth is, I’m part of the FIRE community and I believe it has a PR problem.

I try to avoid the term and I dare not utter the words ‘retire early’ when talking to colleagues or family. It’s as if there is a degree of shame attached to it.

I think it’s time the acronym ‘FIRE’ took early retirement.

It did its job by being catchy. It ignites the imagination and provides a hook for people to be intrigued.

This article will do just that. It will show you in four steps how you can have the option to retire by 40 while starting on $40K a year.

Since I live in the UK, I will compare the numbers between the US and the UK.

The Four Steps To Financial Independence Are:

Earn

Budget

Protect

Invest

Step 1 – Earn

Aim: Maximize your earnings and develop multiple income streams.

Here’s the situation then. Let me introduce to you Amy and Adam. They are 25 years old and both earning an after-tax income $40K a year. Amy lives in the US and Adam lives in the UK.

They have a student loan debt balance of $40K.

For the first few years out of college they were getting themselves settled. They managed to pay off all their credit card debts, bought a used car for cash and lived with parents to save some money.

Amy and Adam both annihilated their consumer debts by using the ‘debt snowball’ method.

They don’t start their financial independence journey until 25 years old with an after-tax income of $40K.

Amy and Adam clearly had parents who taught them how to manage money and not to take on too much debt.

Amy Adam Location US UK Age 25 25 Student Loans Debt $40,000 £40,000 After-tax Annual Income $40,000 £40,000 After-tax Monthly Income $3,333 £3,333

It’s safe to say, they are far from rich, but not poor.

How did they secure such an income?

Action – Preparing to get a job

They both placed themselves in the best position to be employable in a competitive job market. This does not always mean getting a degree, although for some trades that’s a necessity.

I wouldn’t want someone to do brain surgery on me by learning through Youtube videos!

You could seek out internship programs, volunteer your time to shadow someone who works in an area you’re interested in, read and go on training courses.

The list is endless.

It is about self-development and improving yourself so that you have skills that are in demand.

Skills which someone is willing to pay for.

“Make sure you have a very particular set of skills. Skills you have acquired over a very long time. Skills that make you invaluable to employers.”

That last part sound familiar?

Action – Getting A Job

This is the traditional route to earning money. A contract between yourself and your employer; you sell your time and effort in exchange for money. It’s a straight forward transaction.

However, this first step can feel disheartening at times. Be prepared for the rejection letters or never hearing back after you send your resume (CV) off.

Remember, you only need one job out of the millions out there. Don’t give up!

After finishing college and waiting to join the Police, I needed a job to tie me over. I applied to many! I even got turned down for a job as a binman (garbage collector). A large part of why I kept getting rejected for jobs was because I didn’t tailor each resume to the job I was applying for.

Why would a graduate of finance want a job as a refuse collector? Surely this person isn’t serious or there is something wrong with him.

Looking back, I can completely understand why I got rejected so much.

Amy and Adam were smarter than me. They were better prepared and practiced the art of crafting a resume. They knew they had to stand out from the crowd and were confident and comfortable doing so.

Once they were happy with their main resume, they went out on the job hunt. I use the word ‘hunt’ deliberately.

Unless their skills were highly in demand and they already created a solid reputation for themselves, they knew that sitting at home in their sweatpants just wasn’t going to work.

A job was not going to look for them. They were far too inexperienced to be head-hunted.

They got out there. Networked, used social media, let friends and family know they were looking for work. They were being proactive and intentional about.

They were hungry for a job!

Once they found a job that could be the right fit, they researched the company. They tailored their resume to be specific to that particular job and that particular company.

They did this for every job they applied for.

This helped them to be better prepared and be confident at the interview.

Amy and Adam clearly put in the work, smashed it out the park and got offered their jobs.

Action – Do Some Overtime, Get Promoted Or A Pay Raise

One other thing Amy and Adam weren’t shy about was working when there was paid overtime offered. They were doing their employer a favor and not only were they getting more money, they were storing away goodwill for when the next promotion or performance review came up.

Not all jobs offer paid overtime, but if they are available, they are a great starting point to earn extra income.

It seems so straightforward, but I see people everyday expecting a pay raise just for turning up to work on time.

Action – Never Turn Down Free Money!

Amy and Adam understood the terms and benefits of their employer pension plan. Yawn! Yeah, it’s downright boring!

If they’re in the public sector, then the amount that is contributed by their employer is likely to be even more generous compared to the private sector.

When faced with the choice of opting out of a company pension plan; Amy and Adam thought about it very carefully.

They were both very tempted to opt out of the plan because it meant more money in their bank account at the end of each month. After a momentary weakness, they snapped out of it and said to themselves:

“I’d be stupid to turn away free money!”

They didn’t want to get used to the extra money because they knew what they would be like. They’d no longer be able to go without it and the chances of them joining the pension plan later on would be pretty much zero.

They started contributing from day one and learned to live with slightly less money each month in exchange for much more money in the future.

Action – Generate A Second Income (a.k.a The Side Hustle)

Amy and Adam were killing it at work. They were getting pay raises and contributing into their pension plans.

However, they were young and there was only so much Netflix they could handle before their brains turned to mush. They decided to start looking for a second income.

Amy decided to find a roommate and started to make some pretty good money from it.

As a result, once they were in their 30s, they were both making an extra 20% on top of their salary. This was in the form of paid overtime, bonuses and side hustles.

They might even decide to charge their kids rent later on in life!

Summary of Step 1

Prepare well to get the job you want.

Get a job.

Stand out from the crowd.

Maximize your salary through sales commission, bonuses, overtime, pay raise or promotion.

Understand your pension plan and take advantage of the benefits.

Diversify your income through other business interests (a.k.a the ‘Side Hustle’).

Step 2 – Budget

Aim: Reduce your expenses, optimize your taxes and increase your savings rate.

From my experience, the word ‘budget’ can send shivers down many people’s spines. People see it as:

1) too restricting. We all work so hard, who wants to live life constrained?

2) too boring. I’m weird and love spreadsheets. Most people hate them.

3) too time-consuming. Life is busy enough as it is. Sitting down once a month to go through the budget?

4) too honest. We like to bury our heads in the sand. Ignorance allows us to continue spending. Tracking our expenses is such a buzz kill!

5) too difficult. The truth is, budgeting is a skill which needs to be taught and practiced.

Action – Spend with intention

It looks like this:

Amy and Adam’s expenses are low compared to the typical American or Brit. But typical people do not have the option to retire by 40.

Amy and Adam sure as hell don’t want to be typical!

They intend to avoid lifestyle inflation. So as soon as they get that bonus or pay raise, most of it is immediately invested.

Lifestyle inflation is when spending increases with income. Before you know it, the food bill is over $1k a month for a single person and you’re buying a new car every few years!

Action – Giving Money A Clear Job Description

They both budget to ensure that they do not take on any more debt.

Amy uses YNAB (You Need a Budget). It’s a budgeting app which I’ve personally used myself and recommend when first starting out.

Adam on the other hand made his own spreadsheet which at first he updated on a weekly basis, but over time found he only needed to refer to it once a month.

The process of keeping a budget is especially vital in the early stages of building wealth. Amy and Adam are effectively giving the money they earn a performance review.

They treat money like an employee. They make sure every pound or dollar earned is working hard to create value with minimal waste.

To come up with the above budget, they had thought about what they ‘need’ and what they ‘want’.

Needs are things like a roof over your head; food on the table, electricity and so on.

Wants are things like eating out, socializing and holidays.

The goal in setting a budget is to strip away all the noise; all the wants. Then slowly add them back in one by one until they have reached a balance that is right for them.

Interestingly, it would appear that Adam has the upper hand by living in the UK due to zero medical costs and lower student loans repayments. This is because student loans debt in the UK is repaid based on the amount a graduate earns. In fact, 83% of graduates never repay their loans before it is written-off by the government.

Action – Tax Optimization

With their income maximized and expenses minimized to a level they are comfortable with; that alone is not enough. Amy and Adam makes use of all the tax-efficient accounts.

For Amy, there are accounts such as ROTH IRA and 401(k).

For Adam, there are account such as ISA, LISA, and SIPP.

Once they begin to accumulate assets and their net-worth starts to grow, they will be considering the implications of inheritance tax and estate planning.

Action – Staying Out Of Debt

Financing a car would be classed as being ridiculously crazy when framed this way. As soon as someone drives that car out of the lot, they have instantly lost money.

Getting rid of the idea of there being such a thing as ‘good’ debt from their mindset has helped Amy and Adam make better spending decisions.

Action – Geo-Arbitrage

Housing Costs – this is the main expense for most. This is about moving to an area or country where accommodations are cheaper. It could also mean moving in with parents for a few years even if they charge a bit of rent.

Action – Turbo Charge Savings Rate

Amy (US $) Adam (UK £) Age 25 25 EXPENSES Monthly Total 2,490 1,795 Annual Total 29,880 21,540 SAVINGS Monthly Total 843 1,538 Annual Total 10,120 18,460 SAVINGS RATE 25% 46%

Summary of Step 2

Be intentional with your spending – don’t be typical.

Budget – give your money a clear job description.

Be tax efficient – keep more money in your pocket!

No such thing as ‘good’ debt.

Geo-arbitrage your way to financial freedom.

Maximize your savings rate.

Step 3 – Protect

Aim: Protect your path to financial independence with an emergency fund and insurance.

This step is often neglected or missed out altogether. Amy and Adam learned from their parents that having adequate protection is important to safeguard their path to financial independence.

As a Police Officer, we are taught to have multiple contingency plans. In other words: what’s your backup plan to your backup plan?

The last thing Amy and Adam want is to start making good financial progress only for it to come crashing to a halt, or worse go back to square one because something unexpected happens. Unfortunate events in life such as losing a job and a sudden long-term family illness not only drastically increase your stress levels, but could seriously scupper plans for financial independence.

There are a number of ways to mitigate against some of these risks.

Action – The Emergency Fund

Once that’s done, consider increasing it to six months worth of expenses. This will help cover for larger unexpected expenses such as a period of unemployment.

The money saved needs to be what is called “liquid”. This means it can be easily accessible. If it isn’t then it’s not much use in an emergency.

Don’t get back into debt because of an emergency!

Action – The Freedom Fund, a.k.a The FU Fund

The Brit in me prefers the more toned down terminology of the Freedom Fund as opposed to the F U Fund. For me, this is one or two year’s worth of expenses saved.

This is when Amy and Adam can start to feel truly liberated. A boss not giving you the time off to be with your family? Company won’t give you a sabbatical to care for an elderly relative?

Say hello to the freedom fund.

It gives you the power to hand in your notice. It’s amazing how differently employers treat valuable staff who they know are willing to walk away. They will do all they can to keep them.

There is no such thing as idle threats with a freedom fund. They can sense it in your confidence and body language. Having a freedom fund can completely change your outlook on life.

Action – Ignore The Insurance Myths

There are some in personal finance who are against insurance. Their reasons are many, but it mainly boils down to the following points:

Myth 1 – Money down the drain if a claim is not made.

Myth 2 – Better to self-insure by having an emergency fund and a freedom fund.

Myth 3 – All policies are expensive and provide poor value.

Myth 4 – Insurance companies can’t be trusted – they will try to avoid paying out by referring to tiny clauses hidden somewhere in the terms and conditions.

Let’s quickly tackle each of these myths.

How many people do you know go to the press to tell them about that time they made a successful insurance claim? Stories about insurance claims are biased and unreliable.

Even if a claim has been unfairly turned down, there are appeals procedures and they are rare.

Action – Get Life Insurance

This is the main protection so I will go into a bit more detail about it. This type of insurance pays out in the event the person insured dies.

You can go for a term level policy which pays out a set amount if you die within a certain period of time for a set premium.

There are increasing term policies which increase the potential payout each year in line with inflation. However, your premiums will go up by at least the same percentage.

There are decreasing term policies, which are usually taken out with a mortgage. This is when the life insurance pays out just enough to pay for the outstanding balance of your mortgage.

Finally, there is also something called whole life policy. As the name implies, they are guaranteed to pay out because it covers the whole of your life until you die. These are generally poor value for money and should be avoided. They tend to be used to cover any potential inheritance tax, but there are other avenues to explore first because this is considered.

Once you have decided on the type of policy you want: 1) Term Level; 2) Increasing Term; and 3) Decreasing Term, you then need to decide on how long you would like the insurance to run for.

Longer term policies are more expensive. This is because as you get older, the chances of you dying increases due to ill health.

Unless you are choosing a decreasing term policy to cover a mortgage, you will then need to decide how much you want to be insured for. This is the amount that will be paid out.

Cover mortgage debt.

Cover other debts

Cover dependent expenses, such as children until they are adults

Cover education expenses for kids

Cover loss of income

When taking out a life insurance policy, there are so many add-ons. These include:

Indexation – this is when you choose to have the amount of coverage that increases every year based on inflation. By choosing this option, your premiums will increase by at least the same percentage as your coverage increases. Any life policy with an indexation option is also called an ‘increasing term’ policy.

When taking out insurance as a couple, the natural tendency is to take out a joint policy. This is a policy which insures two lives, for example for yourself and your partner.

What I have found is that getting two single life policies works out just the same as a joint policy.

On occasions, it has even been cheaper!

Action – Consider Critical Illness Insurance

This is a type of insurance which pays out when you fall very ill.

What does very ill mean?

They call is a critical illness.

The list of critical illness changes quite regularly based on medical advances, but think of it as a very serious medical condition. An add-on you can have to this type of coverage is called ‘Total and Permanent Disability’ coverage. This means the insurance company will pay out if you are unable to work in an occupation which you are suited due to training, education or experience.

Action – Consider Income Protection Insurance

This is a type of insurance that provides a regular payout until you retire, die or return to work in the event you become too ill to work. There are several differences between income protection and critical illness. The three main ones being:

Critical illness payout a lump sum whereas income protection provides a regular income.

Critical illness is usually a permanent illness whereas income protection will pay out even if the illness is recoverable.

Critical illness coverage will allow one claim whereas income protection can continue even after a claim.

Action – Consider an insurance broker

I used to think insurance brokers do not work in their client’s best interest. Surely, their interests are aligned to whoever provides the best commission.

While this can be true, it is up to you how you manage this relationship to your advantage. You would want to look for an all of market broker or a fee only broker (does not work on commission).

I used an insurance broker when we were arranging protection for our family.

I did my research and asked prospective brokers questions. If they stumbled on any of them, I knew they weren’t the broker for me. The terms above will hopefully give you a good head start.

Remember that if you are interested in any of the add-ons, to ask about them. I found adding them on did not affect my premiums but every provider is different. Check!

They can also secure deals even cheaper than going direct. It was significantly cheaper for me, so much so the underwriter was surprised they offered me such a price. I negotiated hard!

They can also work with underwriters directly to resolve any problems. If you find that you will be ‘rated’ (industry term for policies involving an individual with medical conditions requiring much higher premiums), your broker will explain everything to you and tweak your policy to make it affordable.

A broker is worth their weight in gold by ensuring that the policy taken out is suitable for you and will pay out in the event of a genuine claim.

This alone can potentially save your family thousands in tax should you need to make a claim in the future.

Summary of Step 3

Have an emergency fund

Save for a freedom fund / F U fund

Ignore the insurance myths

Get life insurance

Consider critical illness coverage

Consider income protection coverage

Consider using an insurance broker

Step 4 – Invest

Aim: Invest wisely and with minimal fees.

Now we get to the really juicy bit. Some people skip the earlier steps and jump straight to here.

That would be a bad move!

Amy and Adam understood the importance of getting their financial house in order and having a solid foundation before they even considered investing.

FI Life Stages

To achieve financial independence, Amy and Adam needed to look at life as two distinct periods (FI Life Stages):

Period 1 – time period when work is a necessity.

Period 2 – time period when work becomes optional.

Period 1 is the wealth accumulation phase of life.

To be FI, Amy and Adam will need to have net-worth of at least 25 times their annual expenses. This net-worth number is also called the FI number.

Net-worth is calculated by taking to value of total assets minus total liabilities (debt).

The number 25 is a loose guide and acts as a starting point. The number required for each individual will depend on a number of factors such as:

Asset allocation (the mix of assets that make up their net-worth)

The types of assets owned

Length of retirement

Investment costs

Taxes

Risk tolerance

Once someone has accumulated enough wealth by reaching their FI number, they are considered to have reached Period 2 of their life and is financially independent.

Action – Where are you on the path to FI?

The FI Life Stage could be broken down further in 18 checkpoints. This provides an opportunity for Amy and Adam to celebrate smaller milestones and to keep themselves motivated.

See where you are and track your progress towards financial independence by taking the FI Score Test [FIST].

Action – Understanding risk

There will always be an element of risk when investing. Risk is the probability of sustaining a loss.

The return Amy and Adam get from an investment is the reward for the risk they were willing to accept. Some types of assets are riskier than others.

The riskier the asset, the greater the potential for higher returns and losses.

This is the risk and reward trade-off.

When talking about risk, there are two components to consider. The first is something called risk tolerance and the second is risk capacity.

Risk tolerance is the emotional ability to remain calm and stay the course during periods of falling prices. It is how someone copes with the ups and the downs of investing.

I consider investments to be medium to long-term. I don’t invest expecting a return in one year.

Both the stock and property market goes through cycles of highs and lows. Knowing and expecting a crash at some point in the future helps to psychologically prepare for when it happens.

The cycle is inevitable and it happens because of human behavior.

To understand why that is, I encourage you to watch the video by Ray Dalio – How the Economic Machine Works.

Image Credit – Wall St. Cheat Sheet

So how does risk differ from volatility?

It is really easy to confuse the two things and even I am guilty of sometimes using volatility as a proxy for risk.

Risk is the likelihood of you losing your investment because you sell at a loss. One of the main controllers over risk is you. A loss is only ever realized if you sell.

Volatility, on the other hand, is a measure of how often and how much the price or value varies over time.

“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.” – Warren Buffett

Action – The art of simplicity

Some of the best things in life are simple.

Introducing complexity comes with increased costs, time and stress.

Even veteran fund managers do not outperform the market in the long term. For the average person, we do not have the time, nor the knowledge to choose the right company and buy it at the right price.

So what does Amy and Adam invest in?

They invest in funds that track the performance of the entire world’s stock markets. They own the world.

It is like buying a tiny piece of every major company in the world.

Funds which track the performance of the world’s stock market are called index funds. They are passive rather than actively managed. That’s because they aim to copy the performance of a particular index or indices using predominantly computer software and algorithms.

As a result, active investments are much more expensive compared to passive investments. Half a percent may not seem like much, but when compounded over time; it makes a huge difference.

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.” – Warren Buffett

Action – Diversification: spreading your money

In other words, the impact of one company going bankrupt or a country going through political turmoil will only likely make a negligible effect on their overall performance.

They could apply this same principle by investing in other types of assets on top of the stock market, such as property, bonds or building their own business.

This way, their wealth is not entirely reliant on one particular asset class.

Now that I have mentioned bonds, it may benefit to briefly explain what they are.

Bonds are like an “I O U”; a debt obligation. The return on bonds is generally much lower than stocks because there is less risk.

Bonds can be issued by companies or by governments. The more stable and trustworthy a company or government, the safer the bond will be. The safer the bond, the lower the return.

Remember the risk and reward trade-off I mentioned earlier.

As people approach retirement, it is not unusual to see them allocating a greater proportion of their wealth towards bonds. That is because the returns are much less volatile.

Once retired, people tend to need the stability of not waking up the next day with 50% of their investments wiped out and having to return to work because they no longer have enough money.

They do not have the luxury of time to wait for recovery phase of the cycle.

Action – Minimize Costs

Compound interest can work for or against you.

“The trick is not to pick the right company, the trick is to essentially buy all the big companies and to do it consistently and to do it in a very, very low cost way.” – Warren Buffett

Action – Review Your Investments

Amy and Adam reviews their investments at least once a year to see how they are performing. They don’t do it everyday, because the idea is to ‘set it and forget it’.

Two main considerations when reviewing their investments:

1) costs changes

2) market changes.

The second element relates to rebalancing their portfolio of investments. The process of rebalancing involves buying or selling assets to get back to their preferred level of asset allocation.

This is important to ensure that the overall desired risk has not changed.

For example, imagine they had a 40/40/20 asset allocation, 40% stocks, 40% real estate and 20% bonds at the start of the year.

Action – Don’t Time The Market

Let’s say Amy and Adam receive an inheritance or have a large lump sum to invest. What would they do with it?

Keep hold of it as cash and wait for a crash to buy?

Invest a smaller fixed amount on a monthly basis (also called Dollar / Pound Cost Average)?

Do they invest the whole lump sum?

Instead, they split the lump sum up into say 6 or 12 equal amounts and invest on a monthly basis.

The idea is that should the markets fall over the next few months, they would have only invested a portion of your lump sum instead of all of it.

Option 3 – while Option 2 has its main benefit of overcoming a psychological barrier, it is not the mathematically optimum strategy. That is because studies have shown that on a month by month basis, the market is more likely to go up than go down. As a result, the best financial decision here is to invest the whole amount in one go. Only hindsight will tell you if that was the perfect time; but in the long term, it doesn’t really matter.

Summary of Step 4

Track your progress towards financial independence

Understand your risk profile

Keep things simple

Diversify

Review your investments

Don’t time the market

How Amy and Adam Can Retire By 40

Using all the above principles, this is how Amy and Adam can retire by 40 or reach financial independence really early.

Assumptions for both Amy and Adam

You’ll notice that I’ve used a conservative withdrawal rate of 3.5% instead of 4% to factor in a potentially longer period of retirement.

Results

Amy reaches financial independence at 40 years old with a net-worth of almost one million. Her average savings rate during this period was 49%.

Adam reaches financial independence at 38 years old with a net-worth of almost 900k. By the time he is 40, he has nearly 1.2 million. His average savings rate during this period was 60%.

Adam could afford to spend more and still reach FI by 40 if he chooses to.

Final Thoughts – A Life Worth Living

The individual steps to reach financial independence are easy. What’s hard is having the perseverance and patience to complete the journey.

Earn: Maximize your earnings and develop multiple income streams.

Budget: Reduce your expenses, optimize your taxes and increase your savings rate.

Protect: Protect your path to financial independence with an emergency fund and insurance.

Invest: Invest wisely and with minimal fees.

Following these four steps consistently and over a long period of time will pretty much guarantee a comfortable retirement.

Whether or not this will be early will depend on when you start. You can be sure of one thing though: starting now will ensure an earlier retirement then not starting at all!

We could spend all day debating the expenses and assumptions used for Amy and Adam. They are not living a life of luxury, nor would anyone consider them to be living in poverty with those expenses.

For anyone earning more or in a dual income household, then it certainly makes the journey easier.

Remember, Amy and Adam are used to this low level of spending. They haven’t succumbed to lifestyle inflation.

Our expenses are also around 20k a year despite now earning much more. I’m so used to living on our current expenses that it does not feel like deprivation at all. Every time I get a pay raise, work overtime or get some extra income, I immediately put the money to work.

Getting to this mindset will take time and practice. I promise you, it will be worth it!

The whole point of the exercise was this:

Introduce the main concepts which could allow many people to reach financial independence earlier than originally planned.

If on a low income, the principles here can still help build wealth slowly over time. Just because I can’t run a marathon, it doesn’t mean I don’t try to keep fit!

You don’t have to aim for FI by 40. Choose a savings rate which you are most comfortable with.

Time is precious. I hope the article provides you with a solid foundation to kick start your journey towards financial independence.

No one said this would be easy. If it were, everyone would be doing it. It’s really important that you decide for yourself why you want it and your plans beyond FI.

Don’t end up with regrets that you spent too much time at work instead of spending time with the people you love.

It’s your life, your money and your time. It’s your choice to make work optional sooner, rather than later.

Retire by 40 Calculator

Have a play with the numbers yourself to see how you too can retire by 40. Change the fields in white.

This post was originally published on The Money Mix and is being republished with permission.

The post How to Retire Early – The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To FI appeared first on Debt Free Dr..

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bargegrowth8-blog · 5 years

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How Do You Get Traction In Your Business?

Much like many business owners I dream. Also like many business owners I dream wildly. You know the dream, there is some market of millions and if you can serve some tiny fraction of that market you’ll be swimming in cash.

Of course in this dream it’s so easy to reach that market. I mean how hard could it be to convince 1% of people that you’re smart or that your product is good?

You can listen to this review here. Subscribe to Should I Read It so you don’t miss a book that matters.

The thing is, we then hit reality. Reality is a harsh master. Reality is that maybe 1% of that 1% know about us and an even smaller fraction of that number cares enough to purchase from us.

In his excellent book The Dip, Seth Godin tells us that for many people the biggest problem is obscurity. Not enough people know about you. Sure the market is millions, but if a fraction of a fraction is all that know you exist, you’re not going to get anything moving.

This is where Traction, by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares is here help you. Traction is all about giving you a framework to use so that you can…get traction with your business. With traction, you might be able to get at that 1% market you dreamed of reaching.

Traction is the best way to improve your chances of startup success. Traction is a sign that something is working. If you charge for your product, it means customers are buying. If your product is free, it’s a growing user base.

Traction is all about bringing users in to the top of your funnel effectively. Then turning them into clients. It’s about identifying your one metric that matters, to steal the term from The 10x Marketing Formula, and then learning which types of marketing are going to contribute best to that metric.

A Few Notes Before we Start

I know that many of my readers are freelancer or very small businesses, so let’s put a caveat here first. Traction is geared towards startups. Places that probably have taken funding and can afford some of the methods they’re going to suggest you try.

I have a hard time thinking that billboards will be an effective method for a small web business. It’s going to get some notice sure, but you’re not looking for brand awareness. You’re looking for paying clients and there is going to be a much more effective method than a billboard.

Second, don’t fall in to the trap that because a traction channel worked for a similar business it will work for you.

Just because my last company got traction in this way didn’t mean it was right for every company.

Each company gets it’s traction at a specific time in a market. If you’re early to YouTube then you may not have had to do some things that you see people doing now to get traction. Don’t just copy, test.

What worked for you at one point in your business may not continue to work. In fact, as you reach each new level of income/fame/market recognition it’s unlikely that what you used to do will work the way it used to. Don’t get stuck in the way that always worked. Keep looking at your one metric that matters and evaluating how what you’re currently doing contributes to that.

Don’t stop doing what’s working because it’s “old”. My friend Jason and I were talking about how he built some of his coaching work on personal talks with people. Then he stopped and … he stopped bringing people in at the same rate. Going back to conversations starting bringing in clients that week.

Stick with the single metric that matters. Only look at changing your marketing efforts if you aren’t seeing the same type of traction with current efforts.

Finally, if you’re building anything, you need to spend time building traction for your idea. You need to spend as much time building momentum behind your idea as you do building the actual idea.

Traction and product development are of equal importance and should each get about half of your attention. This is what we call the 50 percent rule: spend 50 percent of your time on product and 50 percent on traction.

In Perennial Seller, Ryan Holiday talks about how we have a creative fantasy.

Deep down, we all harbor a fantasy: We do creative work, throw it in the mail — someone else sends us a contract and doesn’t bother us again. No one gets to tell us what do to; our art remains pure and untouched. – Perennial Seller

This fantasy is what has us spending all our time on doing the work and little, if any time, on building out the marketing for our idea. If you want to build something that wins then this can’t be you.

The Bullseye Traction Framework

To get you going on building Traction in your business, Weinberg and Mares, give a system to test out what will work for your business. They use the bullseye analogy.

Start by testing every single traction method they mention, in addition to any other traction method you can think of. Find the 2 – 3 that move the needle effectively on your single metric and then double down on testing those channels. Identify the single channel that has the most impact.

Then, take the other two and only put any effort in to them if they feed well in to the single channel that has the most impact. Don’t keep putting effort in to ads if they were the 3rd place finisher. Dump all your efforts in to the 1st place finisher.

One of the reasons you test every single traction channel is that it’s so easy to overlook things that work because others in your field aren’t doing it. What often happens is that all your competitors and your own business end up working on the same traction channel and it’s flooded.

This means that far too many startups focus on the same channels and ignore other promising ways to get traction. In fact, often the most underutilized channels in an industry are the most promising ones.

The people that can view the channel are overwhelmed and they become blind to so much of what’s going on. Just because your competitors are doing something doesn’t mean it’s working. Nor does it mean that you can deliver on it to the same level as your competitors.

In Captivate, Vanessa Van Edwards, reminds us to do the things that we do well.

When you try to be the same as everyone else, it’s boring. When you try to fit into a mold, you become forgettable. When you try to be “normal,” you become dull. Just be yourself, because no one is like you. If you’re a little weird, own it. The right people will like you for it. – Captivate

This same idea applies to your Traction channels. If you can’t write, don’t write. If you can’t produce great videos, don’t do videos. Find where you can deliver 10x better than your competition and play in that field.

The Structure of Traction

Traction is broken up in to two main parts. Chapters 1 – 5 cover how the bullseye framework should run. It gives you ways to eliminate things that aren’t working and does an okay job at helping you decide on the single metric that matters. If you need to identify that metric then look at The 10x Marketing Formula because it tackled the single metric that matters better.

Chapters 6 – 24 give you a brief overview of the different traction channels at your disposal.

Traction Channels

They cover a bunch of traction channels, and the content is fairly well differentiated. I think that there is a bit of overlap between some parts. Specifically they talk about social ads and then say that it should probably push to content to build more relationship before a sale.

That’s content marketing, which gets it’s whole own chapter. It felt like they should combine the two based on the approach they took with the book.

I won’t go into detail for each traction channel, but here is a list of what they cover.

Blogs

Traditional PR

Unconventional PR (like Will it Blend videos)

Search Engine Marketing

Social and Display Ads

Offline Ads (billboards, radio…)

Search Engine Optimization

Content Marketing

Email Marketing

Viral Marketing (feels like Unconventional PR really)

Engineering as Marketing (like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer)

Business Development (joint ventures and the like)

Sales (they recommend SPIN selling)

Affiliate Programs

Existing Platforms (like timing every software release to use the new iOS features so you’re more likely to make the news)

Trade Shows

Offline Events (conferences and…trade shows like we just talked about)

Speaking Engagements

Community Building

They do a decent job throughout the book to making sure that you are pointed in the right direction to get started with your efforts in to each field. It’s not an exhaustive look at traction channel, but you can get going without much more research and have something worthwhile.

Should You Read Traction?

The things I liked about Traction is that it doesn’t just stick to online ways to market your business. It encourages you to look at every way you could market your work and then test them.

The issue in this is that for some businesses, a bunch of them just don’t make any sense. Like billboards for your starting content company. You’re not doing brand awareness.

I also found that 10x Marketing did a better job of helping you define the single metric that matters. Not that Traction was bad, but 10x was better.

Finally, there are other books and resources that will do a better job at helping you understand a specific single traction channel. This is not a book that will teach you to write amazing content that converts. You’ll need to look elsewhere if you want to learn the detailed ins and outs of each channel, but if you read Traction you’ll be pointed in the right direction with your learning.

At the end, yes I recommend Traction as a good book to read if you’re trying to get your ideas moving forward. Specifically the ideas in the bullseye framework. Test all the channels, and then focus on the ones that make a difference. Don’t get hung up on the channel that works, just keep an eye on your single metric that matters and do the work that has the greatest affect on that metric.

Purchase Traction on Amazon

Photo by: tuxstorm

Source: https://curtismchale.ca/2018/11/22/how-do-you-get-traction-in-your-business/

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analiecious · 5 years

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Why You Must Experience SEO 2019 At Least Once In Your Lifetime

If you are usually tired of hearing the expression SEO (search engine optimization) probably you ought focus on SMO. If a person's business does not have SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Internet marketing strategies, she or even he will need help through SEO experts. One of the particular most commonly asked questions, Light hat SEO in layman's vocabulary is applying the right methods along with a legal strategy to boost your ranking plus increase your popularity. To help our own client's future-proof their businesses plus maximize online Return on Expense (ROI), we have caused the global partners to develop a good SEO methodology that aligns along with Google's recommended best practices. Off-page SEO will assist make your website most well-known and visible on the internet, so you can get even more traffic and users for your own website and product. You might be the proprietor of a growing and flourishing business, the webmaster of the dozen sites, the SEO expert in the Web agency or the DIY SEO ninja passionate regarding the mechanics of Search: this particular guide is meant for a person. On their organization blog, Demand Wave also offers a great article about 2016's tops trends in B2B electronic marketing and SEO. Why don't explore some roles that sociable media plays in SEO. You will craft your current SEO strategy around the keywords and phrases that will lead customers to be able to your most profitable products. Google for example, states that will the no follow link become taken literally as well since the link will not end up being followed at all however within reports done for SEO reasons it shows some conflict in order to this. Let's confirm our knowing of SEO basics with the one question quiz about the particular factors in search rankings: web pages, links and keyphrases. When it comes in order to Google SEO, the rel=canonical hyperlink element has become VERY IMPORTANT over the yrs and NEVER MORE SO. To place the particular focus on the website guest, it has been suggested that will acronym SEO should are a symbol of research experience optimization. It's important to remember in order to share content from your site or blog socially to provide it an SEO boost as well. Some Webmasters will spend thousands of dollars to several so-called professional SEO expert in order to get their Websites on best in the rankings. It is often preferable to ask questions upon their SEO procedures and find out whether they have knowledge associated with keyword density or if they will have information about the most recent keyword research strategies and equipment. This combined expertise makes all of us uniquely qualified to present a good ethics-based, search engine-friendly SEO guide to teach you guidelines that will reflect the latest developments looking. They include important subjects like search motor success factors and how SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION relates to social media marketing and advertising. In order in order to make web pages appear in high positions in the search outcomes, SEO tries to shape the website according to Google's formula. The major problem of SEO is the reality that there are billions associated with pages in the internet lookup engine indexes and your placement in the SERPS is reliant on a constantly changing formula which is not published. Here's the fantastic news: You don't have in order to have to be a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION wizard to make sure your own website is well positioned regarding organic search engine traffic. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the acronym for research engine optimisation. The particular search engines have refined their own algorithms along with this progression, numerous tactics that worked within 2004 can hurt your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION today. Therefore, we also produce content on conducting keyword analysis, optimizing images for search motors, creating an SEO strategy (which you're reading right now), plus other subtopics within SEO. In 2018 there will be an actually bigger focus on machine studying and SEO from data. ” Of course, the amplification aspect of things will continue in order to combine increasingly with genuine public relationships exercises rather than shallow-relationship hyperlink building, which will become progressively easy to detect by lookup engines like google. Seo (SEO) is often regarding making small modifications to components of your website. In my SEO post writing guidelines I suggest a person take your main keyword plus 3 or 4 other associated keywords and write at 3-4%. Some SEO specialists claim of which building links for SEO uses is pointless; others believe typically the role of backlinks for the web site has continually risen through typically the years. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a huge part associated with any marketing strategy. This brand-new paradigm of users relying upon voice search for many associated with their search needs will become a game changer for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Every advertising SEO blog is definitely talking about online video marketing and advertising and every third company professional you talk to is intending to shift marketing dollars to a good online video campaign. ” Simply by 2019, video is expected in order to account for 80 percent associated with all web traffic. Don't set it and forget about it. Take time to review your SEO keyword strategy every single few months to make certain it's still relevant and attaining the outcomes you want. Stories are a easy method to do marketing, you simply need to include some custom made images or text in purchase to let people know these people could swipe to click plus see where you can obtain a skirt, grill, buy SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, or anything else you're attempting to pitch to the people. Jana Granko, PR (public relations) head in SEMrush - one of the particular top marketing tools of the particular world - believe that within 2019 AI (artificial intelligence) would certainly change the way people lookup for keywords. In fact, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is simply one part associated with every successful digital marketing technique, but possibly the most essential part. These are called SEO standing factors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is the art and technology of driving the most certified visitors to your website simply by attaining high search engine outcomes. From Digital SEO Land, Rintu Biswas a professional SEO expert inside Kolkata will assist you for you to build quality backlinks to your site. This ‘what is SEO‘ guide (and this whole website) is not about churn and burn type of Search engines SEO (called webspam to Google) as that is too dangerous to deploy on a true business website in 2018. Search Motor Optimization (SEO) is the technique to campaign your products on the internet towards the right clientele with regard to increasing ROI. There are many tools upon the web to assist along with basic keyword research (including the particular Google Keyword Planner tool and there are even more useful third party SEO tools to help you perform this). The biggest change that will we'll see in 2019 (and that's already happening) is the particular fact that keywords are getting less important. Once you've discovered your keywords, use another SEMrush tool, the SEO Content Design template, which is part of their own Content Marketing Toolkit, to function out the best way in order to optimize your content. If a company is providing you all these services below one roof, climbing up the particular SEO ranking will not become an uphill task for your own business any more. Local SEO companies allows a person to position your business upon search engines like google plus other digital marketing platforms therefore you're seen by potential clients — on their terms. YouTube adds the particular nofollow” tag to their hyperlinks, so they don't really assist with SEO. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION isn't just about building lookup engine-friendly websites. The sooner you understand precisely why Google is sending you much less traffic than it did this past year, the sooner you can clear it up and focus upon proactive SEO that starts to influence your rankings in a optimistic way. The trending SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique or strategy now plus in 2019 will be Lookup Enterprise Optimization It has already been coined by myself since 2015. There is definitely no magic wand in your own hands to regulate or manage your competitors' strategies or administration, Google analytics update, or user's behavior communicate business but a person can manage your SEO. In this particular new environment, the digital online marketer who views SEO in the broader context will surely come out there ahead of the competition within 2018 and beyond. Good SEO publications explain in detail how greatest to use keywords and just how to structure your entire internet site to attract the attention associated with search engine spiders and associated with human visitors, and a posting such as this cannot perform the topic justice. While businesses begin on an SEO advertising marketing campaign, they should realize that a good entire marketing campaign can drop flat on its face in the event that a business is unable in order to reach the masses, that is usually, their target audience. If your own pages were designed to obtain the most out of Search engines, with commonly known and today outdated SEO techniques chances are usually Google has identified this plus is throttling your rankings within some way. A lot of business people find keeping upward with the "moving target" associated with SEO distracts them from every day priorities more than they actually imagined, so it's good in order to appear closely at what can make sense for every business. The program process for the SocialSEO Electronic Marketing and SEO Scholarship is definitely done 100% electronically and needs the next list of materials. If you speak about search ranking in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you're talking about the place of your content on research results pages (SERPs). Kent Lewis, Originator, and President of Anvil, the performance-based firm based out associated with Portland, says that in 2019 voice search and Amazon research can become a lot more notable than they were in 2018. Google Search Console (Webmaster tools) is one of the particular SEO basics. If you desire to find out how We actually do it, visit Write-up Czar for the free gift plus details of could use post marketing and SEOcious to get top Google listings. It really is geared towards SEO professionals (in-house and agency), marketing managers, and company owners. But now SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION considers tweets, retweets, Google+ authorship, along with other social signals. Besides rank the site, the SEO team gets fault Client's marketing or product sales team by converting surfers or even visitors into buyers. Because therefore much sharing now takes place on major social media systems, social signals may become simply because important to SEO as period on page, editorial linking, plus content quality. Using social press marketing in PA with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics can help boost the website's ranking and popularity. This may create friction and the impact that most well-designed websites are usually very poorly optimized for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. They have impacted SEO previously as well by bringing back links, and today it's even even more. Erase all duplicated content material; it will increase your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking. Long-term: as discussed over, you'll ultimately get more lookup traffic from better usability, actually though you don't squeeze every single last drop from the SEO-trick lemon. However, to accomplish all this particular, web-developers use SEO custom solutions, that have long-lasting SEO Search engines rank. That being said, companies usually have little or simply no time for you to maintain up with the latest advancements in SEO techniques. Social search motor optimization is largely built on user-generated content. Keywords are at the coronary heart of SEO, but they're really not your first step in order to an organic growth play any longer. Obviously, reviews are a powerful kind of customer content that has massive implications for SEO and improving organic traffic. With right search engine optimization and with the help associated with an SEO expert however, your own website can give you a good increasing number of visitors plus exposure. Just keep in mind to pay attention to strong content creation and copywriting basic principles, engage your viewers deeply, plus stay abreast of technical developments such as backlinks, SEO health, site velocity, and schema. SEOmonitor pricing is based on the particular number of websites and key phrases you track. So, I actually would say that 2018 is definitely a challenge for Google, simply because much as it could be for SEOs. The SEO Guide Keyword Suggestion Tool aggregates research data and provides volumes, associated terms, and more. Voice research is going to be one particular of the main regions of concentrate for SEO in 2019 plus beyond. By 2019 mobile advertising will represent 72% of all US digital advertisement spending. They will should realize that SEO Internet marketing and advertising mandates a business website, given that it is a necessary on the web marketing tool. Eventually you can post these pages on various SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION sites or simply submit the particular web page so that the particular search engine spiders can get on your created content. The history of SEO will go back to the 90s whenever the search engines emerged intended for the first time. High quality articles is critical in any lengthy term SEO strategy. Successful SEO includes on-page strategies, which use intent-based key phrases; and off-page strategies, which make inbound links from other sites. So, along with content advertising, SEO now ought to be deeply aimed with your company's PR attempts. Information will be a good introduction to and summary of research engine optimization (SEO), a greatly important tactic for driving visitors to your blog. There is definitely a wide range of misinformation about exactly what an SEO campaign (company) may accomplish when it comes in order to search engines engine rankings. But using the particular SEO analysis tools, you may increase the chances of your own website's high ranking that can enable you to get more traffic and ultimately, more business and revenue. Those who have the many to get are small businesses that will before a new harder period breaking into the snug SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION world. You will become introduced to the foundational components of how search engines such as google work, how the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION landscape is promoting and exactly what you can expect in the particular future. The SISTRIX Toolbox consists associated with six modules 1) SEO, 2) Universal, 3) Links, 4) Advertisements, 5) Social and 6) Optimizer. Low-quality content can severely impact the achievements of SEO, within 2018. When your own SEO starts building strong environment, competitors can start maligning your own SEO backlinks. ” With content marketing spend likely to reach $300 billion by 2019, this statistic is worrisome. Now the electronic marketing companies know how in order to use AI for SEO, plus in coming years AI may dominate in developing the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies of the digital marketing and advertising companies. Ray Cheselka, AdWords and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Manager at webFEAT Complete, the design and SEO agency, states that in 2019 search intention will continue to become even more important. Expert writers of SEO articles will certainly take the time to study the particular industry or market market. 2 tools to help with regional SEO are BrightLocal (for rankings) and MozLocal (for local research optimization). Concerning on-page SEO best practices, I usually link out to other quality related pages on other websites exactly where possible and where a individual would find it valuable. It includes a favorite Regular Table of SEO Success Factors”, a 9-chapter guide to SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION basics, and links to several from the site's most useful blog posts. An SEO on-line marketing strategy is a extensive plan to get more individuals to your website through lookup engines. Several search optimizers try to tip Google by using aggressive techniques that go beyond the fundamental SEO techniques. Subscribe to the particular Single Grain blog now with regard to the latest content on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, PPC, paid social, and the particular future of internet marketing. SEO can furthermore stand for search engine optimizer. Like the rest of the particular digital landscape, SEO marketing will be continuously evolving. Search Engine Book — Read information right after Moz's guide to solidify knowing regarding it of the basic parts of SEO. If a person do not have the period or have insufficient training upon web design or SEO, Appear for web design experts plus hire a professional SEO assistance agency to keep your internet site and your good reputation in any other case you business may depend upon it. I ended with the website number 1, 228, 570, 060. This particular generates SEO anchor text, which usually helps you in improving your own search engine rankings. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION marketing is focused on the keyword choice that will attract a excellent deal of unique visitors in order to your website. Maybe you have speculate what will be the brand new changes and updates that many of us can experience in SEO back links sphere in 2019? A Cisco research found that by 2019, eighty percent of all consumer Web traffic will be from Web video traffic. If you have spent time online recently, you might have probably look at the term "SEO, inches or "Search Engine Optimization. Register and raise a new free donation for SEO Greater london every time you shop on the web. Local SEO - Optimize that localized content on your web site to properly leverage local signs, online reviews and business results. Learn more about content material optimization for SEO here. Along with paid-search it offers a very focused audience, visitors referred by SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION will only visit your web site if they are seeking particular home elevators your products or even related content. From keyword filling to link buying, the SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING landscape has seen numerous black-hat tricks — and Google often catches on. Chris Gregory, founder plus managing partner at Jacksonville dependent firm, DAGMAR Marketing, predicts that will AI and machine learning might have a big impact upon SEO in 2019 and SEOs who aren't technical will become Blog9T left in the dust. Some SEO specialists also advise that anchor textual content should be varied as a lot of pages linking to one web page using the same anchor textual content may look suspicious to find motors. SEO trickery such while keyword ‘stuffing' in irrelevant content material simply won't cut it inside the current day, with Google's algorithm taking over 200 aspects to ensure that it's ranks provide results with valid and even authoritative sites, it is around on impossible to perform anything some other than work with the research engines to make sure best quality SEO results. From a SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION perspective, the principal keyword ought to be at the beginning adopted by the other relevant key phrases. For blog websites the greatest SEO practice would be in order to set the title of your own post in a heading1 label. Search engines is the gatekeeper to substantial amounts of traffic and prospects - search engine optimization (SEO) opens the doors. Simply because long as they are gained naturally, inbound links are possibly the most dependable authority contractors in the world of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. We all call this new methodology AdaptiveSEO so that as its title suggests, it is made in order to adapt to the evolving plus sometimes unexpected changes in lookup algorithms. A lot of get confused in this region of SEO article writing recommendations for either they in place too little or maybe the particular wrong kind of keywords, or even they mention the keyword method too much which is occasionally called keyword over stuffing. Social SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION isn't a separate branch associated with SEO and it won't shortly be replacing traditional SEO, yet social signals are becoming significantly incorporated into search engine methods. Perhaps the particular most important aspect of research engine optimization is how a person can actually leverage SEO in order to assist drive more relevant visitors, leads, and sales for your own business. Just browse through the various types of our SEO blog site to find those important on-page ranking factors. According to him, key phrases have already lost their significance and in 2019 this tendency would only get stronger. Seo (SEO) is definitely the most efficient way in order to drive traffic to your internet site. The sensible strategy for SEO would certainly still appear to be in order to reduce Googlebot crawl expectations plus consolidate ranking equity & possible in high-quality canonical pages plus you do that by reducing duplicate or near-duplicate content. This can take a LONG period for a site to recuperate from using black hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics and fixing the troubles is not going to necessarily bring organic visitors back as it was just before a penalty. The particular best SEO Guide is right here to dispel those myths, plus give you all you require to know about SEO in order to show up online and some other search engines, and ultimately make use of SEO to grow your company. > > Upon Page Optimization: On-page SEO will be the act of optimizing novel pages with a specific finish goal to rank higher plus acquire more important movement within web crawlers. There are numerous Five Common Myths About SEO 2019 websites providing pertinent information regarding SEO and online marketing, and you may learn from them. But it's perplexing why some businesses don't try out harder with analysis, revisions, plus new content with their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION online marketing strategy. An effective SEO strategy may be made up of a mixture of elements that ensure your web-site is trusted by both consumers as well as the look for engines. By taking their own marketing needs online and employing confer with an experienced SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION agency, a business will be able to achieve thousands, or even millions associated with people that they would possess not been able to normally. With internet customers who use their mobiles in order to search on the increase, because an SEO consultant it can make sense to get a look at the particular effects SEO marketing is putting on search engine optimization. The sole purpose of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Services is to improve your own search engine ranking. Guarantee redirected domains redirect through the canonical redirect and this too offers any chains minimised, although Help to make sure to audit the backlink user profile for any redirects you stage at a page just such as reward comes punishment if these backlinks are toxic (another kind of Google opening up the particular war which is technical seo on a front it's not really, and in fact is speak, to building backlinks to your own site). In order to smoothen out the software system interface problem, the web developing team as well as the particular SEO specialist work together in order to build the major search motors friendly programs and code that may be easily integrated into the client's website. They will possess to find SEO expert sites, who will help the company owner's site have many clients in internet marketing. This is since they are not SEO helpful and can affect your standing significantly. These SEO crawler programs are similar to Google's own crawlers and will provide you an overview showing exactly how your page will perform within SEO rankings. Google is making certain it takes longer to notice results from black and white hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, and intent on ensuring the flux in its SERPs centered largely on where the searcher is in the world during the particular time of the search, plus where the business is situated near to that searcher.

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