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evanvanness · 4 years

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Annotated edition, Week in Ethereum News, March 21, 2020 issue

Shill alert: Gitcoin’s 250k in matching grants is live. My grant is here. If you give because you particularly want the annotated edition to continue, could you add .11 to whatever you give? eg, 1.11 DAI or .11 ETH or .01011 ETH. The previous round went great but tracking what people like is hard.

The $250k includes $100k for tech, 50k for media, and 100k for public health, mostly related to covid. I’m curious as to how this goes - I find it very hard to evaluate the public health proposals, whereas Eth proposals are easy for me to evaluate. I mostly know the people, I know the ideas, etc. None of that is true for the public health category. There’s an opportunity for someone knowledgeable to (anonmously?) evaluate all the applicants and shape what gets funded.

Eth1

Latest core devs call. Tim Beiko’s notes.

Discussions (non-exhaustive list) about EIP inclusions in next hard fork: eip2537 (BLS12-381 curve precompile) final, so we can have eth2 light clients on eth1. eip2456 timestamp for scheduling instead of block number, eip2542 vs ungas, eip2046 reducing gas cost for static calls, and eip1962 generalized precompile

Geth v1.9.12 – eth_call no longer defaults to first account

Merry Go Round – an idea for syncing state, a la Bittorrent

Lots of talk in the core devs call about all the different EIPs being evaluated for the next fork.

In some ways this week is a synopsis of what’s happening at the protocol layer: people are working on the things for the next fork and arguing over what should go in, as well as what is ready to go in. The Geth team are chugging along keeping the majority of the network humming, and there is research and ideas being passed around about how to get the current Ethereum mainnet to be stateless.

Vitalik’s long-term roadmap below also does a good job of explaining the main things being worked on in eth1. I wasn’t exactly sure where to put it, probably incorrectly chose to put it in eth2 since so many things are long-term.

One interesting thing to note is that this is Vitalik’s “personal” vision. Of course most of it is not controversial, but he just did this by himself. Does it mean that it is Ethereum’s roadmap? No. It means that Vitalik came up with it at some point and decided to publish it - it does not necessarily reflect what everyone thinks. He didn’t build consensus, he just published what he was seeing on the day he wrote it down.

I noticed plenty of misinformation about Vitalik’s roadmap, as if none of this will happen for a decade. Quite the opposite is true: the top 2/3 of the page is being worked on right now. The Beacon Chain of eth2 is still set to launch in the next few months.

The bottom third of the graphic is much more speculative. Polynomial commitments instead of state roots? That just got published last week, that’s likely years away. When CBC Casper? I’m not sure but it’s not soon and the transition is far from clear - to me, anyway. Perhaps Vlad would give you a different answer.

Eth2

Danny Ryan’s Eth2 update

Latest what’s new in Eth2

Prysmatic client update – stable testnet for a month (but to be rebooted to current spec), surround vote slashing

Tutorial to run your own Lighthouse testnet

Vitalik’s personal long-term ETH roadmap, beyond eth2

Mikhail Kalinin’s writeup of his eth1<>eth2 bridge idea

Sensor fusion for BFT clock sync. Alex Vlasov’s research on hardening timestamps

State transition in Eth2 explainer from Nethermind’s Sly Gryphon

How Eth2 improves on Eth1’s weaknesses from Prysmatic’s Ivan Martinez

Gitcoin playlist of short eth2 explainer videos

I know probably no one else sees the order of things when I try to order things properly. So here’s who it went: Danny’s update was high-level. Ben’s was a bit more in the weeds. Even further into the weeds is client update and “run your own testnet node.” Then we got into Vitalik’s roadmap, which bridged the current eth2 with the future work. So then we got writeups of research like eth1/eth2 merge, hardening timestaps, before getting into a few explainers that were a bit more for broader audience.

The ordering flowed perfectly in my mind, but probably only in mine!

Layer2

Why iden3 is using zk-rollup for universal identities

Having been using Loopring’s exchange running on zk-rollup, gotta say: it’s a great experience. It’s like using a centralized exchange, only it’s a dex.

Stuff for developers

Solidity v0.5.17 (last?) release of 0.5.x (since 0.6 is out) disallowing overriding of private functions

TenderlyPro released – simulate txs, advanced analytics, debugging

Debugging transactions with Buidler and Truffle

Subspace v2, much easier to track events in React.

A demo on observing Defi with Subspace

svm: Solidity version manager

Choose how many IPFS replications you want pinned in each region with Pinata

Austin Griffith video on gas limits and gas prices

Intro to Eth for Python devs using web3py

Compare Eth API performance with the Versus tool

Tutorial on Ethereum RPCs, methods and calls in Infura

Mahesh Murthy updated his famous “Full Stack Hello World Voting Ethereum Dapp Tutorial” to use current libraries

Guide to building a margin trading platform on 0x

A quick start guide for devs to borrowing assets from Compound

Solidity went back to the v0.5 series to fix a bug that not everyone agrees is a bug!

Meanwhile, lots of interesting tools and tutorials this week, I suppose they all speak for themselves. I thought it was neat that Infura released a tool to let you compare API performance. Nice little bit of subtle bragging.

Ecosystem

A taxonomy of the advantages/disadvantages of different types of Eth wallets

How do we better onboard newcomers to Ethereum?

Custom text records on ENS

Onboarding newcomers is something I’ve been thinking about lately, and was tangential to my EthCC talk, which that post references. Community has decentralized, which is good, but also poses some challenges. A good portion of people who think of themselves as “Eth community” get their news from publications which are outright clickbait or have historically not done a very good job at ascertaining facts. Still churning over this one, should probably turn some of my talk into a series of blog posts myself.

Someone at EthCC told me that they summarized my talk as “Make r/ethereum great again,” which is fair. Yet while I continue to put a decent amount of time into r/ethereum, it’s not crystal clear whether we should try to revive it to be the main community discussion point. For one thing, the existing rule is that it’s English-only, which feels unfair, but perhaps necessary for moderation purposes. Can Reddit be the main ecosystem gathering point? Do we need new tools? Should they be web3-friendly sites, or should we keep Reddit as something that new people can find?

Enterprise

Baseline Protocol is now open source, a common system of record between enterprises

“blockchain will do, for networks of companies and business ecosystems, what ERP did for the single enterprise” – Paul Brody, Cornell Blockchain interview

Resolving key considerations for blockchain connectivity with PegaSys Orchestrate

Hyperledger Besu v1.4.1

First public meeting of EEA’s mainnet working group scheduled for April 3

EY and Brody have made a big bet on mainnet, and it appears to be paying off. In his interview, he framed the competition as between public mainnet and private chains, as EY is far ahead in expertise of using mainnet.

It was also super interesting to get some of the backstory that led to the IBM/Samsung washing machine in 2014.

Governance, DAOs, and standards

Technical overview of Vocdoni’s anonymous voting system

The two token structure of SingularDTV’s SnglsDAO

Application layer

USDC added as collateral for Maker to help restore DAI to 1:1 parity with USDC and more Dai liquidity in liquidation auctions and MKR auctions. In Maker parlance, liquidation auctions are flips, and MKR auctions to cover system deficit are flops

flops.live to track the MKR auctions

Backstop syndicate is live. Pool your DAI to buy MKR at a favorable price, if an auction should drop that low

NexusMutual declined claims from Maker liquidated auctions since smart contract cover doesn’t include the risk that only one bot bids on the auction

DeFiSaver and liquidated auctions, the oracle delay was a problem but did 12500 ETH worth of Aave flash loan volume over 4000 transactions

Also check out Covalent if you need advanced notification as a user

Balancer’s 80/20 liquidity pools

Making requests on ErasureBay

OpenLaw: smart clauses for digital legal agreements

Depending on how you count, DeFi was 5 or 7 out of 9 bullet points. That’s my running tracker that I like to occasionally check on.

Backstop was a very cool community effort. Love to see that people get together to make sure the system functions - and they were also incentivized to do so.

Tokens/Business/Regulation

Microsponsors: mint and auction your time as NFTs on a 0x market

Making sense of synthetic assets on Ethereum

Ryan Sean Adams on Covid-19 and crypto

Capital markets meltdown signals the birth of DeFi

Jonathan Joseph’s piece on how Black Thursday is the beginning of the DeFi area would have made the #Mostclicked if I’d tweeted it out just a bit later.

General

AZTEC’s Plookup tables for faster SNARK verification of digital signatures

Using machine learning classifiers and SNARKs to detect improper video transcoding in Livepeer

Benchmarking performance of Rescue and Poseidon hash functions vs MiMC

ICL paper says bZx flash loan attackers left money on the table

NYT’s Nathaniel Popper reports on how the lead dev of Venezuela’s Petro scam got screwed

The NYT on how the Venezuelan kleptocrats screwed the dev is the epitome of something-we-all-saw-coming, which you already knew if you’ve read the newsletter for a long time. I got criticism from a bunch of different corners (”oh that’s because you’re an American,” “you can’t say that, people will think it represents us,” etc) for calling the Petro a scam when it was announced, and I ignored it. I don’t know why you got into this space, but I didn’t get into it to help kleptocrat leftist authoritarians.

Meanwhile, lots of cool stuff in SNARKs, including in Livepeer about how they might be able to detect improper transcoding.

Finally, Cristian Espinoza translated last week’s annotated edition into Spanish, which to my knowledge is the first time that the annotated edition has been translated. Very cool, and support his Gitcoin grant for more translations!

I’ll add the #mostclicked here. Amusingly I had some maxis spreading more lies about me this week because my tweets auto-delete. So here’s a screenshot since that’s more durable than linking to a tweet

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carmineri · 5 years

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Six Disney Gifts Santa Can Bring Back to the North Pole (AKA The “Best” of the Disney Outlet Stores in 2018)

Today’s SATURDAY SIX is an annual tradition. Six Disney Gifts Santa Can Bring Back to the North Pole (AKA The “Best” of the Disney Outlet Stores in 2018). By now many TouringPlans blog readers know every single weekend brings an edition of the SATURDAY SIX. Some look at the world of Disney, some look at Universal, and some are just next level bananas. Some readers of this fine weekly column may not know that we also have The Magic, The Memories, and Merch! where every single month for over four years we have braved the insanity of the Orlando Premium Outlet parking lots to cover the two Disney outlet stores in Orlando. In fact, we even had a very special FIVE Year Anniversary edition that introduced the Disney Outlet Hall of Fame.

Now, while some Christmas dreams do come true, such as Ralphie Parker getting his official Red Ryder BB gun and us Americans being able to say “Merry Christmas” again (although for the life of me I can’t remember a time when we couldn’t,) other Christmas gifts deserve to go straight to the Island of Misfit Toys. Today we will take a look at some of those very items, starting with…

# 6 – A $130 Star Wars Hat

See? If anything the Outlet Report is an educational tool! In fact, instead of “Traditions,” incoming WDW Cast Members should be forced to read previous editions of the Outlet Report to fully understand what their job entails. In the tweet above, the item referenced was seen in the February edition of this fine blog series. At the time, we came across a piece of Star Wars merchandise that was inside a special box. Very few items of any brand come boxed at the Disney Outlet Store, let alone something from Star Wars. I mean we’re talking some high end brands too, including: Dooney & Bourke, Vera Bradley, and Pandora jewelry. None of them come boxed but this was, and it was Star Wars… STAR WARS. It had to be truly special right?

The Box.

Nope, it was an all-leather Star Wars baseball cap. The inside of the box was also themed with X-Wing fighters and the Rebel Alliance symbol. The original price of this hat was $128 and that is NOT a typo. It was “reduced” to just $37.99. Now, I consider myself a pretty big Star Wars fan, but the idea of me buying a near $40 Star Wars baseball cap would make for a good episode on the new Twilight Zone reboot. Maybe I’m the weird one though, because it turns out YouTube’s own @kyzman bought one at the original full price! Maybe we can convince Kyle to do a vlog explaining his thought process on buying this hat.

“We wasted the good surprise on you?!” – Big Daddy

One thing to keep in mind. This was the “Light Side” hat which means there must also be a “Dark Side” version for suckers collectors, so stay tuned for next year’s Outlet Reports for updates.

Speaking of Star Wars hats you’d have to be drunk on spiced Corellian ale to buy, how about this May the 4th Be With You one?

Anyone who buys this hat should be put on some sort of list. For both our protection and theirs.

When it comes to odd Star Wars items, this pin set featuring Star Wars characters as snowflakes may take the cake.

Snowflake.

# 5 – “I Conquered Splash Mountain” shirt for kids too small to ride Splash Mountain

We here at the SATURDAY SIX consider Splash Mountain to be one of our all-time favorite WDW attractions. Unfortunately, outside of photo frames, there aren’t too many Splash items that make it to the Outlets. Recently we did see a fun “I conquered Splash Mountain” shirt, but something seemed a bit peculiar…

Splash Mountain shirt.

This shirt was made for people “36-39 inches” in height.

But a quick look at Walt Disney World’s website reveals…

By the way, how many of you have seen the Splash Mountain Rap? It’s perfect for anyone who has mastered how to Do The Scarn.

youtube

# 4 – Minnie Mouse Metal Earth

This year started off with my arch nemesis – Metal Earth – releasing some new products. For the first time they put out some of the models in color, including an incredible WDW Main Entrance Sign. Not everything looked great though, as the Minnie Mouse Metal Earth looked like someone was trying to build a character in Mine Craft. It just looked horrible. Over on the Twitter machine, an Outlet Report reader accurately predicted its quick trip to the discount bins.

Lo and behold…

Minnie Mouse Metal Earth kit.

If you want weird looking Minnie things, don’t forget about this “hooded fleece.”

Snuggie or Nightmare Fuel, you decide.

# 3 – LeFou’s Brew shirt

Disney created the Twenty Eight & Main branding of clothing several years ago and billed it as being “inspired by period setting of Main Street USA.” It also said this line was – and I’m being completely serious here – “fine quality goods for the discerning gentlemen.” Now, pretty much every single one of these fine quality goods made its way to the Outlets, but the one that really stood out to us was this shirt for LeFou’s Brew.

Before we talk about this shirt, perhaps we should have a history lesson. When Universal unveiled the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade Village in 2010, to say it was a smash hit is the understatement of the century. Forbidden Journey became a game changing E-Ticket attraction, and possibly the first ride in theme park history where guests wanted to spend more time in the queue. No one expected the huge demand for wands, a phenomenon surely helped by the Ollivander’s wand ceremony having wands “choose” their new Muggle owners. But the biggest surprise of the land was the debut of Butterbeer. Universal sold over 1 Million Butterbeers in the first six months. That’s a jaw dropping number, but what may be even more shocking is that sales only went UP from there. In fact, earlier this year Universal celebrated selling its 20 Millionth Butterbeer! For Potter fans, Butterbeer was something they have always wanted, as it was routinely mentioned in the books and was seen being enjoyed on screen in the film series. As a bonus, Butterbeer actually tasted as good as everyone wanted it to be, especially the delicious butterscotch-like foam “head” on top that gives many guests a “got milk” moustache.

Upon seeing the overwhelming popularity of Butterbeer, Disney came to one conclusion: guests must want a kid-friendly drink that looks like frosty cold beer. VOILA! LeFou’s Brew was created by committee.

To Disney’s dismay, LeFou’s Brew did not become the roaring success that Butterbeer was. Whereas Butterbeer is featured prominently in the Harry Potter universe, there was zero connection between LeFou’s Brew and its source material; the beloved Beauty & the Beast. The taste of LeFou’s Brew can be described most accurately as frozen apple juice, which is something no one was asking for.

Thankfully that did not stop Twenty Eight & Main from making a LeFou’s Brew shirt. This is basically like Ed Hardy making a Pepsi Clear shirt by the way. The overall design of this t-shirt is so next level bananas it actually does a disservice to the word bananas. Check out this over the top stitching on a t-shirt.

Whaaaaat?!

Here is a photo of the front collar of the shirt. If you notice, there is an embroidered Twenty Eight & Main logo on the inside of the shirt.

But then check this out. There is a SECOND embroidered logo on the backside of the shirt, in the exact same spot. This is insane. I don’t wear many Lacoste polos, but I’m relatively certain there isn’t a second embroidered gator logo on the inside of the shirt.

Another completely BONKERS shirt found at the Outlets this year was this one featuring Mickey Mouse. In this design, Mickey is doing the hand gesture for “framing” someone or something in a picture. That’s completely normal, and for the vacation kingdom it actually make sense because so many of us are taking pictures everywhere we go. What’s not normal is that Mickey is upside down on the shirt. WHY?

# 2 – Avatar “creature pen set”

When Pandora: The World of Avatar opened last year I was in just as much awe of the land as anyone. Flight of Passage became my favorite attraction at Walt Disney World. Sa’Tuli Canteen was wonderful. All the little details in Pandora were perfect, and Disney even found a way to troll Tom Staggs. The entire area was a grand slam home run except for one place: the Windtraders gift shop. You can’t really place the blame on Disney for this. The film Avatar came out in 2009 and still holds the record for highest grossing film of all time, and its not even close. Avatar could get people to the movie theater like no film in history, but there was one thing the film couldn’t do: sell toys. It also couldn’t sell t-shirts. Or posters. Or books. Or ANYTHING. For whatever reason, the connection that people had with the movie Avatar ended as soon as they left the theater. So Disney had to try and create a market that didn’t exist even when Avatar was a worldwide box office monster.

So we can’t fault Disney for the fact that almost every item in Pandora made its way to the clearance racks. Almost all of these items were D.O.A. and had almost no chance to catch on. Some were doomed to fail though, and that’s what we have here with the Creature Pen Set.

This pen set was one of the first items that arrived from Pandora and is absolutely CRAZY. You may be wondering: who was this made for?! Kids have no idea what any of these creatures are, and even if they did it is highly unlikely they would want their skulls on a pen unless they are Sid from Toy Story. The pen set also had an original retail price of $24.99. This would make sense if the set was released in 2154 – the year that Avatar takes place in – but not so much in 2018. So the pen set went to the Outlets pretty much immediately and was reduced to $7.99. At this price, which was 65% off, they still didn’t sell.

Each month I would come to the Outlets and these pen sets would still be there. Meanwhile just about every item in the store had been completely turned over and replaced with something else. Finally they lowered the price even further – to $3.99 – and of course I bought a set.

Oh, it got even better. The pens had no caps, and no way of retracting the tip, so who knows how you are supposed to store them. You see those colors on the end of each pen? Would make sense if that’s what the color of the ink was, right? Nope. They all write in black ink. This may be the most ill-conceived pen design in the history of mankind.

The “Bud Light at Via Napoli” is a true story. Its the only time I have ever had a server vigorously try and talk me out of ordering something at a restaurant.

I think we could do a whole Outlet Special just on items from Pandora: The World of Avatar merch, but the following pic shows you pretty much all you need to know. Anyone who has gone to the Outlets knows that people will buy anything there…ANYTHING. It’s like a Black Friday sale at Wal-Mart except its every day of the year. Even reduced, the items from Pandora often sit at the store untouched causing the rare “double discount” where the already lowered price has to be dropped even farther.

No offense Disney, but Dollar General has better toys than this.

# 1 – This Hat

“No. No! The hat was supposed to have attitude!” – The creation of Poochy This Hat.

This Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster starring Aerosmith hat is one that Disney has been selling inside the parks for a while now but I’ve never actually seen one bought buy a human being. The love child of Guy Fieri and Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka, this hat is exactly what you would have Dr. Facilier wear if you wanted him to look ridiculous instead of scary.

Art by Juliette Elton.

Honorable Mention – Donald Dock pen

What the dock?

Now, don’t get me wrong there were a whole bunch of incredible items that hit the Outlets this year too, including several from my Disney Merchandise Bucket List (AKA “items I’ve always wanted but cost way too much money to actually BUY.”) One of my bucket list items was the Contemporary Resort monorail toy accessory. Keep in mind, I don’t have a monorail toy set, but I’ve always wanted one of these Contemporary accessories. When one finally showed up at the Outlets, I just about lost my mind and bought it immediately.

Contemporary Resort.

They have also made monorail accessories for the Polynesian and the Grand Flo. If any SAT SIX reader has those in their possession and wants to leave them to me in their Last Will & Testament, I promise to then buy the actual monorail toy and create my own display. Ironically enough, this would actually lead to MY death once my significant other found out. However, that would allow me to pass the toys on in my will, and I’m pretty sure that’s what the song Circle Of Life is all about.

Contemporary.

Here’s another one I’ve always wanted when seeing it in the gift shops, a giant Tree of Life toy. This thing is awesome.

One super cool thing about the Tree of Life toy is that the base of the tree has animals “built” into it, several of which you can actually take out and play with.

“And this is where they park the car when they bring the sick animals in from the Safaris.”

Disney sells a lot of awesome postcards in the Marketplace Co-Op at Disney Springs. Unfortunately most of them are $5.95. I have a lot of friends and family, but not many of them that I love “$5.95 postcard” much. However at the Outlets, these postcards go down to $1.99. I can justify that price and have bought many of them over the years, sometimes just to use as tiny art prints because I love the artwork so much, such as this one featuring Mr. Toad.

Postcards.

Haven’t had too many regrets at the Outlets over the years, because I live by the philosophy that if you see something you like you should just buy it because you may never see it again* I thought about buying this art print featuring bird houses themed to the pavilions of World Showcase. There’s also a ton of Disney bird characters. Kicking myself for passing on this one as the concept is just wonderful.

Art.

This Lotso coffee cup holder is just too bonkers to believe and makes me wonder what other type of crazy products Disney makes for their Asian parks.

I think maybe the biggest hit all year long for the kiddos in our family was this Pirates of the Caribbean skull from Shanghai Disneyland. The skull opens up and is filled with smaller toys, including rubber insects and plastic coins (“treasure!”) The eyeball on the front of the skull can also be popped out and played with.

What’s included inside the skull.

Captain American is my favorite superhero. The Disney Cruise Line puts out my favorite Disney merchandise. Combine them together and its like the day peanut butter met chocolate. LOVE this shirt.

Captain America shirt.

A Rescue Rangers logo shirt? Like I wasn’t going to buy that!

I’m not a huge fan of Mickey Ears headbands, but I love Figment, I really love big chef’s hats, and I really REALLY love the Epcot Food & Wine Festival Logo that was designed to look like the old Schoolhouse Rocks stuff.

For the last several years Disney has been doing a neat Easter Egg gimmick at EPCOT where guests buy a map with stickers and go around the park trying to find themed Easter Eggs. When you show your completed map at the end, you get to pick out one of the small plastic Easter Eggs as a reward. When these plastic eggs come to the Outlets they are often scooped up by the eBay pirates or people who put together “subscription boxes,” but sometimes there zfd eggs left over for the rest of us plebians.

So there you have it: Six Gifts Santa Can Bring Back to the North Pole! See you next weekend for the latest installment of the SATURDAY SIX, where we’ll look at something fun from the world of Disney and Universal. If you enjoyed yourself, be sure to check out The Magic, The Memories, and Merch! articles, or, for your listening pleasure, check out the E-Ticket Report podcast. You can also follow Your Humble Author on Twitter (@derekburgan).

If you enjoyed this article, you will surely like the following:

Everything You Wanted To Know About The Disney Outlet Stores But Were Afraid To Ask\

6 Pieces of Disney Merchandise We REALLY Want to See

The Best RESORT-SPECIFIC Merchandise at Walt Disney World

Special Thanks to The Elite Brandon Glover, Captain Cruiseline Scott Sanders of the world famous Disney Cruise Line Blog, Jammin’ Julia Mascardo, the SAT SIX Fun Squad of Parkscope Joe and Nick, and Hermione Granger’s tutor Megan Stump for their invaluable assistance with this article. The SAT SIX is inspired each week by goofballs Aengus Mackenzie and LitemAndHyde and you Potterheads will enjoy Meg’s other blog work over at the Central Florida Slug Club.

FINAL PLUG! Did you know The 2019 Unofficial Guide to Universal Orlando has a special edition of the SATURDAY SIX in it?That’s right, ANOTHER NEW ONE EXCLUSIVE TO THIS EDITION!Finally, someone came up with an actual reason to read a book. ORDER this baby now!

2014?!

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bharatiyamedia-blog · 5 years

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Eike Batista, Man Who Misplaced $35 Billion In One 12 months Has Some Recommendation For Elon Musk

http://tinyurl.com/y5mmdqkt Brazilian entrepreneur Elke Batista misplaced a fortune in mining and oil and gasoline industries. Strolling down a busy avenue in Rio de Janeiro one current afternoon, we ran into the Brazilian who’s greatest recognized for shedding $35 billion in a single yr. After initially attempting to deflect questions, he begrudgingly invited us alongside for a lunch that lasted two hours. The person, after all, is Eike Batista, who as soon as famously informed Mexico’s Carlos Slim to be careful as a result of, he mentioned, he was poised to surpass him because the world’s wealthiest individual. Slim has since pale to ninth on the listing, Batista to oblivion. Now, he is staging a comeback. Or attempting to, at the least. He is additionally obtained a lot of concepts for a person on the recent seat proper now that he sees as one thing of a kindred spirit, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and he is fast to spew criticism at these he feels did in his empire. Batista sat on the head of the desk at one in every of his favourite Japanese eating places in Rio, holding courtroom and quizzing companions about Brazil’s ongoing oil bonanza whereas he scribbled calculations on a spot mat. Pinned to his black sport coat was a golden solar, the brand of his erstwhile commodities empire that when made him the world’s eighth-richest individual, and a family identify in Brazil. “Individuals do not even know it is working,” Batista mentioned between bites of shrimp tempura, describing a port he owned that now hundreds large oil tankers sure for China. “It is greater than Manhattan!” Different former ventures are all buzzing alongside below overseas possession, and stay a supply of delight. Then a slight frown got here throughout his face. “Besides the oil.” He was referring to OGX, which went bust below a mountain of debt after an unsuccessful exploration marketing campaign. He blames President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva for succumbing to a bout of useful resource nationalism, leaving solely shallow-water scraps for him. Then, with out lacking a beat, he drew parallels to an acquaintance who’s within the type of tight spot he is aware of too properly. “Elon Musk is affected by this proper now,” he mentioned. Like OGX earlier than it, Musk constructed Tesla on the premise of larger gross sales than have been delivered, and the failure despatched shares tumbling. Phrases like “distressed credit score” and “restructuring” entered the dialog. It is the most important decliner within the Nasdaq 100 Index this yr. Whereas variations between the lads are obtrusive — Musk needs his electrical vehicles to interrupt the world’s fossil gasoline habit — the sudden downfall of Batista’s oil firm affords a cautionary story for Tesla buyers. Each have attacked quick sellers with caustic tweets and made market-moving bulletins on social media, then got here below scrutiny from regulators for doing so. (Brazil’s securities fee this week banned Batista from operating publicly-traded firms for seven years and slapped him with a 536-million-real ($132 million) superb.) In addition they regretted having taken their firms public as soon as markets turned towards them, and suffered high-profile employees departures. The 2 have a private relationship. In 2008 Musk traveled to Rio throughout one other tough second, Batista mentioned. A failed rocket launch had put Musk’s house program unsure. In addition they met at Tesla’s manufacturing unit in California, and Musk returned to Rio in 2014 for the World Cup the place Batista assisted along with his social agenda. “I helped him to go to some events.” OGX nonetheless exists below a unique identify as a minor producer, not the large Batista envisioned. Tesla, too, dangers being relegated to a distinct segment participant amid rising competitors from established automobile makers who’re flooding the market with new fashions. Batista’s massive concern for the corporate is the standard — or lack-there-of, he says — of the inside of Tesla vehicles. It is an uncommon perspective. Not even essentially the most bearish Tesla bears are inclined to dwell a lot on the seats. “You’ll be able to select a Mercedes, Audi, or Jaguar which are cheaper than his SUVs, and also you sit in there and see the inside; you’ll be able to’t compete!” mentioned Batista, a former speedboat racer and automobile buff who displayed a Lamborghini in his front room till it was seized. “In case you do not right this, you fall behind.” Batista would not see Tesla bringing down Musk’s wider group of firms the way in which OGX sank his, even when the automobile maker would not endure. In any case, Musk has already altered the course of historical past by forcing the broader auto business to provide electrical vehicles. “He provoked a good looking and big transfer towards change,” Batista mentioned, after which made a comparability to himself. “We’re perfectionists, we’re nation-builders.” The dialog continued the following day at his workplace, a extra modest house than he occupied in his heyday, however nonetheless providing a view of Rio’s iconic Sugarloaf mountain and adorned by trophies from the previous. A surf board as soon as ridden by Gabriel Medina, Brazil’s two-time world champion, rested in a nook. A title belt given to him by a blended martial arts fighter held on his wall, and a espresso desk featured a pair of samurai swords that have been additionally a present. The person who as soon as repeatedly graced Brazil’s entrance pages declined to have his picture taken. He performed movies showcasing the businesses he as soon as owned, then spoke in regards to the 15 “unicorns” he is “breeding in my storage” that can restore him to prominence. One plan entails producing thousands and thousands of tons of calcium phosphate to sequester carbon emissions from energy plant stacks and automobile engines. One other is toothpaste that regenerates enamel, although the tubes he handed across the convention desk have been for now crammed with water. Batista says he is trying ahead, and is untroubled by the previous. “The issue is for folks to grasp that my relation to cash may be very totally different. I did not thoughts breaking my empire,” Batista mentioned, including that he shortly offered his firms on a budget. “You’ll be able to’t let tasks of that scale cease; if it stops for two, 3, four years, generally you’ll be able to’t catch up.” (Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.) 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kayawagner · 6 years

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Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 2

This is part 2 of my review of the Pathfinder Playtest from Paizo. You can see part 1 here where I cover the first three sections of the book (Overview through Classes). In this part of the review, I’ll comment on the next four sections (Skills through Spells). The next review should cover Advancement and Options, and Playing the Game, which will be a big chunk of the review process since this is the “meat” of the game. Lastly, I’ll finish up with Game Mastering through Appendices.

If you’re interested in reading along with me during the review, you can pick up the free PDF of the playtest rulebook at Paizo’s site:

One note that I forgot to drop into my first review is that I’m making notes as I go through a section, then I do my best to accurately expand on those notes “in media res,” so that I’m giving an accurate depiction of my thoughts as they come to me as I read the text. Certainly, there will be some things that pop up later in the book that may change my mind, but I wanted to be clear that this is not a “I’ve read the whole book and am now making comments.”

Skills

A new concept for Pathfinder is the use of skills in untrained and trained manners.

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A new concept for Pathfinder is the use of skills in untrained and trained manners. There are some actions a character can take even without being trained in a skills, but the more potent or advanced uses of a skill are reserved for those with training. This is pretty cool. I like this change in the game. In the playtest book, the list of untrained uses feels a little longer than the trained uses do. Perhaps this will be adjusted in the final product. I really hope to see the trained uses for the skills expanded upon.

While the list is shorter in this edition, I’m not going to go into each skill. I’m just going to comment on some of the larger changes. I do like the shorter list of skills, though. They feel more focused and on target for what a modern roleplaying game should be. Having said that, I think each skill needs more actions (more on this later when we get to feats) to make them worthwhile to the game.

Identifying Items/Effects

I’ve always felt it was too easy in Pathfinder to identify items.

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Something I find interesting is that identifying magic items or magical effects is now a skill check without needing the spells of “detect magic” or “identify.” This takes a full hour per item/effect. I like this change for several reasons. First, I’ve always felt it was too easy in Pathfinder to identify items. In the “old school” versions of D&D, it was exceedingly difficult to identify items. I think this approach strikes a fine balance. Secondly, this skill-based approach aligns more closely with what we read in fantasy literature, which is all about the storytelling. This brings some storytelling back into the game. While I’m on this topic, I also noticed that there are several skills that can be leveraged for identifying magic. These are arcane, nature, occultism, and religion. It’s pretty neat that they applied this use to all of these areas.

Aside: Read Magic

The ability to read magical (or occult or holy) texts is now skill-based. As a matter of fact, the spell “read magic” is no longer in the book. It just takes some time, effort, skill, and a decent die roll to interpret magical writings. Like with identifying magic items/effects, I like this change quite a bit because it more closely aligns our collaborative storytelling efforts with what we read in fantasy novels.

CMB/CMD/Attack Actions

I hadn’t noticed that CMB and CMD weren’t part of the character sheet or character generation process until I got to the athletics skill. Some of the uses of the skill allow for tripping, grappling, shoving, etc. However, instead of the CMB/CMD combination, Paizo has streamlined these actions even more! I’m impressed that they’ve managed to pull this off. Now, it’s a skill check against a saving throw (usually Fortitude or Reflex) to see if the action has the desired effect.

Downtime Skills

This turns downtimes into more fun roleplaying instead of the less fun rollplaying.

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Crafting, lore, and perform can be used between exploring and adventuring to earn some coin for the characters. The subsystem for earning these coins is consistent, easy to implement, and quick to resolve. By moving some of the crunchy bits into a simpler system, there can be more focus on what goes on with the characters during downtime other than doing the necessary math to figure out how much income someone earns. This turns downtimes into more fun roleplaying instead of the less fun rollplaying.

Lore

It appears that the lore skill is now the combination of knowledge and profession skills from the previous edition. I like this simplification because it helps players pick skills in a faster manner, reduces confusion in the game, and allows for a greater breadth of skill choices to be made. I’m not sure how many times I’ve been asked something along the lines of, “What is profession? What do I use it for? How it is different from craft or knowledge?” Dropping these two skills together under a single entity is a boon.

Society

This skill feels misnamed. I like the actions and activities under it. They make sense. However, this is more of a “streetwise” skill than a “society” skill. Paizo should consider renaming the skill to streetwise.

Feats

(Author note: I’m using “feat” here even though I like the word “talent” better because I think that’s what Paizo has turned them into for this version of Pathfinder. I’ll stick with Paizo’s naming convention to avoid confusion.)

Of the skill-based feats, there are some pretty cool ones in here.

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Remember how I said above under the “Skills” header that I wanted more uses for the skills to make them worthwhile? Yeah. I take that back. Now that I’m in the feats section, I see that a vast majority of the feats (all but 20) are there to give skills more oomph. Now I see why characters get so many feats at character creation and as they level up. I was truly concerned that a 1st level character would have a chain of feats that would overpower them out of the gate. It doesn’t appear to be the case.

Again, I’m not going to go into each feat in detail. There just isn’t enough room in a single article to do so. I’ll just say here that there are some really cool feats that allow for both player and GM interactions with the characters’ skills that can drive a story forward (or sideways) in an excellent story-driven manner. It feels to me, as I read through the feats, that Paizo is taking on a bit more “fluff” into their rules and a little less “crunch.” What I mean by this is that Paizo seems to be taking on less of a “tactical simulation of combat” feel that has put some people off and shifting their balance a little toward the story side of things. Don’t get me wrong, Pathfinder still has those crunchy bits for when combat arrives, but that’s not all there is to this game.

Of the 20 “general feats,” only one requires a level higher than first. This gives quite a few options for starting characters, but I’d like to see the list expanded in the final book. While reading through the feats, my gut tells me there is room for growth of options there, but I can’t quite pin down what’s missing. A more thorough analysis than a read-through would probably reveal this to me.

Of the skill-based feats, there are some pretty cool ones in here, and there are quite a few options to customize and make characters special in their own way. No two masters of a single skill will look the same or use that particular skill the same. This intrigues me and piques my interest quite a bit. A friend of mine complained about the number of feats as “too many options,” but I don’t think there’s quite enough here to cause analysis paralysis, to be honest. It’s a good set to work with, and I can see the list being expanded in the final release or in expansion books.

Equipment

Equipment is equipment, right? Well, there are some subtle changes to how equipment is acquired and handled in game that need to be illuminated. Again, I’m not going to go into each bit of armor, each weapon, each piece of gear, etc. here. I’m going to talk about the rules exposed in this section.

Rarity

Items now have a “rarity” attribute. These start with common and range through uncommon to rare and finally land at unique. A color code is used to denote the rarity when an item is listed, which I’m not a big fan of. A single letter (C, U, R, X) inside parentheses after the item name would suffice. There are also folks that are color blind out there, so the red (uncommon) or blue (unique) item listing may be problematic for them. It’s best to stick with black (or dark hued inks) on white (or pale hues) for text, Paizo. I hope someone on the development team sees this and perks up a bit. Also, either I missed uncommon/rare items in the equipment lists, or they’re not present in the playtest book. I couldn’t find anything in the regular equipment other than black text (common items). Having said all this, I do like the potential I see in the rarity of items.

Item Level

When I saw this, I panicked. I thought Paizo was going the way of MMORPGs and stating that characters couldn’t have or use certain items until they were of a certain level. Fortunately, this is not the case. The “item level” listing is a guideline for GMs, so they don’t accidentally hand out something as treasure that might unbalance the game.

Bulk

Instead of weight and strength determining a weight limit for encumbrance or not, Paizo abstracted things away to a degree. Now items have a “bulk” listing, which determines how much stuff a character can carry before slowing down or being forced to drop something. The system looks straightforward and simple enough that I might start using encumbrance again. (I currently “hand wave” encumbrance for my players in Pathfinder, so long as they don’t get crazy with it.) There’s even a page (along with some handy tables) dealing with items made for a creature of different size. It’s pretty easy to figure out the bulk of a small creature trying to use or carry something intended for a large creature.

Item Quality

Items have “levels” like characters skills do. They can be normal, expert, master, or legendary in make. This isn’t even counting the magical weapons. This is a cool expansion on the “masterwork” concept that’s been around since D&D 3.0. The hardness, cost, and bonuses of the item go up as the quality increases. This new feature in the system can be leveraged in “low magic” settings where most sword aren’t be magical, but legendary weapon crafters can produce high quality swords that are +3 without magic. This spawned quite a few setting ideas for me. I really love this shift and addition to the game. Oh, before I forget, there are rules for items of “poor” quality as well. This is an excellent addition for settings like Dark Sun.

Spells

This article is already getting a little long in the tooth, so I’ll try to make this as brief as possible while giving spells the attention they deserve. Like with the other sections, I’m not going to delve into each spell.

Heightened Spells

A caster can choose to prepare a spell at higher spell slots to increase the effects of the spell. Not all spells can be heightened, but many can. The example in the book is that a fireball (3rd level) will do 6d6 damage. If you heighten the spell (by putting in a 4th level slot), it will do 8d6 damage instead. This system provides for greater flexibility in how prepared spellcasters do their thing and plan for the day. It’s subtle, but effective, and I like it. There are also rules for the spontaneous casters to be able to do the same thing, but the rules are subtly different.

Spell Schools and Traits

The typical spell schools we’ve all grown to love and adore are still present in the game. The various spell traits that exist within the Pathfinder playtest book are also outlined and clearly explained. The list of traits is a bit short, though, as I found some spells without explained traits. However, the “good” trait is pretty clear, but it would be best to explain them all for those who are new to Pathfinder or roleplaying.

Rarity of Spells

In the equipment section, I talked about the different rarity of items. A similar system of common, uncommon, and rare exists within the spell lists. Players are restricted from automatically choosing uncommon and rare spells without the GM’s permission. One thing of note here is that Paizo uses a superscript of U or R for uncommon and rare spells instead of the strange color-coding mentioned in the equipment section. I hope that Paizo finds a proper superscript for “Unique” equipment as well and applies the superscript (or some other symbology) to use to alleviate the color blindness issue that some players may have.

Actions in Spellcasting

Each part of casting a spell (material, somatic, and verbal) takes an action.

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As I mentioned in the first part of this review, each PC gets 3 actions per round. I found an interesting quirk here in the spellcasting section. Each part of casting a spell (material, somatic, and verbal) takes an action. This means that a spell with all three components to cast will consume all three actions of the caster during that round. Something with only somatic and verbal will take two of the three actions, and so on. I had stop and ponder the implications of this for a bit. I can see the game balancing effects of this approach. However, I had to flip the very last page of the book (where the spell sheet is at) and look at it. Having a variable number of actions for different spells requires the proper bookkeeping, memorization, or stopping the game to look things up to figure out how many actions a particular spell consumes. The spell sheet does have an “actions” section with three blanks in it for each spell. This will assist in keeping the game running smoothly if players do the right thing and fill out the sheet with all details as they acquire new spells.

Spell Details

While I’m not going to dig through each spell in the book, I wanted to point out that powers gained from various ancestries, classes, feats, backgrounds, etc. that are spell-like in nature are comingled in the alphabetical list of spells. This can easily lead to confusion because the section is clearly labeled “Spells” in the tabs on the right edge of the page. I would recommend that Paizo take the “Spells” label and change it to “Spells and Powers,” so players new to the game can easily track down the specific section of the book they need to find the details about all of the supernatural things their characters can do.

Also, in the spell details section, Paizo falls back to a colored background for the rarity of spells to indicate uncommon and rare. Again, I’m not a fan of this because it requires rote memorization (or a spot in the GM screen) to translate the rarity of a spell from color to meaning. Sorry to harp on this poor decision by Paizo, but it’s really gotten to me. I’ll step away from the soapbox on this topic.

Conclusion, For Now

Coming into reviewing the Pathfinder playtest, I was hesitant to even pick up the book, but I wanted to give the game a fair shake. So far, I’m liking what I’m seeing. Yes, there are limited choices within the book, but it’s also a “slim” book (for a core Paizo book, at least) at only 428 pages. Compare that against the current edition’s core book size of 575 pages, there’s ample room to expand and grow and improve.

So far, I think I would play this game as a replacement for the current Pathfinder. However, as the saying goes, “The proof’s in the pudding.” So far, I’ve been reading about the “ingredients” of the overall recipe. The next few segments of the book will be telling on how good the actual pudding is going to be.

I’ll roll this part of the review to a close, so I can get to how to mix the ingredients together and make the pudding. You’ll be seeing section 3 of the review here in about two weeks if all goes according to plan. See ya then!

Pathfinder Playtest Review, Part 2 published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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topicprinter · 7 years

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I won't get into a big back story as this will probably get too long. So, long story short, this is my 3rd website/business - and the only successful one so far. I look at the first 2 sites as learning experiences, and boy did I learn a lot. From registering a domain, setting up wordpress, customising a theme, seo, email marketing, automation funnels, social media and more. Now, working on this third site, I feel like I have a proper knowledge base and experience to fall back on.So, without further ado, here's how I made $550 profit ($1080 in sales) in the last month, my strategies, and why I think it's only going to be picking up steam from here.I started the website very late 2016, and have been working on it properly since Feb 2017. The foundation of my marketing plan is SEO, this is the long term strategy. I'm then employing short term strategies to drive a little bit of traffic and make these first few sales, as well as working on a funnel to convert more subscribers into sales.Note: from my previous experience, I knew to try and test various marketing channels too see what works. But I haven't had a proper framework for this. That is until last night, when I came across this amazing resource: https://sumo.com/stories/marketing-strategy So over the next few days I'm going to move all my various marketing notes across to their spreadsheet and start to properly track all of my traffic sources.SEO - The FoundationWithout revealing too much information about my site, it's in the category of vehicle security. However, I've chosen a very specific section of vehicle security and am targeting that. For your information, the target market is the everyday individual, so the $1000+ in sales wasn't made from selling to some big company but the average joe.Because it's a pretty narrow topic, there isn't a huge amount of competition in search. However, because it's a pretty narrow topic, there aren't a huge amount of keywords to target.I found 2 main keywords to target (they're two different ways to say the same thing - my topic name). These keywords each had 4-8 very similar variations all with some searches behind them. In the end, these two keywords and their variations had ~8,000 searches/month combined. In my research I also found a few more specific keywords which I plan to create individual posts around.Site Structure:Site structure might not seem like a hugely important part of SEO but when you're a small site, it can make all the difference. Plus it is sooo much easier to plan out and set up when you're first starting a site, rather than trying to overhaul the structure of an existing site. It also makes planning content much easier, improves user flow, and has a whole slew of other benefits.For a seriously awesome guide to setting up silo structures with your site check out this: https://www.authorityhacker.com/site-architecture/Backlinks:Now that I had my keywords worked out (and placed throughout my site), I had my silo structure set up, and all I needed was backlinks. This is where I started to get lost..There's just so many different link building strategies out there now that I had no idea where to start. I began by researching and recording various strategies, but it just went on and on. After a bit of stressing and not sure what to do I sent an email to Glen Allsop (the main man at Viperchill.com) and he had the best advice anyone could've given me.Start slow, and start simple.He recommended that I start out with only 1 link building strategy, and see how that went. If it didn't work, tweak my email outreach or try a different strategy.The strategy he recommended: Guest Posting.I know, you're probably rolling your eyes right now but you really shouldn't be.After a little bit of research I came across this awesome guide explaining how to set up a guest posting machine. It's a pretty awesome read... https://www.authorityhacker.com/buy-contextual-links/I've been doing the guest posting for the last 5-6 weeks and so far I've got 5 posts live. The rankings are starting to increase a bit and the clicks are starting to trickle in.http://imgur.com/a/B8ETGThe expenses for the guest posting rounded out to as follows:$30 for VA to find ~300 related guest posting sites (I only ended up pitching to around half of these sites and that's where I got the 5 live posts from). $16 x 5 for each of the articles.So all in all that's $110 for 5 decent quality links.Quickfire StrategiesI wanted to try and get quicker payoff than what seo would allow, so I've employed a few strategies to get my first few visitors, my first few subscribers and what ultimately led to my first 3 sales.1. QuoraWhen I was looking for a quickfire strategy I didn't just pick quora out of thin air. I had a google around various Q&A sites and found that quora had the most questions for me, many of the other large Q&A sites had almost no questions about my topic.Once quora was decided upon, I searched for every possible question related to my topic and recorded them all in a spreadsheet. I ended up with around 25-30 questions.I then set myself the small target of answering 1-2 of these questions each day. I made sure to try and be helpful, and include links back to my content.Note: After answering 5-10 of these questions I found I could copy and paste parts of my other answers to make the process a lot quicker.In the end I've answered 27 of these questions, which has brought in over 8,500 question views. But, the real question is how much traffic and subscribers did this bring in?http://imgur.com/vgpo64DI'm not exactly sure, because I didn't set up good enough tracking from the start. However, in the last week my site has seen 54 visits from quora according to google analytics, with 6 of these people subscribing.The bulk of the quora traffic and subscribers came from one question, which has accounted for 4,700 of the total views.2. Twitter AutomationI've had some luck with twitter in the past, and because it's so automated, I figured I could set it up for a while and forget about it. I've only set it up a few days ago, so we'll see how this experiment turns out.My plan is to use social quant (socialquant.net) to automatically follow/unfollow and so to gain subscribers. I've then created around 40 twitter posts (some plain text questions, custom images, etc) and scheduled them through social pilot (https://socialpilot.co) which is $5/month.I've set up tweets that are promoting a few guides on my site, as well as a pinned tweet to a discount on my main product.Now that it's all set up I'll leave it for a month and see how it goes.So, what affect have all these strategies actually had on traffic, subscribers and sales?It was a slowish start but things are starting to grow. Here are my analytics stats for roughly the last 30 days..http://imgur.com/8zH4GRqAnd here they are from the start of the year...http://imgur.com/MDTHHYOAs you can see, the majority of the traffic has come in the last 30 days. I believe that's the seo starting to pay off. At the start of March I also went in and edited my most popular Quora answers to include a link to my site right at the top of the post, and I think this has brought in a nice bit of traffic.But traffic doesn't mean much if they don't subscribe/convert. So here are my email subs, it's actually going better than I thought!http://imgur.com/xacymDHHowever, there's one thing I've been noticing and I'm not sure if it's cause for concern. As you can see in the graph above, there's a difference of about 20 subscribers between those who filled in the form, and those who actually confirmed their subscription.However, in Mailchimp I've only had a total of 60 subscribers being added across (13 of which unsubscribed).Somewhere, 20 subscribers have gone missing. If anybody has any insights they would be much appreciated.So, all in all this has lead to 6 sales of my product which is over $1000 in gross profit and $550 in net profit.Not too bad hey! It's giving me a lot more motivation to work on the site even more.My Product's Pricing and ProfitAt the moment, I've only got 1 product on my site. I personally get tired of all these sites with a hundred different product options. Sometimes too much choice makes it difficult for the customer to choose anything at all!So my plan is to simplify things, and have one main product for each problem area in my niche.I managed to find a local supplier for this product. His prices are a fair bit higher than the internet, but he's a local that I can drive to have a meeting with, rather than talking to a Chinese supplier over skype. Plus, his products seem to be pretty decent quality.It costs me $80 to buy one, costs $10-$20 to ship to customer, and I sell them for $180 (sometimes $150 and $130 for the different promotions).So even though I'm paying my supplier more, there is still a very good profit margin there.How I'm Converting Subs to SalesIt's funny, because these three sales I keep talking about actually came in before I added this sales funnel in.Anyway, I feel like this little funnel should be able to generate a decent amount of sales.I'm using the Thrive Ultimatum plugin (https://thrivethemes.com/ultimatum/) to set up a scarcity campaign.All new subscribers get added into an introductory email funnel and go through this scarcity campaign.The first email in the funnel introduces an offer to get $50 off my main product but it only lasts for a week. There's a link to my sales page and it has counters on it with the week long countdown.I email them every day for the next week with helpful content I've created on my site. Somewhere in every single one of these emails I'll include a link back to the $50 discount and tell them that time's running out.I've only had 2-3 subs go through this funnel so far, so I'm interested to see how this little sales funnel will pan out.What's Next From Here?Here are goals for the next 30 days.Firstly, I want to secure two more guest posting opportunities.Secondly, I want to experiment with a second backlinking technique. I've found a data heavy article that's pretty interesting and has around 25 decent links. I'm hiring someone on Fiverr to create a nice little infographic of the data, which I'll then post on my site along with a commentary on the original article. I'm then going to email each of the sites that have written about the data heavy article, and see if they want to include the infographic I created. If I can get even 3 links off this I'll be happy - it's very minimal work.Third, I'm going to add the adwords remarketing pixel to my site and set up a retargeting campaign. I'm going to target people who have visited my site but not subscribed, and I'm going to offer them a discount on my main product. I'm only displaying the ads in search, and for specific terms the viewer has to search first. For example, they visit my site, then 2 weeks later they search for a specific keyword and my ad will show up.This is the first time I've ever used adwords, so if anyones got advice I'd really appreciate it. I've also got a $100 coupon for adwords so I may as well test it, I feel like it has a good chance of working.Finally, I need a way to boost initial subscriber numbers so I have a solid base to later promote content, discounts etc. to. My plan for this is to do a giveaway. Over the next 30 days I want to have this all set up and ready to promote. Anyway, this post is already way to long so I'll let you guys know in the next update how I'm going to set up and promote the giveaway.And if anyone actually read this whole thing, I commend you sir. I hope you have gotten some value from it. Either way, I feel like this was a great exercise to clear my mind from all the different strategies and to stay true to my plan.

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

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