#I was 4" too big for the biggest size according to the size guide but the other reviews were saying they run large

[angiestown]

trying to leave a positive review on a product and it’s telling me my “adblocker prevented review submission” well fuck you then

#it was for those AC PJs they fit btw !!! #I was 4" too big for the biggest size according to the size guide but the other reviews were saying they run large #so I took a risk and it fits me perfectly #this was on boxlunch if it was like ebay or etsy or something with independent sellers I would turn off adblock to leave that review

[botwstoriesandsuch]

Big question. I need your opinion on something. If Mipha was never saved, and Vah Ruta was never calmed, what effect would it have on Hyrule. We know that it will flood, however I doubt the Shiekah would have the ability to create water from nothing (like to gods) so I just assume they are teleporting so the ocean won't rise. With this in mind, none of the major settlements would really be affected. Gerudo Town is far enough out of the path that the river would take through lake Hylia, Riti Village is also out of the way, and not only does it have a natural moat (if you could call it that) but also a canyon in the way. Korok Forest has magic and a moat and is also out of the way, Goron City is also to high up and out of the way, Tarrey Town is really highup and out of tge way, Zoras domain has pretty good drainage and it will probably go through the several other exits to not cause that muc damage, Kakariko Village is safe in the mountains, Hateno Town is safe and out of the way, and Lurelin Village is also out of the way and won't be damaged unless the ocean floods.

WOO LET’S FLOOD A CIVILIZATION AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

**Zelda meter is the meter system of objmap.zeldamods.org, but in accordance with previous posts I'm gonna convert it later to "actual" meters that I think is more realistic. You’ll see why later.

ALRIGHTY, SO LET’S START WITH MEASURING TIME!

So, East Reservoir Lake is 545 zelda meters long (light blue) and 340 zelda meters wide (blue)

Or if we want to see it as more of a circle, it has a radius of 239 zelda meters

Rutala Dam itself is 30 zelda meters wide and 140 zelda meters across. (see purple)

Taking a picture and using an online ruler, I found that the damn is roughly 123 zelda meters tall. (1 cm equal to 17.5 zelda meters by using the 140zm measurement)

Technically speaking, the dam's depth is infinite in the game, so we'll just use this damn's height as the depth.

And before you tell me that I should count the height of the rocks that the damn sits on top of as part of the depth, I'm gonna say not because dams typically block preexisting waterfalls, and given the rounded erosion of the rocks here, I would say that is also the case. Therefore, this was a waterfall that fed into the Rutala River and is not counted for the reservoir's depth.

So, in summary:

Reservoir Length: 545zm

Reservoir Width: 340zm

LW Reservoir Surface Area: 185,300zm (That is only 0.1 zelda kilometer. For comparison, the 45th largest reservoir in the world, Capivera Dam [last place on Wikipedia list] is still 515 square kilometers. The largest ones being in the 60k areas. I’ll come back to this point later.)

Reservoir Radius: 239zm

(pi)r^2 Reservoir Surface Area: 179,451zm2 (179zkm2) [Just got these numbers of surface areas to demonstrate they're practically the same whether you see it as circular or rectangular. I think the circle will be more accurate so going forward I will be using it as my basis for calculations]

Dam Length: 140zm

Dam Height: 123zm

Dam Width: 30zm

The Total Water Rutala Dam Holds Back: 22,072,473zm3 [Instead of just using the sphere volume formula or the LWH formula, I used my more accurate surface area made with the the radius and multiplied by the dam height(is that the,,,cylinder formula? I think so)]

Rutala Dam is supposed to be the largest reservoir in Hyrule, shown very prominently on the map. The largest reservoir(by surface area) in our world is Lake Winnipeg, with a surface area of 24,514 km2, (but only has a depth of 12 meters.)

But here it is on a map of Canada:

To reiterate, Lake Winnipeg has an area of 24,514km, and with zelda meters, East Reservoir Lake has an area of 179.

“BUT KIP! MAYBE EAST RESEVOIR LAKE IS JUST REALLY REALLY SMALL, HYRULE IS PRETTY SMALL ISN’T IT?”

Ok, so comparing the reservoir to one of the the largest, if not THE largest, settlements in the game, Zora’s Domain, we can see that the reservoir is several times it’s size.

But you’ll also note that Zora’s Domain has a diameter of 234zm. That, the entire city, the entire DOMAIN of Zora. 234 zelda meters. Manhattan is 21,100 meters long. Manhattan, by the way, is a fifth fraction of the New York County, which is the smallest county in the United States of America.

234 zelda meters, that’s an area of 43,005zm2. Do you know what else is aobut 40k meters squared in real life? Your nearest Walmart. Just a bit bigger than your local Tesco. Supposedly the entire Zora population, that has been untouched by the 100 year apocalypse and arguably had room to GROW over this time, is living in a Trader Joes.

So I hope this illustrates why I’m converting the zelda meters used on the website to something that I think would be more realistic in the realm of Hyrule. You can find my very loud and kinda embarrassing but factual! and old post about the conversion here, same link as at the top, but essentially just trust me on the conversation that 1zm is equal to 30 real-life meters.

New Realistic Measurements:

Reservoir Length: 16,350m or 16.35km

Reservoir Width: 10,200m or 10.2km

LW Reservoir Surface Area: 166,770km2

Reservoir Radius: 7170m or 7.17km

(pi)r^2 Reservoir Surface Area: 5,383,530m2 or 5382.53km2

Dam Length: 4200m

Dam Height: 3690m

Dam Width: 900m

The Total Water Rutala Dam Holds Back: 19,865,225,700m3 or 19.8 million cubic kilometers of water AKA 19.8 billion kiloliters AKA 5.2 trillion gallons o’ agua

Now THAT sounds more like the biggest dam in all of Hyrule. In fact, it adds up with the stats of the largest dam in our world(by gallons held), that is, the Three Gorges Dam.

The Three Gorges Dam, located in China, ALSO holds back 5 trillion gallons of water/19 billion cubic meters. Although it is a lot shorter than Rutala’s measurements--I think the amount of water that it holds back will be a perfect guide to see the devastation that Rutala’s potential breakage could cause on Hyrule.

There actually is a simulation online about what would happen if the Three Gorges Dam collapsed but I’m not gonna link it cause it might be a bit too distressing, but just know that I based this on that simulation.

Firstly, the biggest sigh of relief comes from the Samasa Plain.

The plain is very very low and slopes down into the Lanayru Bay, so a lot of the water would empty into there. However, the plain would then be totally submerged, so RIP to the shrines and ruins around there. Areas in red as submerged and areas in green would become islands or marshes.

And with that, the water level of Lanayru Bay would rise drastically. Blue is the new water level, dark green are islands, and light green are potential wetlandish areas that would form as time passed.

But basically, Rutala river would have a new branch that spills directly into the Lanayru Bay.

So now you may be thinking,

“HEY KIP THAT’S NOT SO BAD! MOST OF IT SPILLS OUT INTO THE BAY SO IT’S NOT A LOT OS DESTRUCTION! YAY!”

And you’d be half right.

Yes, a lot of the water is going to spill out over Samasa Plain and yes, Lanayru Bay will house a lot of it. But here’s the kicker.

It’s a bay.

Not an ocean.

It would take 1.25zkm or 30km for the water to make it’s way to the ocean, and the water will be traveling SUPER fast--about 100 kilometers per hour.

And that water wants to move, it wants to flow, and Lanayru Bay cannot help all that water flower because:  It’s shallow as fuck.

This chest shows the deepest point in all of Lanayru Bay.

I dropped a windcleaver down in the water: and using a generous GENEROUS estimate of 2 feet per second given the conditions of the still water in the bay--It took 5 seconds for it to float to the bottom. 10 feet. 3 meters. That’s just barely deeper than the deep end of a backyard swimming pool.

But even being extra EXTRA generous and using a real world estimate: Bays would be around 14 feet deep, roughly 4 meter. And we can be even more generous and say the sounding mountains can accommodate 30 feet of height. 9 meters. 9 + 4 = 14 meter height times 30km by 10km(width) = That’s 4.2 cubic kilometers, or 4.2 billion kiloliters of the 19.8 billion kiloliters in total.

uh oh. wheres the other 15.6 billion kiloliters of water gonna go?

It’s like taking a firehose, and filling up a bathtub. Yeah, the tub’s gonna catch a lot of that water, but that firehose has way, way, way, more water than that tub can hold, and when the tub can have a leak or hole on it, but the rate that that hose is going is astronomically faster than the rate the tub can expel water, so it’s just gonna overflow and water will still spill everywhere

[And this isn’t even taking into the account that Rutala Dam is SIGNIFICANTLY higher that it’s surrounding landscape, and would pour into the river with such a force that it could cause a giant tidal wave and break through the rocky boundaries of the pre-existing Rutala River causing even more water to flow into the bay]

Lanayru Bay would be occupied with a lot of water, and since the other 15.6 billion kiloliters of water can’t immediately flow into it, it’s gonna take the scenic route through Rutala River. It’s high mountains on either side basically just make it a death funnel.

Here’s how that would look:

This is the new water level for the Lanayru Wetlands. MAn they weren’t lying, those lands do be wet.

so yeah everything is submerged in between 10 to 20 meters of water and you might be thinking

“WELL KIP, I THINK THAT’S NOT SO BAD AFTER ALL! AT LEAST NO MAJOR LANDMARKS WERE DESTROYED AND NO ONE WAS HURT!”

Well, bestie, here’s the thing. This length of land is 3 zelda kilometers long. AKA 90 kilometers long. And you might recall, I said, that this, 3000 meter tall  wall of water was traveler at 100km per hour. Well the good news is, my calculations are a lot easier for this as this large stretch of flat Lanayru Wetlands land lines up perfectly with the flat areas of Yichange, (which was actually traveling at twice the speed compared to Rutala because it didn’t have Lanayru Bay to open up into)  

But the bad news is, the video is five minutes long, and this is just the first 50 seconds. This water is destined to travel 400 kilometers. That’s about half of the country of Wales, by the way. The entire length of the state of Virginia.

Here’s the rough path of the total flooding that other 16 billion kiloliters from Rutala Dam

Oh, and what’s worse is that the rivers in central Hyrule? Yeah they’re like HALF the depth of Lanayru Bay so the flooding will be even WORSE :D

So here’s the new waterlevel map!

Overtime, a lot of the water is gonna spill onto the paths through Central Hyrule, new swamplands, creeks, etc. etc. The path to the Gerudo Desert will be fin initially, as the water as slowed to the point where it won’t put immediate damage since the bridge is so high. But that new water level plus the influx of water from the River of the Dead is definetly gonna erode that over time and maybe possibly will just collapse and prevent anyone from leaving or entering the desert.

Hyrule Castle will be even more of an island, as the two islands to the left and right of it will be moslty submerged. Also the entire path through Eldin is just fucking done. Everyone in Akkala and Eldin? You’re trapped there. It’s basically a new Lake Hylia but no bridge. Sorry Robbie.

Oh, and also these rapid waters are carrying the debris of it’s destruction, whether the corpses of travelers or giant rocks that it broke off from the side of mountains. So everything is a mess, and depending on the amount of debris, it could completly alter water paths to go even more in land. The rivers are shallow enough, so just pilling in more rocks and dam metal and dirt just makes things shallower

Lake Hylia will be fine, the mini islands are gone, but as a whole, the bridge and the height of the surrounding ridges will keep the water in there. Although a lot of Necluda is basically a goner, and the bridge on either end of Dueling Peaks is totally decimated.

So what did we learn?

All of Hyrule’s economy is fucked. Every major trading path--gone. It’s basically gonna breed even more ethnocentricism, and a bunch of wildlife and sources for food are gone. And not to mention the climate, that’s gonna be fucked too as years pass. Rito and Zora will probably be the most fine? Hylians are fucked though, we destroyed like five stables and basically every river setllement there is. Oh and that influx of water is gonna fuck with the fishes so Hateno and Lurelin aren’t totally out of it either!

Gerudo? Well good thing they’re all lesbians because they sure aren’t going out to woe anybody once those stone pillars holding the bridge give way to the new water levels. Gorons will actually not even know anything’s wrong if I’m being honest. Sheikah? Well that point by Eagus Bridge and Sarhasra slope is gonna connect into a river at some point so I guess they can be a fishing village now.

Oh an RAIN I didn’t even think about that, yeah people are totally gonna die. And if Ruta CONTINUES to pump water into Hyrule (because again, this is only from an INITIAL burst of the damn. Well...

Zora’s Domain will be gone within the year. Water levels will just continue to rise, probably take on Central Hyrule first, but then after that the Gerudo Canyon. Also if flooding in Zora’s Domain REALLY continue it would probably spill over and destroy Tarrey Town. So not good all around!

But I think the main takeaway that we can all settle with is that the Flower Lady and her garden are absolutely, positively, dead.

#botw #breath of the wild #legend of zelda botw #loz botw #botw theory #rutala dam #Zora's Domain

[eleanor-writes-stuff]

keep calm and let HR handle it [V/VI]

Rey managed to go a full year without ever directly interacting with her new CEO, but now it seems like he’s dropping by her office every single week.

(Because what else is a love-struck fool to do when he falls for his head of HR other than find reasons to visit her department?)

OR: five times Ben gets summoned down to HR, and one time Rey gets called into the CEO’s office, based on this prompt from @optimisticsprinkles​​: “Rey as the director of HR at [office] and Kylo/Ben starts finding reasons to be sent down to HR”.

In our penultimate chapter, Rey concocts an emergency in order to lure Ben down to her office. But why in the world would she do something like that??

(Hint: 🎂) 

Chapter 4 Also available on AO3. And hey, maybe check out my Twitter and Ko-fi?

To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: URGENT

Hi Ben,

I’m so sorry about this, but could you come by in twenty minutes? I know it’s almost lunchtime, but something urgent’s come up regarding next week’s staff lunch preparations.

Warm regards, Rey Niima, Head of Human Resources, The Organa Foundation.

 To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: Re: URGENT

I’ll be there. Is everything okay? And do you want me to grab us something to eat?

Best regards, Ben Solo, Chief Executive Officer, The Organa Foundation.

 To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Subject: Re: URGENT

It’s not a huge emergency or anything, just time-sensitive. Sorry for sounding so panicky! And this shouldn’t take long, so don’t worry about getting food.

Warm regards, Rey Niima, Head of Human Resources, The Organa Foundation.

 Rey would feel bad about springing an ‘emergency meeting’ on Ben and potentially disrupting whatever plans he has, but she’d already asked Mitaka about his schedule this morning to make sure she wouldn’t mess up his day.

Predictably, Ben Solo has nothing planned for his birthday.

Scratch that, he has one plan: hole up in his office from the minute he gets in to the minute he clocks out, to prevent any unwelcome surprise celebrations. It’s what he did last year, according to everyone else on the 37th floor, even when they told him they had cake in the breakroom. In fact, Poe says it’s what he did for most of his birthdays growing up.

But not this year, not if Rey has anything to say about it. It’s not like she can’t empathize – she’d spent the longest time hating her assigned birthdate as a child, after all – but ever since Han’s anniversary two weeks ago, something’s changed between them. She can’t quite put her finger on it, can’t quite put it into words, but it’s something that tells her she absolutely cannot let Ben spend his birthday all alone and locked away in a darkened office.

He’ll spend it in her office instead, with a small cake that’s really more for her benefit than his and a card she discreetly passed around the office last week and had everyone sign. She would’ve gotten him a gift, but Rey hadn’t even known his birthday was coming up until she reviewed the monthly employee birthday calendar just last Tuesday and realized Ben’s thirtieth birthday was only a week away.

A week, as it turns out, is not nearly enough time to figure out the perfect gift for your boss-slash-friend-slash-person you get way too comfortable around after two drinks. The cake and the card (and the gift of her company, she supposes) will simply have to be enough, especially since Ben’s supposed to be here any minute now.

He’s almost always on time, if not early, so Rey has no qualms lighting the single candle on his cake and carefully picking it up. She secures the cake in her grip before slowly spinning around so that the back of her chair faces the door, and waits for Ben to arrive. Rose and Kaydel have strict orders not to wish him happy birthday or do anything that might give the surprise away, and her earlier ruse apparently worked a little too well because Ben barges into her office after a series of uncharacteristically frantic knocks.

“I know you said not to panic, but is everything– Oh.”

Rey wheels around with a smile. “Surprise!”

Ben closes the door behind him and leans against it, taking in the scene before him with an almost wary look. “Rey… this is really sweet of you, but–”

“You’re not big on birthdays, I know,” she assures him, setting the cake down on her table so she can wave him forward. “Which is why we’re going to hide in my office for lunch so that the others can’t drag you kicking and screaming to your own surprise birthday party in the breakroom.”

At this, the tension drains out of his shoulders and he happily closes the distance between them as a relieved smile lights up his face. “You know me too well.”

“Make a wish, birthday boy,” Rey says with a grin, pushing the cake towards him. Ben acquiesces, but chooses to maintain eye contact with her throughout the slow and deliberate process of leaning down and blowing out his candle.

It’s… quite a moment.

Rey claps to snap them out of it, and retrieves the oversized card from under her desk to hand it over to him. Finn had told her that last year, none of them had known what to write on the card – on account of the fact that none of them had known the man himself, not really – and so they’d all just signed their names around the standard “happy birthday” message that had come printed on the card. This year, though–

This year she watches Ben open the card, and knows exactly why he grows more and more overwhelmed with emotion as his eyes dart from one message to another, all of them sincere and personalized now that everyone’s gotten to know him better through their weekly happy hours.

She notes a little furrow digging into his brow though, and is ready with a smile when Ben looks up at her. “On the back.”

He closes the card, and sure enough there’s her message to him scrawled across the back, the last one to be written:

Ben,

I know this isn’t what you had in mind for today, but you deserve good days. You deserve good things. And I hope this is the first of many good birthdays we get to celebrate together.

Love, Rey.

There’s so much more she’d wanted to write, so much she’s left unsaid, but when Ben looks up at her with a painfully earnest smile and reaches across the table for her hand, she knows she’s said enough… for now.

“Thank you, Rey,” he says quietly, his smile as warm as sunshine as he squeezes her hand. “Really, this is… this is already the best birthday I’ve had in years, if not ever.”

An incredulous laugh bubbles past her lips. “Ben, it’s just cake and a card, I didn’t even get you–”

“It’s not just cake and a card,” Ben corrects her. “It’s… it’s getting to spend the day with someone who actually cares. I haven’t had that chance in a long time.”

After everything else he’s shared with her, this… this really isn’t much. But she still cherishes every single secret he trusts her with, every ounce of vulnerability he’s comfortable showing her. “I… I know what that feels like,” Rey tells him in return. “Believe it or not, I haven’t always been the biggest fan of birthdays myself,” she adds with a little huff of laughter.

Ben’s hand is still on hers, and he moves to lace their fingers together. “Because of…?”

She nods. “They didn’t even bother leaving a birth certificate, or a note, or anything. Just a baby, a blanket, and a basket on the front door of a police station, like something out of a movie.” Rey fights off a grimace at the memory. “Did you know my name might not even be Rey? It was stitched into the blanket, but people who can’t even be bothered to write a note wouldn’t have bothered getting personalized blankets, would they? More likely that they got it from a thrift store, or maybe even stole it.”

The soothing motion of Ben’s thumb running up and down the side of her hand keeps her from getting tangled up in that old mess. “Anyway, the hospital figured I was the size of an average one-month-old, but I was also malnourished enough that I could’ve just been abnormally small for my age. They had no idea what to do, so they just listed my birthdate as exactly a month before the day I was abandoned. You can probably see why that never really felt like cause for celebration to me,” Rey says with a shrug and a little smile, the instinct to fake nonchalance at her past so much a part of her now that she does it even with Ben.

He keeps her hand in his, warm and solid and reassuring. “So when did you start celebrating?” Ben asks, gently guiding her away from the darkness.

This time, her smile is sincere. “The first year of college. Finn asked me when my birthday was one day, just out of the blue, like friends do, and I just… I was so hostile about it. But eventually he pried it out of me, in bits and pieces, and that year he threw this huge party for me, to show me how many people I had in my life now, how many people cared about me. And I’ve been in love with birthdays ever since.”

Ben smiles at that, and lets go of her hand when she pulls away to get two plates and a knife, which she makes a show of presenting to him. He laughs as he takes it, and serves them two huge slices of cake.

“I love how you automatically know to make mine super-sized,” she quips as they dig in.

“Maybe we both know each other too well.” He smiles at the thought, and Rey spends a little too long with a forkful of cake hovering in the air, caught up in his bright eyes. They eat in silence for a moment, until–

“I used to love birthdays,” Ben tells her, between bites. He doesn’t quite look up, so she pretends to focus on her cake as well. “I think I was six, the first time my mom didn’t come home for my birthday. And then the next year, neither of them were there. And yeah, they made sure to call and they left cake and presents and a signed card, but… that just made it worse, somehow. Because none of it meant anything if they weren’t there with me – and they almost never were, after that.”

Rey slides her hand back into his, and Ben looks up at her with a smile.

“But you’re here now.”

“I’m here now,” she echoes, and hopes he catches on to the unspoken promise that she always will be, year after year, if that’s what he wants.

He nods to himself, as if he’d gotten the message somehow, and they go back to finishing their cake. Ben laughs when she excuses herself for a minute only to return with a bag of take-out from a nearby Italian place they’ve gone to for lunch a couple times and tells her that they’re doing this all out of order, but they dig in nonetheless and the hour seems to fly by as they talk about their friends and their lives and their plans for the upcoming staff lunch, their first major employee engagement effort.

Five minutes past one, Ben reluctantly gets to his feet and accepts his card from Rey with a sigh. “What’s the point of being the boss if you can’t spend your birthday eating cake and hiding out in HR all day?”

“You could,” Rey points out with a laugh, “but can you really stomach more cake? Because even I’m done for now, I think.”

“Good point,” Ben says with a grimace as he pats his stomach. “Fine, I’ll get back to work then.”

It’s habit by now, for her to cross her desk and step into his arms for a hug before he leaves. “Happy birthday, Ben,” she whispers into his shoulder as they hug.

Warm lips brush against her temple. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

Ben tenses before she’s even really registered what he’s just called her, and before she knows it he’s out of her arms and her office, throwing a hurried “Thanks again, see you around!” over his shoulder before the door closes behind him.

Rey blinks as her door slams shut, and a laugh escapes her as her mind finally catches up to the situation and Ben’s reaction to his little slip-up. She’s still smiling as she turns back to her desk and picks up the remaining half of the cake to offer to Rose and Kaydel, both of whom appear to be equally stunned and intrigued by their boss’ abrupt departure.

It’s really too bad that he’d freaked out over it, because Rey finds she quite likes the sound of Ben calling her sweetheart.

. . .

This was supposed to be at least ten times fluffier than it is, with a healthy dose of pining... but nothing is going according to plan with this fic. I'm really glad you guys seem to be liking it anyway.

Our next (and last) chapter will feature a bit of a change, both in setting and POV. Time to go visit the 37th floor! I'm hoping to have that up later today, so I'll see you guys then.

Until then, as always: thank you so much for reading, I hope you liked it, and please don't hesitate to like/reblog/comment!

#reylo #reyben #rey x ben solo #rey/ben solo #rey/kylo ren #star wars #rey #ben solo #kylo ren #my fics #fic: HR

[bilyonaryomindset]

Here are the top money-related reasons to consider purchasing a smaller home.

1. Smaller Homes Have Lower Sales Prices

Looking for homes with a smaller square footage can have a big impact on your homebuying costs. The 2020 median home listing price per square foot is $153, according to Zillow.

A home’s square footage doesn’t directly translate to lower costs — it’s not like shaving off 10 square feet will save you $1,500. But if you look for smaller homes with fewer bedrooms, you can likely set your homebuying budget lower than if you seek out bigger homes. With lower home prices and a smaller budget, this can bring your dream of homeownership within reach sooner.

That was a big reason that Emily Guy Birken, a finance writer and author, opted for a 1,800-square-foot cottage for her four-person household (plus a cat and an 80-pound greyhound).

“If we had been set on a 3,000-square-foot home in the same area, we would have had to rent for several years while saving up the down payment,” Guy Birken says. “Because we chose a smaller home, we were able to buy when we moved to Milwaukee, rather than waiting.”

A lower home price can also bring down other expenses, such as your closing costs, the size of your mortgage, and even your mortgage rate.

Don’t Miss: First-Time Homebuyer Guide

2. Lower Mortgage Payments and Better Cash Flow

“I chose a smaller home because I … never, ever wanted to be house poor,” says Britt Bruce, founder of Tiny Ambitions, a blog and podcast about simple living. Being “house poor” means that housing costs eat up too much of your budget, leaving you struggling financially.

The U.S. Census Bureau considers housing costs to be affordable when they account for 30% or less of household income, for example. If buying a bigger home means paying more than that for a mortgage, utilities, and other housing costs, it could make you house poor.

Buying a smaller and more affordable home with lower mortgage payments, on the other hand, can leave you more room in your budget.

Bruce could have bought a bigger and pricier home than she did. The price of her 750-square-foot bungalow was half the amount of the maximum home loan she was approved for. But when she compared mortgage payments on the small home she chose with what she would’ve paid if she had borrowed the max amount, Bruce found it was a difference of $20,000 a year.

“The biggest financial benefits of a smaller home is the flexibility you get when not all of your monthly income is already spoken for by your mortgage,” she says. With the extra money she has saved, Bruce has made big progress toward other financial goals, like saving and investing more.

3. Other Escrow Costs Are Cheaper

A downsized home can cut more than just the cost of your home loan. Your mortgage payment covers repaying this loan, but it also includes your costs for homeowners insurance and property taxes.

Your mortgage payments are held in an escrow account, which your mortgage servicer uses to ensure these important expenses always get paid. And these expenses are typically lower for a small home versus a comparable, larger house.

A standard homeowners insurance policy, for example, provides coverage up to the cost of rebuilding the home. But the higher that estimated cost, the more you’ll pay in home insurance premiums.

Rebuilding costs are estimated by multiplying average local building costs by the total square footage of your home. Thus, a smaller home requires less coverage and allows you to buy a cheaper homeowners insurance policy.

Property tax is calculated on your home’s value. But the method your local government uses to assess the home’s value (and tax you on it) typically takes the home’s square footage into consideration. Check your state and local property tax codes to see how a home’s size can affect property taxes.

RELATED: The First-Time Homebuyer’s Guide to Homeowners Insurance

4. Smaller Homes Are More Energy-Efficient

Another cost that’s lower for smaller homes? Energy bills.

A small home is more efficient than larger homes, as it requires less energy to keep a smaller space temperature-controlled and comfortable. Smaller homes also have fewer lights and other appliances. Some energy-efficiency upgrades will also be cheaper on a smaller home, such as replacing insulation or upgrading to more efficient windows.

A smaller home under 1,500 square feet saves $290 to $730 per year compared to the average home’s energy costs, according to 2018 data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Here are the average annual energy expenses by square feet:

Average of all homes: $1,856

Less than 1,000 square feet: $1,126

1,000 to 1,499 square feet: $1,569

1,500 to 1,999 square feet: $1,919

2,000 to 2,499 square feet: $2,088

2,500 to 2,999 square feet: $2,282

3,000 square feet or greater: $ 2,631

5. Lower Maintenance, Improvement, and Upkeep Costs

Having less space to clean can make regular upkeep easier and less time-consuming. “The biggest pro is probably that it takes me less than 20 minutes to vacuum the entire house,” Bruce says.

For me, I’ve definitely struggled to find a chore routine that keeps my 1,800-square-foot house neat and tidy. I even tried hiring a cleaning service that cost $120 per week to try to keep up.

There’s also the cost of my time on upkeep. Since I’m a freelancer, time spent on chores like cleaning an extra room takes away from time that could be spent earning more.

Many maintenance, repair, or improvement jobs add costs in materials and labor, which can be a lot cheaper for smaller homes. A common budgeting guideline for home repairs suggests setting aside $1 per square foot, per year, according to Liberty Mutual Insurance. Roof repairs or replacements are among the most expensive home repairs, for example, and the cost of these is based on the square footage of your roof.

6. Cheaper To Furnish

With no space to put a second or even third TV and no spare room to house a guest bed, you can skip those expenses altogether — and save hundreds of dollars in the process.

Smaller spaces will also curb the temptation to keep buying stuff. “A major upside of a smaller home is that it doesn’t really allow you to fill it up with stuff,” Bruce says.

This check on spending can help small homeowners make more mindful and intentional choices about what they want to bring into their home. And that means less money wasted on stuff you don’t really want or need.

ctto: walletjoy.com

[sarahjaneseddon]

Image of mask https://www.netsafe.org.nz/healthline-covid-19-calls/

For starting my assignment 2 processing code, I have chosen to do use New Zealand covid cases data and turn this into a digitally embodied face mask. This is because I am not to sure how the LEDS work and how much it would cost for me to buy the equipment to make. The quiz website idea was also a possible option but I couldn’t decide what kind of quiz, I also went to the warehouse to find a tote-bag but they had ran out. I thought covid 19 was the most relevant idea especially with New Zealand being in level 2 again. I also have access to data through https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-current-situation/covid-19-current-cases. This data shows New Zealand’s current cases, how many total cases, how many deaths and other relevant information. During lockdown I would always look on this website and I know that this has lots of possible data I could use for my assignment 2 work. 

My current workflow:

This is a photo of my current workflow. A work flow is important to understand each step you will take in your process and also allows other people to see your work flow and understand how the mask was made.

https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases

Step 1: Saving as a .CSV

First I used the data on health.govt.nz and copied and pasted it into sheets, this pasted into one column and row, so I had to rewrite each New Zealand city. I also decided only to have the DHB (district health board) and TOTAL (total number of cases) because this was the two headers I want my mask to represent compared to how many are active, recovered, decreased ETC. This means my mask shows the total number of cases for each NZ place. I have also gotten rid of the “Managed Isolation and Quarantine” row. This is because it isn’t a New Zealand city, and I am unsure where they are in isolation. 

We have learn’t about saving as a .csv through spreadsheets. CSV means Comma Separated Value. We have previously worked on birthdaydata.csv and have imported this into processing through using Table birthday data. Table is the variable. To make sure the data is imported correctly, you have to save your .csv file into a “data” folder in your sketches folder otherwise it would not be able to find the document. I will be using the birthday example as an example for reminding me how to import a .csv into processing. 

(THE COVID STATS WHERE UPDATED FROM THE 5TH OCTOBER 2020, I would have to get regular stats but currently I am working from this dataset)

Step 2: 

Putting it into processing. I have used the birthdayData template as a guide, I have changed the data sheet and therefore the ellipses represented the covid 19 cases in New Zealand in each city, for example Capital and Coast had/has a total of 95 cases. Therefore the ellipse will be medium shaped close to small. The bigger the total case number in that New Zealand city the bigger the ellipse(). I have made sure to change where the birthdayData was put and changed this to Table covid. Table covid gets the table from covid=loadTable(”covid.csv”, “header”)

I have chosen New Zealand stats because I wanted it to be relevant to where I live. It was also easy to find the correct stats because over the lockdown period I would always check https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-data-and-statistics/covid-19-current-cases and I knew they had the statistics written on the page. I also found it interesting to see what city in New Zealand had the most cases. According to my statistics Waitematā had the most cases with 293, therefore they are the biggest ellipse() on this sketch. Overall I have changed the birthdayData and used it as a guide to import my own statistics into processing

Colour

I have decided to choose green because green resembles the colour of germs from a snotty colour. Green I can relate to bacteria and thats what I want to show through the ellipses. I have done stroke(0,random(255),0). Processing uses RGB, green stands for G and therefore is the middle parameter. I decided to use the random function, to have a varied amount of greens this means each time you run the code you’re not always going to get a dot with the same green. It creates randomness and variation within the data visualisation and I feel that it adds another layer of complexity to the code. 

The black background has been chosen to display contrast between green and black. Sometimes the ellipses would get to light and therefore be hard to see. I have set the background to black by using background(0); function. This therefore shows that I have considered contrast in my making.

Step 3:

I have now worked on the idea of random. I want to create random dots as if the bacteria bubbles have spread across the page. This is because I feel that it is more interesting to have variation in the bubbles but this means your mask is personalised to you, when you run it you get a different mask pattern and therefore know that it is your mask. It also means that you can decide which mask you like when buying them in a shop.

When randomising I like how the bubbles appear spread out but also overlapping each other, it would look affective on a mask. I have the idea of instead of a bubble how could I show bacteria? I thought that I could try and import an image of a photoshopped bubble and replace ellipse() with an image. I will have to do some research on how to add a image into processing because I have not done this before. 

Step 4 photoshop bubble

https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/covid-19-coronavirus-virus-bacteria-outlined-icon-illustration_7972163.htm

I have creative commons sourced an image of a covid 19 bubble. This is because we want to make sure there is no copy right within the image. I can use photoshop to crop the bubble and change the colour to green. This is because I want my overall final covid bubble mask to be green. Green means germs and bacteria and works well to show the bubble. 

I have used photoshop to edit the covid bubble. I have used the “wand” tool to get rid of the background and made it transparent to save as a png file ready for processing. The purpose of the .png format is because when the bubbles overlap I want to be able to see through the covid bacteria bubbles. In photoshop I have also cropped the image so that you can’t see the word “Covid-19.″ I then changed the colour of the bacteria image to green by overlaying the colour. Overall the png has worked successfully.  

I have saved this png into the data folder. This is because the data folder is where processing can access the correct image. This works similar to when importing a .csv file, you have to put it within the data folder.

Step 5 research

https://processing.org/reference/image_.html#:~:text=Select%20%22Add%20file...,%2C%20JPEG%2C%20and%20PNG%20images. 

For creating my mask I have done some research on how to get an image into processing to replace a ellipse(); 

The image() function draws an image to the display window. Images must be in the sketch's "data" directory to load correctly. Select "Add file..." from the "Sketch" menu to add the image to the data directory, or just drag the image file onto the sketch window. Processing currently works with GIF, JPEG, and PNG images.

We have to write PImage img; at the begining of the code as a variable. Then replace the ellipse() code with image(img, random(1000), random(500), covidData.getInt(i, “TOTAL”),covidData.getInt(i, “TOTAL”)); this therefore means that instead of a ellipse, it gets the png image and sizes it depending on the data from covidData.csv. This is an example of experimenting and improving my code. (This also works with .svg images);

Step 6: Running my code

Overall my code has successfully worked. I have used PImage img; to get processing to find the image in the data folder. The “img” has been set in the void setup(), it calls processing to get the image and put it in the variable of img. img= loadImage(”covidBacteria.png”) (processing gets the image from data folder). We then replace the ellipse function with - i(img, random(1000), random(500), covidData.getInt(i, “TOTALl”),covidData.getInt(i, “TOTAL”)) It gets the integer of total number of cases from the data set and then uses the bacteria img to show the size of the cases in that city along the 1000x and 500y canvas size. I have used random as the same size as the canvas, therefore the bubbles appear around the whole canvas, not just a section of the x and y. Overall the width and height is determined by the the number of total cases in that place. EG. if the total number of cases was 95, therefore the bubble will be 95width and 95 height. The (”TOTAL”) also means that proccessing gets the “header” of the csv and inputs all the values that are bellow that column in the csv file. This overall shows the number total cases New Zealand had/has of covid 19 by each city. 

Improvement idea:

I think that I could further improve this code. Some of the covid bubbles are small and look like dots. I need to make sure that the embroidery machine is to pick up the small details in my design. This means that my face mask will look better in the final outcome. I could do this by experimentation. Experimenting maybe *5 each bubble by covidData.getInt(”TOTAL”) *5 = TOTAL number is times by 5 and therefore a bigger bubble in size. EG: 95 width and 95 height  x 5 = 475. This could be too big so I would have to experiment. I could also change the smaller bacteria bubbles by using the ellipse() inside of a if statement, if it is < 100 = an ellipse(). 

[jeffwhorton]

Is Interstellar Travel Possible?

Author Jeff W. Horton

Interstellar travel. Travel between the stars. Crossing the vastness of space that lies between one star system and the next. It is the next frontier for humanity, and it calls to us like the sea once did, to some, like the West once did for others.

The biggest problem is that the universe is big, unimaginably big, and the distances between star systems are often so vast. For example, using current technology, it could take over tens of thousands of years to make a return trip to our closest neighbor, Alpha-Centauri. If you stepped outside on your porch this evening and shone your flashlight directly toward our neighbor, it would take the light from your flashlight some 4 ½ years just to get there and, it there were a mirror there to bounce the light back, another 4 ½ years to make it back home. It would take nine years for your reflected light to get back to you. That’s a long, long ways.

So, what about Faster-Than-Light travel, or FTL. If you’ve ever watched Stargate Universe or any of a myriad of other science-fiction programs on television, or if you’ve read more than one science-fiction novel in the past decade (like Frontiers: Cybersp@ce Series Book Two for example) you would have likely heard the term, Faster-Than-Light (FTL) travel. But what precisely is FTL, and why is it important, anyway? Unless you’re the captain of a starship or part of a galactic rebellion, who cares? Well, you might be surprised.

Scientific discoveries, improvements in technology, medicine, agriculture, etc. have all led to longer lifespans across the globe, which in term has led to an explosion in the human population on our planet, which just exceeded 7.6 billion men, women, and children. Three countries hold over half of the world’s population; China, India, and The United States.

-China: 1.385 billion

-India: 1.335 billion

-United States: 325 million

The world’s population is expected to reach 11 billion by the turn of the 22nd century, nearing the maximum number of human beings some scientists believe the Earth can support.

Now I say all this not because I believe we need to reduce population growth. It’s impossible to do so without a significant and inexcusable intrusion into our personal liberty. A growth in population is a natural by-product of the previously improvements in technology and medicine, leading to longer lifespans and a higher infant survival rate.

There is another issue which while related to population, is actually a distinct and separate issue; some resources are finite and are not renewable, well, unless you can wait millions of years. I’m referring to fossil fuels, of course, crude oil, used for gasoline, diesel, etc. to power the world’s locomotion. It’s going to run out eventually, the only question is when. The need to search for and find alternatives sources of energy is essential to the future of our civilization. Take a brief look at another excerpt from Frontiers, which addresses and resolves a number of these issues by sharing highly advanced technology with the rest of the world:

Excerpt from Cybersp@ce, Cybersp@ce Series  Book I, by Jeff W. Horton

“Montana motioned to one of his assistants. Images from all over the world suddenly appeared at various locations within the room.

“Mr. President, General Caprella, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I’m sure you have a lot of questions. Please be patient and I’ll attempt to answer them as we go.

“I’m sure everyone here is painfully aware how the price of gasoline has been skyrocketing in recent years. Governments around the world have been offering all sorts of explanations for the sudden spike in pricing. Some have been blaming the rising prices on overpopulation, some on too few refineries, others on speculators, with most, of course, blaming the increased demand on the surging economies in Africa and Asia. There’s been a dirty little secret, however, one that I’d now like to share with each and every one of you in this room. This little tidbit has been known to only a very select few men and women across the planet, mostly to world leaders like President Raymond, so secret they’ve had to keep it to themselves in order to avoid a global panic, a revelation I will share with you now; our planet has nearly exhausted the last of its global crude oil supply.”

A murmur erupted throughout the room.

“Now,” Montana continued, “many have speculated that supplies were rapidly decreasing, but no one outside of a few world leaders realized just how rapidly they were being depleted. We discovered the seriousness of our predicament only six months ago, after a group of geologists were commissioned by the Department of Energy to study supplies all over the world, including conducting searches for possible, undiscovered supplies. The results of that study were quickly classified at above top-secret, and the scientists involved were sworn to secrecy, and threatened with being charged with treason should they speak about the study to anyone, including their families.

“According to the study, we have approximately six months of crude oil remaining, a fact we have since verified with several independent studies. This amount does not include the six-month emergency supply that most developed countries have kept in reserve, of course, but this still is a very serious crisis. Increased tensions over the rising cost of crude oil and the subsequent crippling blow to the world’s economies have already had substantial, negative impacts on geopolitics all over the globe.

“For example, recent fighting between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified again this morning, this after the latter deployed destroyers intended to hunt down and destroy the Iranian submarines that have been harassing the Saudis for a while now. Saudi Arabia, the once extremely wealthy, oil-rich nation, has expended much of its vast wealth in recent years, engaged in an arms race with its greatest Middle East rival, Iran.

“As most of you know, the fighting broke out between the two nations after several years of skirmishes, mostly over contested rights to oil reserves in the Persian Gulf itself. Iran purchased at least ten new ballistic missile submarines over the course of the last ten years, each capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which they began using about that time to harass the six oil platforms the Saudis built toward the end of their heyday as the world’s leading supplier of oil, before the bulk of their supply finally dried up. The Saudis purchased an equal number of guided missile destroyers, each also equipped with nuclear weapons, intended to counter the new Iranian threat.

“The Iranians started the arms race with the Saudis ten years ago, after surpassing Saudi Arabia to become the world’s major supplier of crude oil. They soon began using their newly discovered wealth to increase the size and the might of their military. Following the purchase of their first three nuclear-powered submarines armed with ICBMs, the Iranians also purchased their first aircraft carrier, which extended the Iranian influence into other parts of the world. Then recently, about two months ago, the Revolutionary Guard began setting up a number of ICBM launch sites strategically dispersed all over Iran, most pointing toward Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States.

“When news got out that Iranian nuclear missiles were pointing towards Saudi Arabia, their greatest competitor in the region, the Saudis went ape. They purchased destroyers, sped up their nuclear weapons research and development programs in Riyadh, and soon began purchasing components to begin building ballistic and intercontinental ballistic missile and delivery systems of their own.”

“Have there been any direct confrontations as of yet between the Iranian submarines and the Saudi destroyers?” President Raymond asked, clearly either surprisingly ignorant of the skirmishes, or attempting to draw attention to them for the sake of others in attendance.

Montana cast a short look towards Caprella. “No, sir, not yet. There have just been a few skirmishes, mostly the Saudis dropping depth charges once the Iranians subs had moved on.” Montana walked back and forth for a moment, clearly searching for a detail.

“Okay, so why are we here, General?”

“Mr. President, the truth is that virtually all oil supplies around the world have dried up, except for what little’s left in the Gulf.”

“What about the shale?” asked Raymond.

“Well sir, from what I’ve been told, the remaining quantity of shale oil has been greatly exaggerated, mostly in an attempt to stave off panic. The oil companies extracted what remained of the shale oil reserves about five years ago.”

“Are you expecting a full-scale war to break out between the Saudis and the Iranians over the world’s only remaining supply of crude oil?”

“Mr. President, to answer that question I’d like to defer to CIA Director Frank Murphy.”

A man in a dark gray suit near the other end of the table cleared his throat. “That is one of our concerns, Mr. President, yes. We now suspect that both the Saudis and the Iranians know that the world’s oil supply has failed, and that what little remains is located under the Persian Gulf. Each nation is determined to do whatever they have to in order to control that supply and through it, the world.”

“Okay, Frank, thanks.” Raymond turned back to Montana. “So, Jim, I’m assuming that since you called us here, you must have some thoughts by now about how to address this?”

“Yes, sir, I do have some thoughts, but they’re not just mine. This crisis isn’t limited only to the Iranians and the Saudis, or even to Persian Gulf. The hard truth is that our entire world has become dependent on oil, addicted to it, even in remote parts of the world. We’re starting to see similar skirmishes flare up all over the world, especially between Russia, Japan, and China, between various nations scattered throughout South America, and even in parts of Europe.

“Therefore, we’ve had to come up with a phased approach for dealing with this immediate worldwide crisis, before one or more of these conflicts go nuclear, if they haven’t already. Phase I addresses the crisis in the Persian Gulf, and for that I’d like to defer to Tom.”

Everyone turned to face Admiral Thomas Franklin, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Thanks, Jim,” Franklin answered. “Mr. President, we feel we must act, and soon, before the situation spirals out of control in the Persian Gulf. As you know, the Middle East has always been a tinderbox, but now it’s more volatile than ever. First, consider the fact that we’ve been at odds with Iran for many decades, nearly declaring open war with them on several occasions. Next, keep in mind that we are not the only major world power with an interest in access to what little oil remains; Russia, China, nearly every country on the planet is willing to go to war if necessary over whatever oil remains. Add that to the already very precipitous standoff between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and you have a recipe for global conflict.”

The day will arrive when there is no more oil, so we’d best be prepared, with alternative energy sources already in place and long-since having replaced fossil fuels as the world’s leading energy source.

The population issue must also be addressed at some point, however, as demand on resources gradually begins to overtake the supply. If nothing is done, it will inevitably place increasing pressure on governments to secure access to resources for their respective populations, potentially leading to conflicts or even wars. It’s therefore likely that world leaders will begin to see a growing need to find alternative resources for humanity.  Now certainly the case could be made that with three-quarters of the earth’s surface being covered in water, that humanity has much more it could to not only with harvesting resources from the ocean, but with finding new ways of living on or under the surface of the world’s oceans. Still, the question will always remain, what about space?

Which brings us back to the discussion around FTL; is it possible and why do we need it? The most obvious reason for wanting FTL is it’s fast. Light travels at 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second), so Faster-Than-Light travel is fast, very-fast.  When you’re talking about crossing the endless void of empty space just to get from Point A to Point B believe me, you’ll want fast. But is fast really what we’re after, or is it just what we thought we wanted? Take a look at the following two excerpts from my novel, Frontiers; in which humanity builds and successfully tests its first interstellar spaceship.

To set the scene Hank Reynolds, the man who will be piloting the ship also helped design and build it, is preparing for a simulated test-flight. Hanks is talking in both excerpts with his girlfriend Hailey.

First except from Frontiers, Cybersp@ce Series Book 2, by Jeff W. Horton

“Just think of it, experts argued for decades about quantized space-time. Then, for twenty years or so there were several published papers about LQT, or loop quantum theory. They were all wrong, of course!”

“What do you mean?”

“Despite what some theoretical physicists may say, Albert Einstein never claimed that the General Theory of Relativity was the end all of cosmology. In fact, many of the more recent theories about space-time are much closer to the truth. When it comes to traveling faster than light, PDT rules.”

“What is PDT?”

“The quantum engines actually use something called Phased Dimensional Shifting, or PDT, to achieve Faster Than Light travel, or FTL. The theory has to do with slipping slightly into an alternate state of being, another dimension, enabling travel for vast distances. Dad and I have had a number of conversations over the years about various theories that might account for how the ship was capable of interstellar travel. Based on what I’ve learned from developing the quantum engines, they definitely rely on PDT, or something very close to it.”

In this next excerpt, Hank has successfully flown the craft to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star-system to our own, some 4.3 light-years away from earth. Now Einstein describes why literal FTL travel is impossible, which leads us t a sort of non-literal FTL travel:

Second except from Frontiers, Cybersp@ce Series Book 2, by Jeff W. Horton

“Hank, where are you? Did the quantum engines work; did you make it to Alpha Centauri?”

Based on what she saw in the three-dimensional holographic display, Hank then turned to look at something in the ship.

“Hold on a second, you’ve got to see this––” he replied with a grin. He turned and pressed a switch, which instantly activated a camera that displayed what was outside of the ship. In spite of everything she’d been through, Hailey gasped in awe as she beheld a most wondrous image before her, a vision of a never-before seen section of the universe, with two of the three stars in the system along with several strange, alien, planetary bodies, all projected against the black blanket of space.

“I would like to call your attention off to the port of the ship, where we have the large yellow star that we refer to as Alpha Centauri A, which looks remarkably like Sol, the life-giving star around which our own Earth revolves, what we typically refer to as the ‘sun.’

“Now closer to the middle of our view, we have a second star; this one is considerably smaller than the first and is orange in color rather than yellow, and is relatively close to Alpha Centauri A, astronomically speaking. This second, smaller star is known on Earth as Alpha Centauri B. Off in the distance there, to your far right, you should be able to see another, much fainter light; that is the third star in the Alpha Centauri system, and also the Earth’s nearest neighbor, Proxima, also known as Alpha Centauri C. That makes Earth’s nearest star system a binary system, though some include Proxima and refer to the system as a triple-star system.

“Now, if you look down toward the bottom of your projected image, you will see a small, brown planet about the size of the Earth. This world has a scarred and tortured surface, however, the result of its proximity to Alpha Centauri A. All in all, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it Hailey?”

“That’s an understatement, Hank; it’s absolutely amazing! Wow! How long did it take you to get there?” she asked him, her eyes filled with wonder.

“These quantum engines are something else, Hailey. It me took one hour, forty-five minutes.”

Hailey punched at a keyboard for a few moments. “Do you have any idea how fast you traveled, Hank? That’s 419,047,619,047.61 kilometers per minute, or 23,297 times the speed of light!”

Hank frowned and shook his head. “No, Hailey, remember your physics; that would be impossible, at least assuming Einstein’s theory of relativity is still correct. What the quantum engine does is open up an inter-dimensional window, a passageway through another dimension, which makes covering the vast distances of the universe much easier. Besides, even if the ship could travel that fast, you and everyone else on Earth would be long-dead by the time I arrived, since time travels slower the closer you get to the speed of light, much less thousands of times the speed of light!”

In Frontiers, Hailey proclaims the ship traveled 23,297 times the speed of light to arrive at Alpha-Centauri in an hour-and-a-half. Hank quickly corrects her, stating that would be impossible as predicted by Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. He goes on to state that the ship’s quantum engines open-up an inter-dimensional window, which essentially provides short-cuts from one point in space to another.

Next, Hank puts his finger on the crux of the matter, the underlying and pesky issue that makes any traditional form of linear propulsion and acceleration a non-starter from the very beginning.

“Besides, even if the ship could travel that fast, you and everyone else on Earth would be long-dead by the time I arrived, since time travels slower the closer you get to the speed of light, much less thousands of times the speed of light!”

If you’ve seen the movie Interstellar you’ve seen this same issue play out. Traveling at high speeds in space-time is essentially a way of moving through time, into the future. What good will it do to travel the universe, when everyone we know, and love will be dead and gone when we return? Only when we can safely bounce around the universe without traveling through time will we be able to take significant advantage of FTL travel.

Science-fiction authors and screenwriters have addressed the challenges posed by the vastness of space by coming up with creative solutions like the hyperdrive, folding space, black holes, worm hole drives, white holes, slipstream drives, and of course, warp drives.

It turns out that some of these theoretical technologies could offer some hope for one day enabling us to travel the stars. enough that NASA is funding research into warp drives, worm holes, and something called magnetic portals. Take a look at this excerpt from an article in Forbes Magazine.

The challenges to achieving interstellar travel, while sobering, have not stopped the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from providing $500,000 in seed funding for 100 Year Starship, a long-term, nongovernmental initiative that ensures "the capabilities for human interstellar flight exist as soon as possible, and definitely within the next 100 years."

Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth other than the Sun. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Schwartz, who authored "The Art of the Long View," one of the seminal books on scenario planning, acknowledges that the idea behind 100 Year Starship is audacious. When he was first approached to apply scenario planning to the concept, he initially judged it extremely unlikely. "Anyone who looks at the problem has to be skeptical because it is so hard," Schwartz said in an interview.

But the more Schwartz examined the idea, the more he realized the opportunities for achieving interstellar travel had increased in number and probability. First, mankind now had definitive evidence that earth is not the only habitable planet in the galaxy. To date, NASA's Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, has discovered 152 new planets orbiting distant stars, including around a half-dozen in the "habitable zone."  And billions of planets remain undiscovered. "What this means is there is someplace to go," said Schwartz, who holds a degree in aeronautical engineering and astronautics from Rennsselaer Polytechnical Institute.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2013/09/29/seven-sci-fi-scenarios-for-interstellar-space-travel-that-could-happen-in-this-century/#2e79958fed92

Here’s an excerpt from a fascinating article I came across on IFLSCIENCE’s website regarding a highly ambitious project called “Breakthrough Starshot.”

New Project Plans to Send a Spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in 20 Years

http://www.iflscience.com/space/stephen-hawking-reveals-plan-send-spacecraft-alpha-centauri-20-years/

A new project has been announced that will attempt to launch a small spacecraft to our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, and return images and data to Earth within a generation.

The ambitious proposal called Breakthrough Starshot was revealed today by billionaire Yuri Milner, Professor Stephen Hawking, and a host of other scientists and experts. The $100 million research project will seek to prove a proposed concept for interstellar travel, using a tiny satellite with a large laser-powered sail, with a plan to launch a mission to Alpha Centauri in the near future.

“Today, we commit to this next great leap into the cosmos,” said Hawking at a press conference today. “Because we are human, and our nature is to fly.”

The proposal involves using a tiny “nanocraft,” called StarChip, which could fit between two fingers, attached to a giant and sail. An array of lasers on Earth will then be used to direct a powerful laser approaching 100 gigawatts at this sail, accelerating it to 20 percent of the speed of light in a matter of minutes.

Stephen Hawking was one of the experts taking part in the press conference. Breakthrough Starshot

Regular spacecraft would take more than 30,000 years to traverse the 4.37 light-years (25 trillion miles) to Alpha Centauri, but this nanocraft could complete the same journey in just 20 years, returning images and data to Earth of planets in the Alpha Centauri system.

Rather than just sending one of these nanocraft, Milner and co plan to launch hundreds, or even thousands of them. But they admit there are still a number of challenges to overcome, so they are opening the project to the public to seek advice on how best to move forward. As of yet, there is no launch date planned for the mission.

“The question is, can we reach the stars, literally?” Milner said at the press conference. “And can we do it in our lifetimes?”

Aside from Milner and Hawking, the project boasts some high-profile backers including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Ann Druyan, the widow of the late Carl Sagan, who proposed the idea of a solar sail in 1976. “But we didn’t think of making one so small,” said Druyan. The program will be led by Pete Worden, former director of NASA’s AMES Research Center.

So, is Interstellar Travel possible? Well, I’ll have to leave that answer to the real experts, but it is sounding increasingly likely that we will find some way to make it happen, one way or another, and more likely sooner rather than later.

There’s been one question that’s been nagging at me about this ever since I read about Breakthrough Starshot regarding time dilation and Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. If time passes more slowly for an object as it approaches the speed of light, does that mean that Starshot will make it to Alpha-Centauri in 20 years from the probe’s perspective, or from the perspective from those still on the Earth? \ If, indeed, Starshot takes 20 years from the Earth’s perspective, doesn’t that mean that from the probe’s perspective, the trip would last something like, what, a day or two?

Ohhhhh, my head’s starting to hurt. I need some Tylenol before my head explodes.

Jeff W Horton strives to write fun, exciting, revealing, and widely entertaining fiction with a slight Christian flavor.

Visit my website: at www.hortonlibrary.com

Find me on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/yb3lwhnx

or On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Author.Jeff.Horton

================================================

[From Blog Post #1030, Technology Discussion: Is Interstellar Travel Possible?]

Read more posts by Author Jeff W. Horton by clicking on the link below! https://www.hortonlibrary.com/home/blog-the-horton-post

#Jeff W. Horton The Horton Library Science Books TheHortonPost Space interstellar FTL technology

[wordpresshelper]

How to Speeding Up WordPress Site?

A Guide to Speeding up WordPress: 

 When a person lands on your site for the first time, you only have a few seconds to capture their attention to convince them to hang around.

 Get ready to lose sleep at night: according to a report by the Microsoft Bing search team, a 2-second longer delay in page responsiveness reduced user satisfaction by 3.8%, increased lost revenue per user by 4.3%, and reduced clicks by 4.3%.

 If your site takes too long to load, most people are gone, lost before you even had a chance.

 Not only that, but Google now includes site speed in its ranking algorithm. That means that your site’s speed effects SEO, so if your site is slow, you’re now losing visitors from impatience and reduced rankings in search engines. Yikes.

 1. Choose a better web hosting provider

 The major factor that influences the speed of a website is the hosting of your WordPress website. It might seem like a good idea to host your new website on a shared hosting provider that offers “unlimited” bandwidth, space, emails, domains and more. However, the point that we usually miss out on regarding this offer is that shared hosting environments fail to deliver good loading times on peak traffic hours, and most fail to provide 99 percent uptime in any given month.

 Shared hosting tends to deliver a poorer performance because you are sharing the same server space with countless other websites, and there is no telling how much resources others are using. Plus, you don’t know exactly how well the servers are optimized.

 Thankfully, the web-hosting industry has advanced with technology, and the prices of cloud hosting providers have decreased with the passage of time. In the present times, you can buy dedicated cloud servers from SiteGround, DigitalOcean, Amazon Web Services, and even Google Compute Engine at a nominal price. However, setting those servers up can be a daunting task as you are required to set servers up from scratch. There are web hosting providers like Cloudways (where I work) who make the task of setting up optimized cloud servers as easy as click and launch. You can read more about the process here: how to set up WordPress through Cloudways.

 2. Use a lightweight WordPress theme/framework

 WordPress themes (WordPress Theme Development) with a lot of dynamic elements, sliders, widgets, social icons, and many  elements and higher page sizes, then they will definitely cause your web server to take a thumping.

 The best option here is to use lightweight themes. One solution is to go for one of the default WordPress themes. Another is to try out something like Neve, built by the same guys behind CodeinWP.

 Alternatively, for a feature-rich website, you can also opt for a theme that uses a good framework like Bootstrap or Foundation.

 3. Reduce image sizes

 Images are the major contributors to the size increment of a given webpage. The trick is to reduce the size of the images without compromising on the quality.

 If you manually optimize the images using Chrome PageSpeed Insights extension or Photoshop or any other tools, the process will take a long time. Fortunately, there are plugins available for just about everything you can think of, including image optimization. The ones worth mentioning are:

 Optimal

WP Smush

EWWW Image Optimizer

 Using any of the above-mentioned plugins on your WordPress site will drastically reduce image sizes, thus improving the speed of your website.

 4. Minify JS and CSS files

 If you run your website through the Google PageSpeed Insights tool, you will probably be notified about minimizing the size of your CSS and JS files. What this means is that by reducing the number of CSS and JS calls and the size of those files, you can improve the site loading speed.

 Also, if you know your way around WordPress themes, you can study the guides provided by Google and do some manual fixing. If not, then there are plugins that will help you achieve this goal; the most popular being the Autoptimize that can help in optimizing CSS, JS and even HTML of your WordPress website.

 5. Use advanced caching mechanisms with a caching plugin

WordPress caching plugins (e.g. W3 Total Cache) has been there for a long time, making the complex tasks of adding caching rules to your website elements easier. Combining such plug-ins with advanced caching mechanisms like Varnish could help you better the loading speed of your website and ultimately speed up WordPress considerably.

 6. Use a CDN

 The people who visit your website belong to various locations in the world, and needless to say, the site-loading speed will differ if the visitors are located far away from where your site is hosted. There are many CDN (Content Delivery Networks) that help in keeping the site-loading speed to a minimum for visitors from various countries. A CDN keeps a copy of your website in various data centers located in different places. The primary function of a CDN is to serve the webpage to a visitor from the nearest possible location. Cloudflare and MaxCDN are among the most popular CDN services.

 7. Cleanup WordPress database

 Deleting unwanted data from your database will keep its size to a minimum and also helps in reducing the size of your backups. It is also necessary to delete spam comments, fake users, old drafts of your content and maybe even unwanted plugins as well as themes. All of this will reduce the size of your databases and web files, and thus speed up WordPress – your WordPress. (Fix error establishing database connection)

 8. Deactivate or uninstall plugins

 Keeping unwanted plugins on your WordPress websites will add a tremendous amount of junk to your web files. Moreover, it will also increase the size of your backup and put an overwhelming amount of load on your server resources while backup files are being generated. It is better to get rid of the plugins that you don’t use and also look for alternate methods to use third-party services for automating or scheduling tasks (like sharing of your latest posts to social media).

 IFTTT or Zapier are two web services that help in automating such tasks and reduce the burden on your website and server resources.

 9. Keep external scripts to a minimum

 The usage of external scripts on your web pages adds a big chunk of data to your total loading time. Thus, it is best to use a low number of scripts, including only the essentials such as tracking tools (like Google Analytics) or commenting systems (like Disqus).

 10. Disable pingbacks and trackbacks

Pingbacks and trackbacks are two core WordPress components that alert you whenever your blog or page receives a link. It might sound useful, but you also have things such as Google Webmaster Tools and other services to check the links of your website.

 Keeping pingbacks and trackbacks on can also put an undesirable amount of strain on your server resources. This is so because whenever anyone tries to link up to your site, it generates requests from WordPress back and forth. This functionality is also widely abused when targeting a website with DDoS attacks.

 You can turn it all off in WP-Admin → Settings → Discussion. Just deselect “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks).” This will help you speed up WordPress some more.

 Conclusion

 The biggest advantage of lowering your website’s loading time is that it will help tremendously in improving the experience of your visitors. The case remains the same whether they are using mobile devices or PCs. Furthermore, it will also improve your rankings in the SERPs. After all, reduced bandwidth usage of your hosting and faster site-loading speed on the client-side will only benefit you both in the short as well as in the long run.

 Call Us at 888-606-1808 (US Toll Free) to get free assistance for your WordPress Website. 

#how to fix fatal error #how to fix 403 forbidden error on google chrome #WordPess TroubleShooting Services #how to solve 403 forbidden error in php #how to fix error 403 #hire expert wordpress developers #offshore wordpress developers india #offshore wordpress development company

[imaginedisneydescendants]

Castle Warming

*Requested*  Doug has a little surprise for Evie!

Paring: Evie x Doug

Word count: 1,710

A/N: So cute!!!

Request | Masterlist

“Hey Diz, what do you think of these designs?” Evie questioned as she held up two pieces of paper that had drawings of two unique dresses that were ordered by none other than Queen Rapunzel.

It had been four years since Evie and Doug had graduated from Auradon Prep. After graduation, Evie had to relocate Evie’s 4 Hearts from her small bedroom that she shared with Mal to Auradon City, where she and Doug bought a vacant storefront. As Evie worked her way to the top, her business had begun to thrive, as it became one of the biggest fashion boutiques in Auradon.

Evie and Doug were the power couple that was taking the fashion world by storm; Evie designed and embroidered her own creations while Doug handled all of the boutique’s finances. However, their life wasn’t all that glamorous as it sounds and despite their moderately high cash flow, they have been living above the boutique which also doubled as Evie’s sewing room. It was a decent-sized living space, but there wasn’t enough room for three people as Dizzy also lived with Evie and Doug. It was hard sometimes but Evie didn’t just want a normal house, she wanted a castle. The castle she had always wanted was still on the market, much to her surprise, but she was so close to buying her dream castle.

“Bibbidi bobbidi boo, they’re amazing!“ Dizzy gasped with astonishment, "More amazing than your last designs.”

Dizzy, now sixteen, had gone from a hair stylist to fashion designer, creating alongside Evie. Dizzy had come a long way from when she first left the Isle of the Lost, and as soon as Dizzy stepped foot in Auradon her talent had prospered under the love and care of the teachers at Auradon Prep. She became so much more than the little girl who was assigned to sweeping the floors at her wicked grandmother’s salon.

“I know right?” A smile grew across Evie’s face as she placed the two designs down on the table before she started gathering pieces of sample fabrics for the materials board, “I just hope Rapunzel will like at least one of them when I show her the final designs tomorrow.”

“Trust me, Evie,” Dizzy insisted, “She’ll fall head over heels in love with both of them!“

Dizzy always knew how to reassure Evie whenever she worried about customers not liking her designs; she did it more often than not as Evie always worried that her designs weren’t good enough. She blamed her mother for instilling the idea that she had to be perfect in everything she did, but no matter what, Evie was never good enough for even her mother’s standards.

With newly found confidence, Evie had grabbed a couple of choice fabrics and started to put together the material boards. However, something was off about the colour scheme as they didn’t match up to what Rapunzel had wanted. Before Evie could think of a solution to the problem, she heard the bell ring from downstairs, signalling to them that they had a customer.

"I’ll handle this one, Diz,” Evie told before she rushed down to the main level of the boutique to see Doug walking through the door.

“Oh, Doug — it’s just you,” Evie said casually, exhaustion evident in her voice.

“I’m sorry to be a disappointment,” Doug replied in a teasing manner.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Evie told before letting out a deep sigh, “Sorry, I’m just stressing out about the designs I have come up with for Queen Rapunzel, one of them is going to be worn at the Coronian Banquet in a couple of weeks time. I have to have these dresses perfect, as I want my best work on display,” Evie ranted, pacing back and forth.

“I’m sure the dresses will look flawless,” Doug encouraged before going over to Evie and gave her a peck on the cheek, “As they always do.”

Evie gave him a small smile; she knew that she could count on Doug to make her feel better, as he was her number one fan and her biggest supporter after all.

"Hey, what do you say to a special night out, just you and me?” Doug questioned after a while of silence.

Evie’s smile faltered, “Doug, you know I can’t, I have to —”

“Please, Evie?” Doug begged with big hopeful eyes, “We deserve a night out.”

Evie couldn’t help but give into her boyfriend before she nodded with a smile, “That sounds like the perfect idea.”

Doug smiled brightly. “Great! I’ll pick you up at six, but right now I have to get going again,” he informed as he checked his watch.

“Oh, so soon?” Evie pouted.

Doug couldn’t help but smile softly before he went over to Evie and kissed her again on the cheek, “Yeah, I’m really sorry — it’s just that have to take care of something first. I’ll see you soon, darling.“

Before Evie could ask where he was going, Doug was out the door. Evie shook her head with a small smile before she headed upstairs. As she reached the top of the stairs, Evie saw Dizzy’s head pop out from under one of the many piles of fabrics that were stacked upon one other. Grinning from ear to ear, Dizzy rushed towards Evie with a blush pink coloured sample with some gold lace fabric as well.

"Evie, I found these and thought that they would be perfect for Rapunzel’s dresses!” Dizzy exclaimed before she gave Evie the samples.

Evie accepted them graciously and studied them both before she muttered, "Yes, these just might work!”

Rushing over to her sewing table, Evie placed the samples together with the fabrics she already had laid out; they look so beautiful together.

“Dizzy, you are a fashion genius!” Evie cried out in happiness before she wrapped an arm around the younger girls shoulders and pulled her closer, “The material board is done, I cannot wait for Rapunzel to see it!”

As the two girls stared proudly that their teamwork, Evie then reminded herself of the night out that Doug wanted to treat them both too. “Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” Evie spoke up, “Doug and I are going out tonight.”

“Is that who came in earlier?” Dizzy asked as she turned to face Evie and she nodded in response, "Oh, cool, where are you guys going?”

“Honestly, I don’t know, Doug never said where,” Evie answered as her curiosity was sparked, “He was in so much of a rush to ‘take care of something’ that he never mentioned what it was.“

Dizzy then lit up in excitement, "Ooh, I wonder what he has planned!”

"Me and you both,” Evie said before frowning, “I’m sorry that you can’t come this time, Diz.”

Dizzy waved a hand in a dismissive manner, “Don’t worry about me, you guys go on ahead. I’ll hold down the fort while you two have a good time. You guys haven’t had a decent night out since you opened this place.”

Evie couldn’t help but smile; Dizzy was such a sweetheart. For the rest of the afternoon, Evie and Dizzy worked on some other orders that they had received from multiple numbers of royals and nobles.

Doug and Evie’s night out was perfect; Doug had taken them to ‘Tiana’s Palace’ where they tried the house speciality and were provided live entertained by Louis the alligator and the Palace’s exclusive band the Firefly Five. After they had finished dinner, Doug and Evie took a stroll around New Orleans for a while before they had decided to put an end to a perfect evening. But when they got to the car, Doug had Evie sit in the passenger seat of their car before he tied a blindfold over her eyes telling her that he had a surprise to show her.

So as Evie sat in the car having no idea where they were going, Evie’s curiosity was getting the better of her before she asked, “Doug, where are we going?“

“Patience, darling,” Doug told softly before he placed a gentle hand on top of Evie’s hand, “We’re nearly there.”

After a couple of minutes, the car had come to a stop which made Evie excited and slightly nervous. What was he going to surprise her with? Evie heard Doug turn off the ignition. He then stepped out of the car, shutting the door behind him. Evie waited in the car before Doug came around to open the door, took Evie’s hands and helped her out. After closing the car door, Doug held onto the sides of her upper arms before he guided her forward. Evie felt gravel crunch under her heels as she took hesitant steps forward.

"Watch your step,” Doug told, as he guided her safely.

"Well, it’s pretty hard considering that I’m blindfolded, Dopey,” Evie let out a laugh that sounded like bells chiming according to Doug.

As Evie took a few more steps forward, she felt Doug stop and so she stopped as well. Doug took her blindfold off and her eyes fluttered open; there it was, the castle she had always wanted.

Evie raised an eyebrow in confusion before she turned to her boyfriend, “Doug, why did you bring —”

However, before Evie could finish her question, Doug pulled her into a passionate kiss. Evie was even more confused but she kissed him back nonetheless.

Once they broke apart, Doug grinned, “Welcome to our new home, darling.”

As the words registered in Evie’s head, her hands flew up to cover her mouth, "Oh my — Doug! You bought the castle we always wanted?!”

Doug nodded, "I had to negotiate the price but in the end, it was worth seeing your beautiful smile.”

Evie let out a laugh of disbelief as her eyes filled with tears; she was overwhelmed with happiness, “Is that where you went this afternoon, to buy the castle?“

Doug nodded again sheepishly.

“Oh Doug,” Evie swooned before she leaned her head into his chest, "We can finally move out of the boutique and put a studio upstairs! You really know how to make a girl feel like a Queen,” Evie beamed before taking Doug’s hands and dragging him towards their new home.

#descendants #descendants 2 #disney descendants #descendants imagine #doug x evie #evie x doug #evie descendants #doug descendants #devie #evie #doug

[adolphkwinter]

How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget

There’s a formula to SEO and as long as you follow it, you’ll get rankings.

So, what’s this formula?

Well, you write amazing content, optimize your code, create a great user experience, and you mix in some backlinks.

Sounds simple, right?

Well, the formula isn’t too complicated, but it does require hard work and patience.

Now what makes SEO challenging isn’t the formula, or the time, or the patience. It has more to do with how you beat people who have more money than you because, in theory, they can do more of everything, which should cause them to outrank you.

But you know what? I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I love SEO because it’s the one channel where you can beat big companies even if you can’t outspend them.

How? Well, let’s go over that.

Let’s first start with the two mental shifts you’ll have to make.

Mental shift #1: Speed is everything

What most people won’t tell you is big companies need to spend more to get the same results that you can for pennies on the dollar. They have way too many employees and layers in their organization to move fast and nimble.

In other words, everything moves slowly.

So, what do they do? They spend money in hopes that it makes them move faster. But the reality is, spending more doesn’t necessarily get them faster results.

If you want to beat them, the first thing you’ll have to do is focus on execution. If you can’t move fast, you won’t win.

This is your biggest advantage.

The reason I have gotten to where I am today is due to my execution speed. And now that we keep growing in size, things are moving slower.

For example, because my business has continually been growing, we now prioritize based on what makes us the most revenue and I bet you SEO isn’t as high on that priority list as it used to be. Not just for me, but for all companies my size and bigger.

You have to remember, we have multiple offices, hundreds of employees… we have to focus on what pays the bills.

So how do we compensate? We spend more money in hopes that it fixes it. Just like how I write less content these days, and I spend money on things like Ubersuggest and Backlinks in hopes that it helps.

But that won’t fix everything.

The point is, if you can move fast, it will give you a huge advantage.

Mental shift #2: Scrappiness beats money

Alright, let’s recap the formula to SEO…

Content + SEO friendly code + user experience + backlinks = rankings.

I know Google has over 200 ranking factors, but the formula above encompasses the majority of it.

Now you are probably thinking that if you want to write content or build links you have to spend money, but that isn’t necessarily the case.

With my previous marketing blog, Quick Sprout, I grew it by partnering with other writers.

I wasn’t as well known in the marketing world back then, but I hit up people like Brian Dean and co-authored guides like this one on link building with him.

That guide is over 20,000 words. And Brian did the majority of the work and for free.

I also did something similar with Ritika Puri and we created a guide on marketing psychology.

And every time I partnered with other writers and marketers to create these in-depth guides my traffic skyrocketed.

The first time I published one, my traffic went up by 117% in 2 months.

Now, that’s something that you can still do to this day to see great results.

Another way you can boost your SEO traffic is to get people to contribute content to your site for free.

I did this with the KISSmetrics blog before I acquired it. During its peak, it generated 1,260,681 unique visitors a month.

We grew the KISSmetrics traffic through one simple approach… we hit up tons of writers in our space and asked them to contribute articles.

At first, we had to pay a few because the blog wasn’t known and we barely had any visitors. But once we paid a handful of well-known writers who were guest contributors on competing sites, we now had a great foundation.

We still didn’t have much traffic, but having those writers publish content was enough to convince other writers to submit content for free.

It’s a simple approach that still works to this day.

There are many ways you can be scrappy, you just have to think outside the box. Don’t think you need tons of money to solve your marketing problems. Being scrappy in most cases is more effective.

Now that we’ve covered the two mental shifts you need to make, let’s focus on the 4 quick wins that will yield the biggest results in the least amount of time.

Yes, many of these “quick wins” are well known, but less than 1% of SEOs focus on them. I know this because I have an ad agency that works with large Fortune 100 companies… and it doesn’t stop there, most companies no matter what size they are, don’t focus on these quick wins.

Quick win #1: Land and expand

They say the more content you create the more traffic you will get.

Do you want to know what the big issue with this strategy is?

Writing more content doesn’t guarantee more traffic.

Content marketing has changed. Writing no longer guarantees you more traffic because there are over 1 billion blogs.

With people cranking out so much content on a daily basis, Google now has the choice of what content to rank and what not to rank.

Similar to me, your top 10 pages are going to make up a lot of your traffic… and probably more than me.

The top 10 pages on my site make up 29.23% of my traffic. That’s crazy considering I have 5,171 blog posts.

With your site, your top 10 pages will probably make up over 40% of your traffic as you probably don’t have as much content as me.

So instead of spending the majority of your time writing new content, why not get more traffic out of the content you have.

I call this the land and expand method. In other words, you already have pages that are getting search traffic and rank on Google, might as well adjust them so you can 2 or 3 times more search traffic to those pages.

Best of all, this method gets results within 1 month for most sites and within 2 months if your site doesn’t have as much authority.

If you want to leverage this technique, follow “step 2” in this article where I break down how to land and expand step by step.

Quick win #2: Optimize for revenue, not traffic

Your goal is to increase your search traffic, right?

Well, if you are reading this blog it is. 😉

But as you get more search traffic, what’s happened to your revenue?

Actually, let’s rephrase the question… as my traffic climbed, can you guess what happened to my revenue?

That traffic according to SEMrush is worth $1.2 million.

But here is the thing: as my search traffic grew by 123%, my revenue only grew by 12.5%… not a good deal.

Yes, you want to optimize your site for Google so you can rank higher. But what’s the point if it doesn’t increase your revenue?

You need to look at the pages on your site that are responsible for revenue generation activities and first optimize those so they rank higher on Google. You can do this by setting up goal tracking within Google Analytics.

Once you set up goal tracking, you’ll now know what pages to focus your attention on so that those extra visitors you in bring will turn into revenue. You can then take that extra revenue and reinvest it in your marketing initiatives.

Quick win #3: Optimize for clicks, not rankings

Question for you…

If everyone did a Google search and clicked on the second results instead of the first result, what do you think will happen?

Well, it would tell Google that people prefer the second listing and it would move that ranking to the number 1 spot.

To prove this theory, Rand Fishkin told all of his Twitter followers to search for the phrase “best grilled steak” and click on the 4th listing instead of the 1st.

And within 70 minutes the 4th listing jumped up to the top spot.

It was so effective that the listing Rand Fishkin told everyone to clicked on skyrocketed to the top of Google for the phrase “grilled steak”.

If you want to boost your rankings, it isn’t just about the content you are creating or the links you are building. If people don’t want to click on your listing, you’ll find that your rankings will continually tank.

And if people click on yours more than the competitors, than your rankings will skyrocket even if you don’t build as many links.

So how do you increase your click-through-rate?

Well you don’t want to tell your friends to click on your listing as that is a temporary effect and your rankings will only climb for a short period of time. You want to optimize your title tag and meta description to encourage people to click on your listings over the competition.

This will cause your rankings to climb slower, but they will stick once you reach the top.

I won’t bore you with the details in this article on optimizing click-through-rates as I have already blogged on it… just head over to this post and follow hack number 1. 😉

Quick win #4: Update your old content

Have you noticed over time that your rankings fluctuate? No matter how good you are at SEO and no matter how much money you have, there is no guarantee you’ll be at the top spot.

Do you want to know why your rankings drop?

Most people assume that it’s a penalty. But Google is very friendly (believe it or not), and their goal isn’t to penalize sites. Their goal is to rank the best sites at the top.

You know… the sites that users love the most.

Just think of it this way, if Google hypothetically penalized BMW for building backlinks and removed them from the index, what do you think would happen when people search for “BMW”?

People would be pissed that BMW isn’t showing up.

And they wouldn’t be pissed at BMW, they would be pissed at Google and they may not use Google again.

Google’s goal isn’t to penalize your site or be mean to you or tank your rankings. Their goal is simple… always put the site that is best for the end user at the top.

When your rankings tank, it’s typically because someone else created a page that provides a better experience for the term you were ranking for.

The way you fix this, maintain your rankings, and even climb higher is to continually update your old content.

If you have content that is old, outdated, or if your rankings drop, read this. It breaks down what to do step by step, and it will help you outrank your competition because I bet they aren’t updating their old content.

This is so effective I currently have 3 full-time people updating my old content.

You don’t have to get as crazy as me, but you should update your old content.

Conclusion

Money isn’t stopping you from beating your competition. The only thing standing in your way is you.

That’s ok though. We can fix that.

With a few mindset shifts and some quick wins, things are about to change.

I’ve never let my competition get in my way. I don’t care if they have more money than me or that they have been at this longer.

If I started my journey cleaning restrooms and picking up trash and eventually got here… you can too.

There is nothing really stopping you from winning.

So what do you think, are you ready to beat your competition?

The post How to Outrank Big Companies When You Have No SEO Budget appeared first on Neil Patel.

from Online Marketing Tips https://neilpatel.com/blog/outrank-competition/

[dylan38sanders]

2019’s Biggest Event Tech Trends

Event tech trends are evolving faster than ever before. We are seeing giant leaps forward in technology. These giant leaps forward impact and shape the way we execute and plan events. The event tech trends we are listing today are being used everywhere at events and behind the scenes in planning.

Below you can watch Will Curran of Endless Events, Alex Plaxen of Little Bird Told Media talk all about their favorite 2019 Event Tech Trends at GOWEST. Joining them are Lindsay Martin-Bilbrey of Pathable, and Chuck Alias of Eventbots. We will expand on each of these 2019 event tech trends and how you can implement them in more detail in the article below but you can’t miss this presentation!

While we are on the topic of event tech, if you want to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest in event tech be sure to subscribe to

https://js.hscta.net/cta/current.js hbspt.cta.load(430132, ‘d5fe189f-4175-42aa-b9c7-386d647d5289’, {}); , and we fill you in on the hottest industry trends and tech weekly!

https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/d065p19bf8.jsonphttps://fast.wistia.com/assets/external/E-v1.js

  Artificial Intelligence (AI)

We have seen AI on countless event trends lists by now, so why is it a 2019 event tech trend? We believe while it has been trending for many years it is an ever-evolving trend. When you think of AI you immediately think of physical robots who are capable of thinking and learning. We think about the robots we saw at CES this year like Sophia, the humanoid robot who can express feelings and even has a sense of humor. However, this bleeding edge technology in AI is not quite ready for mainstream use yet. It will be years until we see these types of AI at events.

In reality currently, AI at events is mostly just programmed answers in technology such as chatbots and some event apps. We don’t see these robots of the future walking around passing out drinks or registering attendees just yet. However, it could shape up to be an interesting future with the way AI is evolving!   

Event Automation

Saves Planners Time

Time and time again event profs have found themselves on the list for most stressful jobs.  In fact, CareerCast listed Event Coordinators as the 5th most stressful jobs of 2018. Event Coordinators were right up there with military personnel, police, and firefighters in terms of stress. Part of this is because event profs are stressed for resources. There is always a lot to do but never enough time. Often eventprofs feel as though they are running against the clock. However, thanks to recent developments in technology, event automation can help both event profs in the planning and execution of events and attendees have the best event experience possible. In fact, event technology can not only reduce stress but increase planners’ productivity by 27%.  That is huge!

Event automation allows eventprofs to automate tasks, create workflows, cut costs. Automation can even measure the success of event activities and marketing efforts. By setting up event automation you can set and forget tasks allowing you to focus your talents and time elsewhere.

Creates Custom Attendees Experiences

And that’s not all event automation does! It also gives planners the ability to create personalized experiences for attendees sending attendees information tailored to what they are interested in. It could also help prevent attendees from getting slammed with information overload. Have you ever got an event email with everything you need to know in one giant email? That can feel like too much at once. Instead, eventprofs can use event automation to create email drip campaigns that slowly drip information out to attendees into smaller more digestible emails!

Source: Sciensio

Chatbots

In summary, chatbots are a conversational tool that automates a chat-driven process. Their primary function is to give consistent responses to questions via programming. The programming works by implementing 2 key components the template and the library. The template consists of the questions and the library.  The questions are what you can ask the chatbot, the library holds all the answers programmed for the chatbot to respond back. More than likely you interact with chatbots on a day to day basis, for example, the little boxes which pop up on a website asking ”How can I help you?”.

There are many benefits to using chatbots.

Can Be Used At Any Size Event

They work for virtually any type and any size event. Whether it’s a 4-day conference, a music festival with 100k attendees or 10 person leaders retreats, a chatbot will benefit your event.

Can Alleviate Overwhelmed Staff

Chatbots can answer most popular questions taking some of the work load off of event staff. They also greatly improve communication allowing attendees to get information 24/7 instantly and in a world of instant gratification, the ability to immediately assist is what really cements chatbots as a new wave of communication in event support.

Chatbots Can Be Used on Many Platforms

One of the best parts about chatbots is you can use almost any channel from text messaging to social channels like Facebook Messenger, and websites allowing the attending decide where and how to use them. This puts chatbots at an advantage over event apps when it comes to getting attendees information as they don’t need to download another app just to get event info. Furthermore, ff your chatbot is using SMS to get messages out there is a great chance your notifications will be seen. VoiceSage reported 90% of SMS messages are read in the first 3 minutes of receiving, and 82% of people say they open every text message they receive. With compelling statistics like that, SMS chatbots could be a godsend when it comes to sending out emergency notifications or schedule changes as it’s very likely your attendees will see and respond to your notifications.

Accessibility

Accessibility at events has always seemed like an afterthought in event planning but that’s a big mistake. About 56.7 million people — 19 percent of the population — had a disability in 2010, according to a broad definition of disability, with more than half of them reporting the disability was severe, according to a comprehensive report on this population released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. With these numbers in mind, it’s no surprise planners are starting to put more focus on how to make their events more accessible so that events are inclusive and welcoming to every attendee.

Often when you think of accessibility you think about physical modifications like ramps and elevators, but accessibility stretches far beyond that. When planning events you need to think about providing all types of accessibility. So how does tech play into this? Assistive technology. The use of according to ATiA ,“Assistive technology (AT) is any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities.” We are seeing the use of assistive tech help make strides in improving accessibility at events in the form of 360 audio (spatial audio), video captioning, and even VR.

Google is Leading the Way

“Using an HTC Vive, we built a prototype of a 1:1 scale virtual room, recorded the name of every object in the room, and linked these audio labels to the individual objects—including the floor, walls and other features. Then, we made the user’s field of vision entirely black to simulate complete blindness. To enable navigation in the pitch-black room, we created a 3D audio laser system that includes a laser pointer extending from the Vive controller to select and play the audio labels, and an audio location control (touchpad click) to provide distance and direction to the last object aimed at by the laser pointer.

When a person aims the laser pointer at a virtual object and selects the audio location control, the VR system plays a short impulse response tone at location of the controller. Then the sound is played a few more times as it quickly progresses to the location of the virtual object. Because all audio is processed using the Google VR Spatial Audio plugin, each tone provides enough information to understand distance and relative location of the object in the virtual space.” Google

Source: Google

We can see this specific technology being used at events to guide attendees through show floors and exhibits creating an inclusive experience allowing attendees to be fully aware of their surroundings even when they cannot see.

It’s important to note some of this technology is only at its start. Assistive tech still needs to make a lot of progress before it can be implemented at events. With a growing need for accessibility, it will happen. Technology will provide real solutions to accessibility so that all attendees can feel included in event experiences.

Hybrid Events

Hybrid events are events such as conferences and meetings that have both a physical event and a remote component where attendees can be a part of the event virtually.  These events are quickly gaining traction. Each year we are seeing more and more events that happen concurrently in person and live streamed to virtual attendees.

Can Increase Live Attendance

However, this trend is met with a bit of reservation. It’s a common misconception that having a hybrid event will make your in-person attendance decrease, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Having a hybrid event will not make your in-person attendees go-down, it will actually raise in-person attendance the following year! Digitell found that 30% of people who attended a live streamed event attended the live physical event the following year. Think about it, it costs a lot of money to go to large events from travel to event tickets, and before investing in it people want a taste! They want to make sure the investment will be worth it for them, and hybrid events are a way to give them that peace of mind.

If you are still leery, don’t fret! You don’t have to give away your entire event, in fact, we recommend making sure you have some sessions and content that are exclusive to the live event to incentivize in-person attendance. But! Give attendees a preview, let them have a taste, just make sure they have a reason to come for more!

Hybrid Events Work With Any Budget

A hybrid event work with any budget. You can live stream free to social media even with a smartphone, but if you really want to impress your virtual audience you will need to up to production value with professional live steam. This will give you professional quality videos, interesting angles, better audio, an all-around superior quality. If you are serious about creating engaging content, we highly suggest hiring an AV company. They will have the best equipment like microphones, multiple cameras, and allow you to produce the best possible quality.  A bonus to this is you will have high-quality content you can repurpose it for event marketing efforts. For more information on living streaming at events check out our Whiteboard Wednesday, How to Live Stream Your Event where we cover the best ways to live stream your event from DIY to professional services!

Long Term Engagement  

Everyone always talks about audience engagement at your event. This shouldn’t come as a shock, the last thing you want at your event is the audience sleeping. But ensuring onsite engagement isn’t enough for a great event. For a truly remarkable event, you need to keep your attendees interested engaged before during and after the event. Leveraging technology is a great way to keep engagement high!  

Before your event

Before your event, you need to create a buzz! Get everyone talking about your event and make them feel FOMO. To do this create early bird incentives, make teasers from keynote speakers, and show glimpses into the behind-the-scenes planning. Another great way to build excitement is to promote the highlight reel from last years event (repurpose that content from last years live-stream!). All of these tactics work well to engage your audience and get them excited for your upcoming event. You want to build anticipation and excitement right up to the live event!  

During your event

At your event, it’s not enough anymore to just add in some polling for audience engagement. Attendees want amazing experiences! Create shareable experiences like photobooths, encourage the use of event hashtags, pull video clips and quotes to share from your speakers and post them all over social media, encourage speakers to use live polling and q&a, and think beyond a boring powerpoint to create engaging presentations (we love seeing video!), be sure to give your audience a glimpse behind the scenes of your event too. All of these options will keep the buzz going throughout the event.

After your event

You aren’t done yet! Be sure to share the best moments from your event, create a recap video for attendees. Be sure to send out surveys asking attendees how you did. Use that feedback to improve the next year’s event. Most importantly sincerely thank your attendees, your vendors and any partners involved in your event.

Still not sure how to foster audience engagement? Check out our guide on

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Software Integration

If the tools and software you use when planning events don’t integrate you’re wasting time entering the same information over and over. You’re a busy eventprof and you don’t have time for that! Make sure all the platforms you use during event planning integrate well. This is going to save you so many headaches by providing you a more streamlined process.

When you are looking for software that integrates, we aren’t just talking about platforms designed specifically for events. Think about all the programs you use daily that are an essential part of running your business, those too ideally should integrate. This could include your CRM, company chat such as Slack, and an event software like Bizzabo. It can also include project management tools like Trello and more. When choosing platforms always check into integration, nothing is more frustrating than when two platforms do not play well together. Everything should come together and work seamlessly to make your planning process easier.

Video Content

It is no secret we love video content here at Endless! Video is an extremely powerful event tech trend you can leverage for your business and events. Why so powerful? Video is the most observed content on the internet. Youtube has over a billion users, that is over ⅓ of the internet. On top of that, over 8 billion videos or 100 million hours of videos are watched on Facebook every single day. And according to Optinmonster.com, video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year and achieve a 54% increase in brand awareness.

So to state the obvious, you need to be creating video content for your events! Video content works well for any size or type of event. You should be creating video content for before, during and after your event to really maximize the effectiveness. Videos can spark excitement for your event, lead to more sales and better engagement.

Ways to Use Video Content

There are many great ways to incorporate video at conferences and events from behind the scenes videos, sneak peeks into your events, introduction videos, countdown videos, recap videos and so much more. Like live streaming it’s likely you have the tools to get started right in your hand, and you can scale up depending on what you need!

Always be sure to talk to your AV company when implementing vide0. You want to ensure you are creating content in the right format for the screens being used at your event! Nothing is worse than spending hours on a presentation only to find out it doesn’t fit the screen. Even worse, the format cannot be opened on the event computers.  If you want to make sure you have flawless events and presentations check out our free webinar, 

https://js.hscta.net/cta/current.js hbspt.cta.load(430132, ‘9f86c9ca-f3e1-4a44-9dc7-0f1046852d8a’, {}); .

Conclusion  

So there you have it, our top 2019 event tech trends. These trends will certainly take over events this year and we can’t wait to see how they are used. And while these are great, it’s just like anything else in the events world only use them if they fit your event’s purpose. What is the point of a trend for trend’s sake? Make sure the trends you choose benefit your cause. 

Do you agree with these trends? Think there are more? We want to know what you think will be the big 2019 event tech trends? Comment below and let us know!  

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from Endless Events https://helloendless.com/2019s-biggest-event-tech-trends/

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The Step-by-Step Process for Starting, Growing, and Getting Traffic from Your Blog’s Email List

Did you know that one of the best ways to get more traffic to your blog is actually…building your email list?

Yep, that’s right. If you’ve been struggling to drive more traffic and attract more social shares for your blog posts, your email list is about to become your new best friend.

You might be shaking your head at this point, and wondering, “What the heck does list-building have to do with blogging? Do I even care about sending emails, or building an email list? I thought I was supposed to focus on driving more traffic, attracting more social shares, and getting more people to comment on my posts.”

Here’s the secret a lot of people don’t know: Building a loyal email list for your blog can get you all three of those things. In fact, it’s one of the very BEST ways to get all three.

Blogger, author and speaker Michael Hyatt, who is one of the most successful bloggers in the world, has a list of over 500,000 email subscribers. He said this about his list:

“I have literally built a million dollar business on the strength of my email list. Ninety percent of my income comes from it. Even today, my email list is still my #1 business priority and asset.”

Michael Stelzner, founder and owner of Social Media Examiner, has a list of almost 600,000 dedicated subscribers who receive his blog posts in their inboxes every day. Stelzner said, “Email is the most important channel for you to cultivate in your online business.”

But why exactly is building a list the key to a blogger’s success? Why is it so important, and why are all the world’s top bloggers recommending you focus on building your list?

4 Reasons You Need to Focus on Attracting Email Subscribers for Your Blog

According to The Inbox Report – which collected details of the email habits of over 1,500 Americans – over 89% of adults check their email at least once a day, and nearly 21% check their email more than 5 times a day.

No other marketing tool allows us to connect with blog readers as quickly and effective as email marketing – and focusing on list-building can give you some remarkable blogging benefits.

Here are four of the biggest reasons why building your list can give your blog a big boost:

1. Your email subscribers will give you traffic on demand.

You will get more unique visitors from your own email list than you will get from practically any other traffic source – especially if you’re a beginning blogger.

When someone joins your email list, they will read more pages on your site than they would if they were not on your email list – so if you want a high-traffic blog, it’s a good idea to focus on building your email subscriber count.

Want to see how you can turn email subscribers into blog visitors? Let’s go back to Michael Hyatt for an example.

When Michael publishes a new post, he sends an email like this out to his list subscribers:

Michael’s email subscribers click one of the links in the email and go straight to his newest blog post. Keep in mind, Michael has over 500,000 subscribers, so that’s a LOT of potential traffic.

2. Email subscribers share your posts.

Once people get to know, like and trust you, they are more likely to share you content on their favorite social media platforms – so if you’re looking for more shares and wondering how to make a post go viral, the answer is in your email list.

As your list grows, your social share numbers will rises accordingly — especially if you prompt people to share your posts, like Jon Morrow does in his content notifications:

3. Email subscribers are more likely to comment on your posts.

Do your blog post comments feel like a ghost town most of the time?

If so, I get it. Getting people to speak up in your comments section is challenging – but once again, you can go back to your email list for the answer to this problem.

Your visitors are more likely to comment on one of your posts once they are on your email list, so your email subscribers will usually be your most frequent commenters.

People often want to be a part of your community before they start commenting, and being on your list helps them feel connected to you – especially when you’re sending them high-quality content on a regular basis.

4. Emails subscribers are buyers.

This one shouldn’t surprise you.

If you want to start bringing in revenue with your blog (or bring in MORE revenue from your site), building your email list is the #1 thing you should focus on.

Jon Morrow tells his students that if they are amateur marketers, they can probably make about one dollar per email subscriber, per month. If you have 5,000 subscribers on your list, that means you can probably make around $5,000 a month from your blog – and it only goes up from there, as you become a smarter copywriter and a better marketer.

If you want to use blogging as a springboard to quitting your day job, improving your lifestyle, or taking that dream vacation, remember that the money is always in your email list.

Setting Yourself Up for List-Building Success

What if you don’t have an email list yet?

Perhaps you’ve been focusing on writing great content for your site, and you didn’t think starting a list was important. Maybe the task “Start an email list for my blog” has been on your to-do list for months.

If that’s the case, don’t keep putting it off! Follow these simple steps for starting an email list for your blog this week:

1. Sign up with a trusted email service provider to help you manage your list and make sure you comply with current CAN-SPAM laws.

I know you don’t want to spam people, and I also know you don’t want to pay steep penalties (up to $16,000 per email!) for violating federal CAN-SPAM laws.

A reputable email service provider (like MailChimp, Emma, AWeber, or Drip) will make sure that the email messages you send to your list are CAN-SPAM compliant, and make it easy for people to subscribe and unsubscribe from your list.

Our fearless leader, Kevin Duncan, uses AWeber (affiliate link) as his email service provider, and I use Infusionsoft. There are tons of choices out there, so you should be able to find a service that fits your needs and your budget. Most services make it easy to sign up and get started.

2. Have a plan in place for how to build relationships with your subscribers.

Last week, I was talking to a client on the phone, and I asked him about his list size.

“I have about 500 people on my list,” he said.

But when I asked him about the last time he emailed anything to his list, he answered “I think it’s been at least six months. I just don’t know what to send them.”

Too many bloggers start bringing subscribers in – and watching with glee as their email list numbers grow – but they have no idea how to connect with those new community members.

It’s critical that you figure out in advance what you’re going to send to your subscribers, and when you’ll send it – and then you keep your word and do what you’ll say you’re going to do.

At the very least, I recommend sending out what I call “content notifications” any time you’ve published a new blog post (see Michael’s example, above), but you can also do a weekly newsletter, a curated blog post of great stuff from around the web, or a daily tip.

Whatever you decide, just do it well, and do it consistently – it will help your new subscribers start to trust you!

3. Create a welcome message for new subscribers.

Most email service providers (like MailChimp and AWeber) will let you send an automated welcome message to new subscribers. This message will go out to new folks who join your list, whether they sign up in the middle of the night or at 2 PM in the afternoon – and because it’s totally automated, you won’t have to lift a finger to send it.

Your welcome message should be friendly and gracious, and it should explain what’s going to happen next.

Once you’ve decided how often you’re going to email your list (see #2, above) explain that plan to your new subscribers in your welcome message, so they know exactly to expect.

For more information on crafting a welcome message that connects with your subscribers and builds trust, download my free report, “The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Warm Welcome Message for New Subscribers.”

3 Ways to Start Building Your Blog’s Email List

There are a million ways to get more subscribers – and just as many bloggers who want to give you advice on this topic – so I’m just going to give you three quick-and-dirty list-building tips.

List-Building Tip #1: Give away something free to get people to join.

Unfortunately, you can no longer just add a little “Sign up for my newsletter!” box to the sidebar of your site, and expect new subscribers to come pouring in the door every day. We are so inundated with email offers every day that most of are really picky about what we sign up for.

Want to know how to get past people’s hesitations? Give them something valuable if they sign up for your list. Some call it a “incentive,” some call it a “bribe,” and some call it a “giveaway.” Whatever you decide to call it – you need one for your blog!

If you give new subscribers an incentive to entice them to sign up for your list, you can build your list up to 10 times faster than you can without an incentive.

If you’re still dragging your feet, look at it this way: Would you rather take one year to get your first 1000 subscribers, or 10 years? Having a powerful incentive on your website can literally save you nine years of time and effort.

Come up with a giveaway idea that it compelling for your audience, and create it this week. It doesn’t have to be long or complicated! Sometimes one-page cheat sheets or checklist bring in more subscribers that 300-page ebooks. Keep it simple and create something quickly.

List-Building Tip #2: Offer your giveaway on your blog.

Once you decide what you’re going to give away, you’ve got to let your blog visitors know you’ve got something great to offer them.

You can add a welcome gate, pop-up, pop-over, landing page, or content upgrade to your site, or simply add a footer to your blog posts that says, “Like this post? You’ll love my [awesome giveaway name here]. Sign up here to get it right away.”

You can use tools like Sumo, OptinMonster (affiliate link), or LeadPages to offer your incentive, or talk to your web developer about the best way to feature your giveaway on your blog.

List-Building Tip #3: Once you’ve got list-building tips #1 and #2 in place, promote the heck out of your blog posts.

Derek Halpern of Social Triggers recommends spending 20% of your blogging time creating content, and the other 80% promoting that content. Sound extreme? I know. I was a little shocked when I saw those numbers.

Even if you don’t meet that standard, absorb the lesson Derek’s trying to impart: We should spend more time promoting the content we’ve already written. This is especially true for the vast majority of bloggers who don’t promote their content at all – they just hit “publish” and pray someone will notice their new stuff.

Looking for idea for promoting your posts? Start with this list of 107 content promotion ideas from CoSchedule. I recommend finding 10 ideas that are in your comfort zone, and four that are “stretch” goals for you (like asking partners and affiliates to share your content) – then doing all fourteen of them every week.

Promote your content consistently, and see your email subscriber (and blog traffic) numbers grow!

List-Building Tip #4: Guest blog for popular sites where your audience hangs out.

Yes, this strategy still works, although it’s not the goldmine it was five or six years ago. There are still great guest blogging gigs out there, but you need to be very selective about where you guest post.

Here are the questions I ask myself before I consider submitting a guest post to a site:

How many people have shared the blog’s recent posts on social media? These numbers don’t have to be in the thousands, but if you see one-digit numbers for every post over the past few months, it’s not a great sign. How many people are commenting on this blogger’s posts? When people consistently comment on the blogger’s posts, it means he or she has an active and engaged community. That’s exactly what I want! Will the blogger let me add a short bio and a link back to my site at the end of my post? Some bloggers want to put advertisements or other links at the end of my guest post, and they want to bury my bio. That’s their prerogative, but it will cut down on the amount of email subscribers I get from my guest posting efforts. Those folks go on my “no” list every time. Will the blogger send an individual email about my guest post to their email mailing list? If yes, that’s a big plus for me as a guest poster – it will mean more traffic, social shares, and comments for my post.

If (and only if) a blogger meets all four of these criteria will I approach them with a guest posting idea.

Hint: When I asked these questions about Be A Better Blogger, I got “YES” answers for all four – which is why you’re reading this post today!

Your Email List: The Springboard to Your Blogging Success

If you’re feeling stuck in your blogging journey – if you’re frustrated by your traffic numbers, aggravated by your lack of comments, and bewildered because no one is sharing your posts on social media – I encourage you to focus on building your blog’s email mailing list.

List-building isn’t easy, but every minute you spend focusing on your list it is going to pay off tenfold in your traffic, engagement, and social sharing numbers.

Start your email list today, and start enticing people to join that list by offering a useful and valuable giveaway. Then use some of the tips above to start attracting more email subscribers.

Here’s my promise to you: Having a loyal list of subscribers who can’t wait to read, share, and comment on your blog posts is going to make you feel like the king (or queen) of the blogging world.

The post The Step-by-Step Process for Starting, Growing, and Getting Traffic from Your Blog’s Email List appeared first on Be A Better Blogger.

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