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theanimeview · 4 years

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The Summer of Online Anime Cons - Review!

By: Peggy Sue Wood | @peggyseditorial

OKAY. This review has been way overdue, but in my defense, I wanted to wait until Summer was officially over, and for me, that meant the Crunchyroll Expo needed to happen before making this post. So let's get into it:

This summer, in addition to the Big Three Anime Weekend (where people could attend Anime Expo Lite, Funimation Con 2020, and Aniplex Online Fest all at once), we also had Comic-Con, the Virtual Crunchyroll Expo, and several other small conferences happening online like the Toonami special.

The events I "attended" happened to all be free (woohoo!), and to be perfectly honest: I LOVED it. I hope that they have more virtual conventions like these in the future. It's not because I don't love in-person and live conventions. I mean, anyone that knows me personally knows that I love conventions, traveling, dressing up, and more. I am a massive nerd for literary/professional/writing conferences and actively seek them out to attend throughout the year (if not present at them). I love anime conventions just as much and see them as a way to geek out with people from all over the world who share the same interests I do (and often know the niche anime/manga/webcomic/etc. that so few of my regular friends know about or have any interest in seeing!).

However, I think that Anime Expo has seriously fallen apart in recent years. It's something I've been more than vocal about in the past, like last year. Last year, as much as I did have fun, the convention space was overly crowded. AX is one of the largest anime conventions in the US, and overcrowding isn't unexpected given the size of it; however, since 2017, the convention has gone from simply full/crowded to claustrophobia-inducing. Enough so that someone like me, who had never felt claustrophobia before in their life, became overwhelmed and physically ill due to the number of people touching me on all sides as we attempted to shimmy down packed hallways. As a reference, I usually love enclosed and or crowded spaces--like, my mom and I frequented packed swap-meets as a child that I loved navigating. I also grew up with six older siblings, in a home next to Disneyland... so, like, crowds are not an issue for me, which is why I never expected to feel the level of anxiety I did in that horrible 2017 crowd, which repeated in AX 2019.

Add on to that panel experience: whereas before people could and would regularly slip in and out of panels with lines sometimes being outside the door for smaller rooms with more popular content, now the lines for most programs are often placed outside, in the heat, with attendees asked to line up sometimes hours in advance to have even a chance of attending. To my knowledge, Sakura-Con and several other conventions I've gone to in the last few years don't have that problem, and it's a fair guess as to why but let's leave that topic for another day.

By comparison, the virtual convention was a breeze! Yes, sometimes I had to sacrifice going to one panel over another, but who hasn't had to do that at conventions before? Ultimately, I could enjoy the panels from the comfort of my own home in PJs. I didn't need to worry about food, overheating in the sun, or finding the bathroom while at my house. I didn't get to meet new people (😥), but I did get to "attend" with friends of mine that can't go to conventions regularly for health reasons.

My major criticism of the virtual conventions can be summed up pretty easily. One issue I found was that the scheduling of three digital-conventions in one weekend was far too tight, but that was quickly mediated by the Funimation and Aniplex groups banding-together and merging the events so that Day 2 of FC2020 was a split with AOF2020. Another criticism I had is the lack of shopping--but I'm sure my wallet and bank account were relieved to find that I was much too entranced in panels to care about putting my cards through a ringer. I thought I would be upset by panel cancellations, but since virtual conventions are new and since panel cancellations happen at live conventions too, I can't say I'm all that upset by them. Not to mention how easy it was to handle such cancellations online when you have many more panels to attend freely.

What was probably most upsetting was, at times, the layout. Of all the conventions, I think AX and Comic-Con did the best job with panel layout. AX used Twitch live streams, YouTube, and a handful of unique call-in panels that were easy to navigate. More frustrating was the ever-changing schedule times at AX, but that happens (mainly when you are one of the first conferences navigating the online-field and thereby making all the first mistakes). Ultimately, it was EASY to get to the right "room" for the right panel. It helped too that their schedule was frequently updated, so it was rarely a question of "which room?" and "when does this thing start?" Comic-Con, which featured all their panels on pre-scheduled youtube posts, was similarly easy to navigate and enjoy. Frankly, I preferred the use of YouTube as Comic Con's primary platform for distribution more, but that's just because I enjoy being able to go back and rewatch things later.

Funimation and Aniplex suffered a bit by not updating their schedules consistently. For example, Funimation kept listing panels for Day 2 in the room merged with the Aniplex Online Fest live-stream, leaving me (and I'm sure a few others) to wonder what in the world happened to all those disappearing panels. Though, I'm sad to say that Crunchyroll Expo had it way worse. Their different "rooms" attempted to allow for many panels and multiple languages, and it suffered due to the way they handled this, among other complications. The way things were labeled for different languages meant you either had to search through the individual tabs to make sure you wouldn't miss anything, or sift through all of it at once. There was no in-between. You also wouldn't know which panel was whereafter it aired, meaning things got lost easily. Sometimes I wouldn't even know what panel was canceled, rescheduled, or entirely overlooked by me! This issue is difficult for me to find acceptable, as the Crunchyroll Expo happened months after other conventions and had arguably more time to review platform options and layouts for their digital conference. It almost felt like they were aiming for a "different just to be different" feel ultimately at the cost of user experience, which is crazy since Crunchyroll is one of the largest online anime streaming platforms in the US abroad. It would have been better for them to publish their pre-recorded panels similar to episodes of a show that people could scroll through than the disorganized mess that their expo "stages" tried to do.

With that said, let’s focus on content.

Panels were the main focus of these conventions (obviously), and content-wise, they did NOT disappoint. AX hit HUGE on the industry panels from major licensing and publishing companies in the US and Japan. They also had the most in terms of interesting focuses. There was a healthy mix of fan panels, culture panels, industry panels, and such, meaning someone could find something of interest in nearly every hour. In fact, at the time, Casea (@madamekrow) and I were in a real panic about how to watch everything we wanted to watch. You could tell that a lot of thought had gone into making this thing work given how quickly they had to switch from live to digital, and I appreciate that. FC2020 and AOF2020, by comparison, were not as reliable in terms of those profession-based and fan-based panels, and given that they are mainly licensers of anime rather than convention planners, it makes sense. They were also up against a convention with a long history (BTW, AX celebrates 30 years in 2021). That's not to say they didn't come to the table without the cards.

FC2020 brought it home with premiere screenings of animes to come. My favorite of their premiere list is By The Grace of The gods, set to come out in October of 2020. Meanwhile, AOF2020 lacked premieres, professional and fan-based panels but made up for it with entertainment of a different kind. They hosted all-night marathons of popular works they license, held a digital concert, and unintentionally perhaps, generally gave a place to "chill" between the stressful jumping from panel to panel. In conclusion of the Big Three Weekend, they gave the summer a phenomenal start!

Next up is Comic-Con. In my opinion, their panels were heavily movie-based as opposed to print-media comics, manga, or anime. Yes, of course, there were plenty of comic panels too, but they weren't the same as what we saw during AX, FC2020, or AOF2020. The feel was different--maybe because of content. Regardless, it was interesting. I enjoyed much of the industry-related panels, like "Manga Publishing Industry Roundtable" and "How to Thrive as an Indie Comics Creator Now!" (I mentioned before I'm a publishing nerd, right?) Perhaps most preferable to me is that the Comic-Con panels are still available on their YouTube channel, which means that unlike many other conventions, I can share the panels with friends interested in a particular series, subject, or person. I LOVE that. Share-ability is huge, and I think Comic-Con was smart to make their content available moving forward. It has certainly been great for my film-loving friends and our team members here at The Anime View (like Jenna @jkmorgan-media).

Lastly, Crunchyroll Expo. What can I say about this one? The panels were huge variables. I know that everyone on our team found them to be a mixed bag, myself included, as Crunchyroll opened up to fans hosting panels. This was great, in my opinion, but with that comes a bit of criticism. Some fan panels were polished, exciting, and engaging. I loved many of the mecha panels. I also loved some that were engaging discussions of a topic between people that were close friends. HOWEVER, with that came just as many who were new to public speaking, hadn't prepared much of anything and just recorded an awkward Zoom call, or worse (it's hard to describe how).

As for the smaller conferences like the mini-Toonami Con during Adult Swim’s digital conference, I don’t really have anythings specific to say so I’ll be leaving them out of this review.

I don't want to shoot down any of the fans that hosted panels despite this negative review. It's HARD to present at conferences, and for some, it's even harder when they know they are being recorded. I remember my first conference where I stared at my paper the whole time and had to be asked to raise my voice twice for people to hear, while my friend aimed my phone at me to record the mortifying presentation for my mother. I don't blame the people that had a hard time doing this, and I fully support Crunchyroll for giving fans, particularly young ones, the platform and experience to do this. Some of those panels were very interesting, despite the presenter's awkwardness. Controversially, the handful that made no effort (and you could tell which), I don't extend that empathy.

For me, panels quality has nothing to do with camera work, lighting, or even sound in some cases (for the most part, as long as you can hear the words--awesome). I didn't need to see spot-on PowerPoint slides, anime clips to fit the conversation or hyperactivity. To me, it was all about what was being said or not said. One panel that comes to mind that I aimed to attend was about picking the right anime for you or a friend. I ended up ditching half-way through. It was, sorry to say, terrible. The hosts definitely had the energy and passion to discuss anime and interesting subjects beyond their approach to the idea of recommendations.

For example, they spent a reasonable amount of time comparing how they grew up experiencing anime to how many people now entering the fandom have come to know it. They started by describing how they watching anime on a handful of VHS rentals from BlockBusters, while many people in my (Peggy's) "anime generation" grew up in the age of fansubs and illegal uploads; meanwhile, my (Peggy's again) niece grew up experiencing all of her anime through legal online licensing services like Netflix, Funimation, Crunchyroll, etc. After discussing that difference, they mentioned briefly (as in one time in a single sentence) that the popularity of a particular genre in anime when you entered may affect what you find most interesting before completely undercutting themselves to say that you can't recommend anything to anyone because people always think about what they like first. (I hate to break it to them, but I find it pretty easy to recommend things based on my friends' stated interests in past series. Maybe that's because I watch almost everything of every genre in anime, but also--it's not rocket science. If your friend likes thrilling action movies, you can probably name a few thrilling action animes to satisfy their interest.) It felt as though the panel's title was misleading when the answer to recommending anime is "you can't." (when, in fact, you can with little to no complications!)

Overall, for me, AX takes the crown in terms of content. They had a fantastic mix of everything you hope to see at a comic convention in addition to making it fun. Comic-Con takes the crown for best platform use and layout (AX takes a close second and Aniplex/Funimation sharing third)... Crunchyroll doesn't rank in this category. Aniplex/Funimation shares the title of Best Entertainment. Crunchyroll takes the crown for fan inclusion into the presentation spotlight. They're all winners, but if I really had to rank them, it'd be this:

Anime Expo - Title: Content is King 👑

Comic-Con - Best Platform/Layout

Aniplex/Funimation (Sharing is caring) - Best Entertainment

Crunchyroll - Best Fan Inclusion

With that, I conclude my long drafted review. Thank you for your patience, and I'll see you all next week in another post!

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peraltasames · 5 years

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don’t go sharing your devotion

requested by anonymous - 26. A jealous kiss

read on ao3

Amy wakes to the incessant beeping of the alarm clock on the nightstand, programmed to go off a few minutes before the backup ones on her phone.

While leaning over to hit snooze, feeling oddly sleep-deprived, she realizes a few things.

Despite it being Monday, she’s tangled up in blue sheets instead of white ones, meaning she’s violated her rule of always staying at her own apartment on Sunday nights to ensure that she’s well-rested for the beginning of the new week. She recalls being coerced into staying one more night after an incredible weekend (she hasn’t actually gone home at all in three days). She also recalls staying up way too late last night, reinforcing her reason for the Sunday night rule - a rule that Jake despises and attempts to break every week with about a fifty percent success rate.

She does not understand why she’s alone in the blue sheets when the sole reason that she sleeps in a less comfortable bed in a less clean apartment and gets dressed for work out of a duffel bag half the time is so that she doesn’t wake up alone now that she knows there’s something so much better. In a matter of weeks, waking up to messy brown hair, a warm chest pressed against her back and soft snoring in her ear has become a crucial part of her nearly everyday routine, and her days never seem to go quite as well without it.

Amy doesn’t have much time to lay there pouting about the absence of her boyfriend in bed; before she can call out his name and figure out why on earth he’s awake before her, he’s strolling in, wide awake - already dressed, even - with a mug in each hand and a broad grin on his face.

“Happy Tactical Village day!”

Of course, this would be the only logical explanation for Jake being up before seven. Frankly, she’s surprised she didn’t remember sooner. Amy smiles, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Who’s the character this year?”

“Vladimir Smirnov,” Jake says confidently in a terrible Russian accent, “a former spy seeking revenge from the mob boss that killed the woman that turned him over to the light and taught him how to love.”

Amy laughs at the familiarity of it all, leaving the warmth of the bed to stride over to him and wrap her arms loosely around his neck.

“Definitely better than Rex Buckingham. I think Vic Kovac was the sexiest, though.”

Jake’s eyes widen comically, his hands stilling on her waist. “You were into that?”

She kisses his cheek and strolls off to the bathroom before he can ask any more questions about her formerly bottled-up feelings.

“So, we’re paired the Seven-Six this year,” Terry says to the squad as they enter the village, reading from a piece of paper.

“Nice, their arrest numbers were crazy last year,” Rosa says approvingly.

Amy looks around the room, which has no discernible differences from last year’s layout. The hostages and perps are getting ready in the corner while most of the other squads begin to prepare for the course.

“Oh my god, Jake Peralta!”

Amy whips her head around at the voice, higher-pitched than her own and unfamiliar. Standing in front of a group of people that she recognizes to be the Seven-Six is an absolutely stunning woman with shiny light brown hair falling just past her shoulders and piercing blue eyes.

“Katherine, it’s been forever,” Jake says with a small laugh, stepping towards her as she pulls him into a tight hug. “I didn’t know you were with the Seven-Six now.”

The woman - Katherine - releases Jake, still holding him at an arm’s length.

“Yeah, it’s awesome other than the cost of living in Manhattan,” Katherine quips. “You’re still with the Nine-Nine?”

Jake finally turns back to the squad for a moment, which has gradually dispersed to the point that only Amy is still looking at him (and Rosa looking at her with what’s she’s sure is a knowing smirk).

“Yeah! These are my coworkers, Detective Diaz and Detective Santiago.”

Amy forces a polite grin, trying not to care that he referred to her as a colleague - it’s a terribly petty thing to care about, something that she never would care about if it weren’t for the beautiful woman still smiling at him.

“Nice to meet you…sorry, what was it?”

“Detective Katherine Porter,” she states confidently, extending a hand to shake Amy’s firmly. “Peralta and I go way back. We were friends in the academy and dated for a few months right after we started as beat cops.”

The haven’t had the exes talk yet, so Amy shouldn’t be surprised. It isn’t like she thought Jake never had girlfriends - she’s met a few since she’s known him, Sophia being the longest relationship she can recall - but never has she felt the ugly emotion rising in her chest right now. There were many times she felt a tinge of jealousy towards Sophia (like, every time he kissed her or held her hand or, to be honest, even mentioned her name) but now she feels a possessive instinct that is both new and entirely unwelcome.

The gears in her brain must be whirring a mile a minute, her face easily giving away her inner thoughts, because Rosa pulls her away under the guise of “looking at some guns” while Jake continues to chat with Katherine.

“Santiago, you are so jealous.”

Amy wants to object immediately, but even if the gun is just a paintball gun, Rosa holding one is a menacing enough sight that she doesn’t dare lie to her.

“I’m - maybe a little - she’s gorgeous-“

“Amy,” Rosa says sternly. “Jake is obsessed with you. You know it, I know it, anyone who steps within ten feet of him knows it. Who cares about some dumb ex he dated ten years ago?”

“I don’t care.” Amy grabs the nearest gun and fires it at one of the targets, landing a perfect bullseye. “Let’s just get ready for the course, alright?”

Much of the next few minutes consist of Amy busying herself with firearms and trying to avoid watching Katherine follow Jake around the village and laugh at everything Jake says and - god, why is she touching his arm so much?

She’s pretty sure Jake is oblivious of any jealousy she may be harbouring, because when Katherine slips away for a moment he turns to grin at Amy. He’s holding up a huge gun and pretending to shoot at nothing in particular and smiling like a little kid at her, not at Katherine. Still, the feeling lingers.

It lingers when they start the drill and she watches him bust into a room and take down three perps in one swift movement, when he pumps his fist victoriously and turns to high-five her, when Katherine re-emerges out of nowhere immediately afterwards to congratulate him on beating the course record again and hug him again.

Amy would be appreciating his fitted navy t-shirt and the confident aura he’s radiating even if it weren’t for the jealous streak she’s experiencing, but the culmination of everything is enough for her to abandon her attempts to be a “chill” girlfriend who isn’t intimidated by gorgeous women her boyfriend has slept with.

“I’m just gonna borrow Jake for a second, if you don’t mind-“ She grabs his hand and tugs him away from a very confused Katherine, ignoring Jake’s raised eyebrows as she pulls him into the nearest empty room and shuts the door.

“Ames, what’s going-“

She grabs him by the material of his t-shirt and kisses him, feeling him stumble backwards in shock until his back hits the wall and his hands find her waist. When she feels his attempts to pull away, she presses herself closer against him and slides her tongue into his mouth, knowing this will incapacitate him for at least another minute or two.

“Amy,” he finally manages to pull away long enough to say, panting slightly. “Are you okay? Someone could walk in.”

She drops her hands from his hair, taking a small step back and shifting her weight awkwardly.

“Is it a crime to kiss my boyfriend after he just set the course record?”

“It is if you’re Amy Santiago and you have a very definite set of rules for workplace PDA.”

She has been enforcing said rules quite regularly when he tries to hold her hand in the break room during their lunch or steal a kiss in the evidence lockup, despite her constant urge to reciprocate.

“Well, maybe I missed you since you’ve been so busy all day-“

The look on his face quickly informs her that she’s given herself away, somewhere between shock and smugness.

“Hold on. Are you...jealous?”

Amy crosses her arms defensively and opens her mouth to bark out a defense, but she can’t find the words to get her out of this one.

“Maybe a little.” Jake starts laughing, and she hits his arm and furrows her brow. “Don’t laugh at me! I’m only human, Jake, obviously I noticed your beautiful ex-girlfriend flirting with you all day.”

He shakes his head apologetically, stepping forward to grab her hands in his. “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I just - there’s no threat there, Ames. I dated her over ten years ago.”

She softens a little, squeezing his hands.

“She just seemed so into you, and I didn’t wanna be the crazy jealous girlfriend, but-“

“She asked me to go to dinner before the drill started.”

Amy raises an eyebrow. “Is there a ‘but’ coming?”

“Is there a ‘but’ coming, title of your-”

“Jake,” she cuts him off with a stern look.

He laughs at his own joke as he tangles their fingers together.

“But I told her I’m not interested, that I’m very happily dating someone else, and she backed off. She’s just an old friend, I have no interest in her or anyone else that’s not you, okay?”

He stares at her for a few moments with the same soft, loving look that has made her melt more than once before, until she finally nods and lets out a sigh, running her hand up his bicep.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeats, ducking down to kiss her again. “Also, even though it’s crazy to think I would ever wanna date her when I have you, it doesn’t make you crazy. Remember Tactical Village ‘14, when I followed you and Teddy around all day? I was straight-up obsessed.”

Amy lets out a soft laugh, remembering the days of their blossoming feelings with quiet reverence and a small pang of regret that she didn’t grow to understand her feelings earlier.

“I would’ve gone out with you if you had asked first, dummy.”

“Ugh, that’s what Charles said!” He exclaims, pulling his hand away to slap his forehead. “We suck at timing.”

“Speaking of bad timing…I probably shouldn’t have tried to make out with you at a work event,” Amy says, red creeping onto her cheeks.

“You’re right, we should get out of here.”

Her eyes widen incredulously. “Jake! We have to go back to work after this!”

“We also have a lunch break and my car-”

“Absolutely not.”

She tries to walk out, her stride interrupted by a hand gently tugging her arm and spinning her back around, followed by lips pressing against hers.

When she sighs happily, he pulls away to survey her expression.

“Can I take that as a yes?”

“It’s a maybe,” she murmurs teasingly against his lips.

“Does the fact that I cleaned all the candy wrappers out of the backseat sway your vote?”

(It does.)

#jake x amy #peraltiago #kiss prompts #b99 fic #i wrote this so fast sry if there are mistakes lmao #more early relationship woooo #myfics

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sonicranticoot · 5 years

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About CTR, Money, and Both Together: Part 2

Continuing from part 1.

Somehow it has been brought to my attention many more things that just...don’t say any good things, any good things, about the situation of the game and possibly the entire Crash and Spyro franchises going forward. I’m known to keep a very positive image here and I want this to continue, but sometimes, life sucks and then you die. So yes, this one is a lot angrier than the one before. You got to let it all out sometimes.

First thing is how these are actually out now, and boy are they terrible. Not just the fact they exist, but you can make 2500 in about an hour each day with online play. Or just pay Activision (not Beenox) $2.49 for that. A lot of people have been talking about how ridiculously overpriced the bundle for the Probulot 2000 is, and that can take a while to grind out even for online players (I have the dearest sympathies for people who don’t have their console’s online service and are stuck with offline payrates). Or, you could just hand that nice old Activision marketer (not Beenox) $9.99 for coins that disappear as soon as you buy them. I remember years back when Capcom got major slack for selling people costumes in Street Fighter IV for $3.99 a pop. Except there, you got a costume for five characters, and each costume had ten palette swaps. And that’s not going back to before that game, where you could get those in games at the low, low price of being earned as an in-game reward like beating the game on a certain difficulty or whatever.

It just goes back to how it used to be. Crash Team Racing is a 20-year old classic game that had a wealth of content you did not have to pay a cent for past the initial purchase of the game. Some people may say, “well, nothing in the original CTR can be unlocked with microtransactions”, and although that may be correct, it is completely missing the point. Content shown heavily before launch, like all the characters from Crash Nitro Kart and the new karts taken from Tag Team Racing, the stuff that was used to show “hey, look, it’s a little more than just CTR”, that stuff is locked behind an in-game store that allows you to spend real money. That’s not even going into the people who want to put N. Tropy or his digital skin in the shop. I actually commend Beenox for putting in something that, unlike the Pit Stop, forces players to get better at the game to have in their possession. The whole thing takes some pride out of the game. It barely feels like it’s a reward for people who didn’t pay up anymore because now people can go out and buy it with real money. Maybe.

That goes back to the fucking Fortnite store layout. Yeah I know this shop was problematic before, but didn’t go into as much as detail on why it is. Let’s say someone wants that one special skin, they want to buy Crunch that badly, that special car, or paint job. The store is set up to force players to wait, or buy things to roll again and hope what they get shows up. And with the addition of microtransactions, now, you can brute force, but even that still doesn’t help you if the Pit Stop gods don’t feel like playing nice and that special skin you wanted is the very last one in rotation. Some people aren’t that patient. This especially goes for offline players who have to spend hours trying to spend up for even one item. This type of impatience leads to kids stealing daddy’s credit card and spending $1,300 on gambling in FIFA. That’s really where this whole shit stops being “optional”, and feels like a deliberate part of the game. Because it is. It is a deliberate decision made on Activision’s part to make a predatory store. The paid solution now exists to a problem they created, and said paid solution doesn’t even fucking work.

Yes. Some people saw microtransactions coming. Some of these people like the game. Others didn’t like it, and are rubbing it into the former’s face. That doesn’t actually solve the issue here. What is the issue is that they weren’t there. People played the game for over a month without them. All the reviews were out, they were great. YouTubers praised it, both Crash-oriented and otherwise. The ESRB didn’t have to put a warning on the box. It’s all nice and cozy.

Then they do this. I’ve seen the review bombing of Metacritic. I’ve seen many Youtubers who have loved the game before either turn against it, or just express endless disgust over it. The ESRB can’t even do their fucking job of warning people that they are in the game, because there are a lot of copies out there that don’t have the “contains in-game purchases” label on them without glancing at one sentence in size 2 text on the back of the box as if Activision is playing their own twisted game of “ok, how can we tell people they’re in, but in such a way they won’t know it”, so someone, let’s say said person has a gambling problem, can buy the game, hear the good word of mouth from people who played it when it did NOT have MTX, and all of a sudden, they found a game that can prey upon them. I mentioned last time Activision did not make the message clear to consumers. Activision doesn’t want their message clear not just to consumers (and that goes for all consumers, from kids, to people with impulse buying problems, to genuine gambling addicts), but ratings boards either.

In short, all that goodwill Activision built up with this game, Spyro Reignited, Crash N. Sane, it’s gone. Not all of it is. But denying it’s done a crippling blow to things would be foolish. This game has a ton of issues. They’re all still here. MTX are though. It doesn’t give me, or anyone, a reason to trust them about what they do with these franchises, because they aren’t immune to any of the MTX bullshit that regularly plagues Call of Duty or whatever. I like the Crash and Spyro games for many reasons, but one big thing is that their newest release were free of this shit, they were old school ways of making people sold on games: by being really, really good games. You payed for a game. It’s good. Simple. Sweet. To the point.

You know what? Like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, Activision’s own Call of Duty sold millions and reviewed very well when it didn’t have microtransactions as well. FIFA did too. Grand Theft Auto did as well. Mortal Kombat also did. Deus Ex did. 2K sports games did. Fallout did. Elder Scrolls did. Plants vs. Zombies did. Quality games make money by being that. Quality games. Who would’ve guessed. Obviously Activision didn’t make all these games. And that’s the problem. Crash isn’t even new to this shit, it’s just one of countless classic, acclaimed franchises now subjected to the scummiest predatory practices that again, were initially made for free-to-play games that didn’t cost a dime to start playing. You didn’t see these in console games because they weren’t build for that practice. Yes, they make money, but console games could again, make money in a way a F2P mobile game can not: straight-up buying the game.

One of the worst (that’s a drinking game at this point) things is that let’s say people do get the message: everything in CTR can be earned in-game, not all the hard to do at that, the MTX coin rates are terrible, and thus, most people don’t buy the MTX. As in 99% of people don’t buy MTX. But you have whales, that 1% of people who these types of business practices specifically are psychologically engineered to pander to, spending literal thousands of dollars on coins for a cartoon kart racer and Activision can get the idea from them and only them of how to make money. And those types of practices become more accepted because of this, rinse, lather, repeat. There’s no winning scenario except for not having them in the game.

In short, Activision is the single slimiest, greediest, dirtiest, most absolutely fucking disgusting money-lusting pig of a company in the video game business and I am very, very disappointed in how corrupting classic games and franchises with pure filth meant to destroy bank accounts has consumed the industry. Activision is obviously not the only company that does this, but I can’t say many of the others are willing to do things like lie to the people who’s job is to warn people about these things. Fuck. Straight. Off.

Let it be known despite all that I am still a big Crash fan. I love the game. I’m eagerly anticipating Beenox to confirm Pasadena as a playable racer, I want to see how Brio looks in the game as well as what kind of race track the game will see when he is introduced, I want to see the Spyro stuff, I want to see what kind of crazy costumes they make or old school vehicles make a return, etc. I payed $40 for it. That’s the only money I’m giving it because that’s the point. I’m just disappointed. And that’s severely underselling it.

#crash bandicoot #crash team racing nitro fueled #activision #microtransactions #rant

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arecomicsevengood · 5 years

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Stuart Immonen Superman Comics Circa 1998

There’s a lot of “best of the year” lists that appear at the end of the year, but after that flutter of activity, tied to commercial imperatives, there are moments for reconsideration, as we approach the year to come and ask ourselves what it is we want. So now is as good a time as any to talk about some Superman comics Stuart Immonen drew some twenty-odd years ago. The artist announced earlier this year that he was “retiring” from comics, but this didn’t mean he was going to stop making comics, just that what he did would be “personal” work, in collaboration with his wife. They recently launched a comic on Instagram, and they’ve done some graphic novels together previously, none of which I can recommend.

I do think it’s interesting that these personal works are scripted by his wife, rather than him writing them himself, though; because back in the nineties, working for DC, he took a few stabs at writing. This was done within a framework that must’ve removed some of the risk involved: The four monthly Superman series that together constituted a weekly serial split between different creative teams had him drawing Karl Kesel’s scripts for a few years before he took over a separate title for his own. In my mind, much of the overall plotting would be hashed out at a conference, and then kept coordinated by an editor. Ideally this process would be oriented around what it was each individual creative team wanted to write and draw: Immonen’s artwork was a little softer than his compatriots, a little more likely to seem like he could’ve drawn romance comics in a different era, maybe younger than the others and more interested in youth culture and fashion, probably more likely to admire Jaime Hernandez. Maybe all this just manifests in the context as being the one who could draw women, but in a era where none of the Superman comics are showy about what they do and all aspired to being solid and well-crafted, his were the most enjoyable.

This softness I appreciate in this work isn’t really present in his subsequent work, which is sharper, shinier, where figures and their wardrobes seem consistently sculpted out of plastic. Part of it’s the coloring, but there also seem to be changes in how scripts call for layouts. He’s also maybe working with ink wash underneath the digital coloring and delineating more how he wants values of light to be approached, I don’t know. I don’t really want to diminish the work the man’s been doing in the years I haven’t been reading superhero comics. I can look at the years of intervening work and see how the choices he’s making are confident ones, the result of years of drawing action comics. I haven’t really read any of them, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t.

Still, if you’re anything like me, you probably generally think that comics created by one person are better than those made in a collaboration mediated via a written script, so if I’m going to read anything by the guy, it’s going to be work created under those circumstances. I’ve heard that DC sort of has structures in place against writer-artists: this is why those “Bizarro World” anthologies where they brought in alternative cartoonists forced them all to collaborate with each each other. Maybe this rule was a little looser with the Superman books: After John Byrne relaunched the line in the mid-eighties, both Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway would write and draw chunks of their subsequent runs. Otherwise it’s pretty rare: The only other thing I can think of would be that Rick Veitch Swamp Thing run, the circumstances of its ending probably be why they don’t let that happen too often. A little after Immonen and Kesel did the event The Final Night, Immonen wrote and drew a 4-issue miniseries spotlighting the Legion Of Super-Heroes character Inferno. It’s not good or anything, but it does seem to revolve around the strengths or interests I understand him having at this time: It’s a comic about a young woman, hanging out in the mall with a group of other young women, who might be understood as punks, as some are homeless. Before Immonen worked for DC, his initial small-press work, Playground, made in collaboration with his future wife, was described in “punk rock” terms. He states in the Inferno letter column his goal was to make something someone who didn’t read other DC Comics could read and enjoy. I don’t think it gets anywhere near being able to achieve that, it’s confusing on multiple levels. The covers are probably the most memorable part, but because you can track those down easy enough, I’ll include a bit of interior sequential art.

Not long after that, he took over writing Action Comics. I haven’t read that many of those either! I had stopped reading the Superman comics regularly not long before this happened. It was during the time period when Superman had electric powers and a blue costume. I was in middle school. I found out he’d started writing when I found a couple issues in a bargain bin and picked them up, but I didn’t get back in the habit of reading Superman comics, as the story was pretty difficult to follow if you attempted to only read the series with the best art. He also didn’t really work as a writer for that long: After a little while, Mark Millar gets credited for providing scripts.

But a little while back, around the time I wrote that post about why I’m willing to read superhero comics with some degree of hope that they’ll be good, I ordered a three-issue arc that seemed kind of self-contained. Looking online, it seemed like after the whole “electric Superman” story wrapped up with a special called Superman Forever, each of the four monthly books told their own stories, set in different historical eras, for a few months. Immonen’s Action Comics issues had covers suggesting they were united in progressing from one to the other. I was pretty into them, though in some ways it was an unsatisfying experience. The first issue in the arc is drawn by a fill-in artist, the third part focuses on this separate narrative thread- It’s narrated by this new villain, with god-like powers, who I guess was behind the whole “multiple timelines” thing in the first place, so you there’s exactly one fairly self-contained normal Superman comic written and drawn by the dude, though that third issue kinda rules, as aside from the narration, you’re reading all the normal Superman storytelling stuff happen wordlessly, calling attention to the clarity of the storytelling. It might fail to live up to expectations for a third act based on the way serialization has it setting up the next big arc, but as an episode in itself, this would be a pretty fun surprise to come across in your pile of the week’s comics. Which, if you remember that post, was exactly what I claimed to be looking for.

There’s also an original graphic novel that’s a little later still, “End Of The Century,” which seems like it’s partly tying up a long-running subplot in the Superman comics about Lex Luthor and his wife. It honestly has WAY too much plot, and too many narrative threads, and it’s all still fairly generic. While I picked it up hoping to see cool visual storytelling, the amount of story there is to tell gets in the way. The visual art is good, Immonen’s linework shifts to be a little finer. There’s also this weird thing where real images are photographed/scanned and inserted like they’re laying on the edges of the page, which is dumb, but the technology to achieve this effect was probably only recently made available. There’s also some sepia painted pages, and the most likely reason the “graphic novel” exists is because Immonen wanted to do the painted pages and have the time to work on them. That’s as good a reason as it is to try writing comics for a few years because you’ve drawn them for a few years and writing doesn’t seem hard and you would get paid more, and reasoning resulted in work I thought was better than what you usually get.

Ambition is a wild thing, in that it can really just stir inside you feeling frustrated even as you have no idea what you want to do with it in particular. It can easily be applied to other people’s ends. Work might be personal not because of the importance of what “the artist” has to say but because it’s an outgrowth of a personal relationship. It’s worth noting, looking at his career, the importance of cultivated professional relationships: He had those comics scripted by Mark Millar, and decades later they did a comic together which has probably resulted in a development deal and a sizable paycheck. He did two creator-owned comics with Kurt Busiek, largely forgotten I’d say, and then worked with him on a Superman comic which is pretty well-regarded. He’s collaborated with both Warren Ellis and Brian Bendis multiple times. It is sensible to view all those professional relationships as having had their respective culminations, while working with one’s wife is more of an ongoing long-term project.

At the same time: Having someone write for you, and what they see as your skillset, is going to present different challenges than seeing what you can do and pushing yourself, even if the latter results in what can be easily described as failure. It’s fine either way. Career paths in the arts are always going to be weird and haphazard, because there are so many decisions to make in creating a piece of art that progress is never going to be linear. I don’t know if any of these collaborations embraced what I like about his work, but maybe what I like in his work isn’t what he sees as his strengths, but is just what was emblematic of his style at the point in time I was initially exposed to it. The questions of who we are in relationship to others vs. what our true potential is is always up for negotiation.

I think those Superman comics excel because I came to them with very particular set of expectations. Not only can I not expect anyone else to share those expectations, I don’t even really want to convince anyone to have them: There’s no small part of me that thinks of the fact that I tracked them down to write about them is in some ways squandering some bit of potential inside myself I can’t expect anyone else to care about. I don’t know what 2019 looks like, though I hope I won’t spend too much of it looking back twenty years at comics from 1999. I don’t like doing this thing where I try to make something “personal” to rationalize my talking about some some comic while actually just talking in vague generalities because I’m very reticent to talk about myself, but I’ll probably continue to do so. I’m probably not going to spend the next year looking at Stuart Immonen’s Instagram feed. But here at the end of this year, as I contemplate my own inertia and depressive laziness, I have to give an honest accounting and give it up to that dude for putting in the work.

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circusbenny · 7 years

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Writing memories. The assignment for class was literally to write memories and uh. Kin memories came out. But it just said to write for 30 minutes and start with “I remember”! It never said it had to be factual! I mean, this is factual, but. Uh. That’s complicated.

I used Michael as a placeholder name. I still don’t know if I think it’s accurate. I have no idea! I can remember all of this, stuff like this coming in clearer and clearer, and still I don’t know what his name was but good god at least I finally remembered my own.

Anyway. I’ve written a little about this night before, but I dived into more detail this time.

If you’re my teacher googling a line from my assignment and you find this, uh, hello. This sure is awkward.

I remember a cold crisp winter night. I’m not sure why we were there that night, it seems too late for us to be there. There were mostly no other cars in the parking lot, although maybe that shouldn’t have been surprising for a building that had been sitting for sale for months.

I wondered why we were there, but I didn’t immediately ask. Michael had a way of telling me things in his own time, and I was too nervous to ask him. I’ve never been good with people, conversation, or anything like that – I stumble over words, I’m too blunt, I say strange things unnecessarily. I’m aware of all of this, but with Michael so far my strange quirks hadn’t been a problem. He would laugh and works around them, or even seem to appreciate bluntness where others would recoil. It was probably the only reason we were standing where we were together right then.

Where we were standing was just in front of Michael’s car. It was cold and my breaths were coming out in puffs of visible air, frozen for a moment before dispersing. I had a coat but I wished I had brought gloves. Michael hefted himself up to sit on the hood of his car, and I glanced over my shoulder towards him, watching as he fumbled in his pockets for a cigarette and a lighter. He put the cigarette to his lips, lit it without trouble in the breezeless night, and took a drag.

I don’t smoke, but it didn’t bother me that he does. He seemed to savor it for a moment, exhaling in a breath much more visible than mine with the smoke, and then turned his gaze towards the building.

I didn’t come down that way very often, so I hadn’t seen this building and its “for sale or rent” sign before, or if I had, I didn’t recall it. I thought I knew why we were there, but for all I knew, Michael could have just picked this spot to pull off and have a smoke.

Not that he didn’t smoke in the car, because he did.

“What do you think?” he asked me, and jut his chin towards the building. I’m thinking a lot of things – mostly about the weather and about my present company. I tried to shuffle those thoughts away and throw them into a box I could shove into my mental closet, clearing the way for more relevant things. It’s not a tactic I’m very good at.

“Uh,” I said, stalling, as usual. In writing I can sound verbose, but in speech, it’s stilted and awkward. “The building? It looks pretty new.”

“Yeah,” Michael agreed, and mentally, I was relieved that he didn’t seem to react negatively or find what I said to be strange or off-topic or not what he was looking for in a response. “It was built just about five years ago, or something like that. There was a restaurant here, a family owned place, but there were issues with liquor licensing or something.” He flicked his cigarette ashes, then took another puff. When he exhaled, he added, “Dad told me about this location.”

That got my attention. Michael’s father was who brought us together, more or less, and I considered the building now in a new light. “Well—it looks big. And this part of town, the rent’s probably pretty high.”

Michael laughed. “Yeah, no kidding. But I got us a good deal.”

The past tense he used eluded me for a moment. I didn’t immediately ask, and my expression must have given away my confusion because he slipped from the hood of his car, crushing his cigarette under his shoe, and grinned, turning to face me with his arms spread out.

“I bought it! Just a couple hours ago! Turns out dad knows the guy who was selling it and got a good deal ‘cause the guy liked the old business so much!”

My stomach jumped into my throat, and I was happy – really, I was! But at the same time, I was overcome with an intense amount of anxiety, and part of me was a little annoyed. Michael and I were supposed to be partners, so why wouldn’t he talk to me about this before buying the building? I had started to feel a little unsure of myself lately. The basic concept and the animatronics were coming from Michael’s father’s business, and now he’d gone and bought the building without even consulting me first. What was my role in all of this? What was I there for?

“You wanna go check it out?” Michael asked. His arms lowered a bit, and he looked annoyed. Probably by the fact that I hadn’t really replied. I quickly answered “yes,” trying to inject some enthusiasm, and he grinned again. Michael smiled a lot, more than anyone else I knew.

“Good. I just got the keys before I picked you up. Let’s get the hell out of the cold, huh?”

I couldn’t argue with that. I got back to my feet (I’d been leaning against the car before) and started walking, and Michael turned, pulling a small key ring from his pocket.

“We might have to do a little renovating,” he warned. “I saw the inside last week, but this place has sat untouched for two years now, if you can believe that. The carpet definitely has to be replaced, and we’re going to want to make the kitchen better suited to our needs. But let’s take a look!”

I walked in after Michael, taking a look around. He went immediately to a panel at the wall, beginning to flip switches to illuminate the building. The florescent lighting in the ceiling hummed above our heads, but a few didn’t turn on immediately or flickered.

“I had an inspection done and the wiring is fine,” he promised. “Just some bulbs and stuff that need to be replaced.”

I finally decided to say something. “Why didn’t you tell me you were looking at this place?” I asked. “I mean, you said a week ago—“

“What? Are you mad?” Michael was looking at me with an incredulous expression, his eyebrows raised. “I thought this could be a good surprise! You’ve been stressed about all the logistics and shit, I thought I could just take care of it. Don’t worry about the numbers, it’s all within what we already talked about. Take it easy, Theo.”

It wasn’t worth fighting about. He probably meant well, right? It was better than having to build our own place, that’s what I’d been worried about. That would mean hiring architects, dealing with planning and layouts, costly construction, and a whole host of other issues. Michael had been hasty, but his heart seemed like it was in the right place. I couldn’t really get too mad about it.

Especially without seeing the place beyond its entryway. I nodded, ducking my head a little, and Michael turned back around, clearing his throat.

“And here we have the main entrance and dining area!” He had taken the air of a tour guide. I stuffed my hands into my coat pockets, still hoping to warm up a little. It was warmer inside, but not significantly. The dining area was pretty large, but tables had been taken out. That was probably fine. Our concept was going to require larger tables than most restaurants used regularly. “We’ll have to build a stage area here, probably towards this back wall.” Michael stepped quickly towards where he was referring, and I followed, trying to picture it. “Which means we’ll need a control panel for the stage off to the side.”

I nodded, thinking it over. It was easy to picture the stage in my head, but hard to picture what the cost associated with that would be. Still, the area was large and so far it seemed like the place had a lot of promise.

“Now this way, this way, down the hall.” Michael continued with a spring in his step, a little giddy, and I had to admit, his excitement was infectious. For better or worse, this building was ours now, and we’d taken a giant step down the path we’d set ourselves on a few months ago. It was hard not to be excited about that. The dining area turned into a hall, opening up into more rooms. We’d need an office, storage, maybe one or two private party rooms?

Instead, when Michael turned into one dark room and flipped the switch, the room that greeted me was clearly an arcade. Complete with pinball machines and arcade cabinets, humming to life with the sudden jolt of electricity.

I stood at the threshold of the room, my mouth agape.

“See?” Michael said. “I told you it’d be a surprise.”

“All of this came with the building?” I asked. I started to wander down the aisles with childlike wonder, but I was somehow afraid, as if touching anything would make the entire place disappear into a poof of smoke.

“They threw it in for a little extra,” he said. “Some of them need repair, but most of them work. We’ll need to get them fitted with ticket machines.”

“This is incredible,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. Suddenly, I was overcome with gratitude that Michael had handled this, because what he’d managed to do was incredible.

#phoneguy #memory

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positivepsychologyinterventions · 5 years

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Podcast: Does Sleeping Alleviate Mental Illness Symptoms?

Not getting enough sleep impacts every single person. It makes us irritable, slows our reflexes, and reduces our ability to think and reason. When a person is sick or suffering from an illness, getting more sleep is beneficial to the healing process.

Mental Illness is no different. You will benefit from regular sleep. In today’s episode, we talk about sleep hygiene – what it is and why it is important. Trust us, if anyone can make a discussion about sleep engaging, it’s Gabe and Michelle. Listen Now.

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

“When you don’t get enough sleep, you’re a crabby ass. If you’re mentally ill and don’t get enough sleep, you’re a crazy crabby ass.” – Gabe Howard

Highlights From ‘Sleeping Mental Illness’ Episode

[0:30] Let’s talk about sleep hygiene.

[3:00] Good sleep, bad sleep, and more sleep.

[9:15] Sleeping and waking up with psych meds.

[13:00] Kanye West makes an appearance. . .oy vey.

[17:00] Resetting your sleep cycle.

[19:00] Should you tell your doc if you are having trouble sleeping?

[21:00] The dangers of book lights.

Computer Generated Transcript for ‘Sleeping Mental Illness’ Show

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: For reasons that utterly escape everyone involved, you’re listening to A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. Here are your hosts, Gabe Howard and Michelle Hammer.

Gabe: Welcome to this episode of A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. My name is Gabe and I have bipolar.

Michelle: Hi, I’m Michelle and I’m schizophrenic.

Gabe: And today we are going to talk about.

Michelle: Sleep hygiene.

Gabe: You couldn’t even say it exciting.

Michelle: Well, I mean, I like sleeping. Hygiene is something I struggle with, but together they form a thing. What is it Gabe?

Gabe: The rituals, behaviors, and norms that you follow around sleep. And they are referred to as, hey shocker, “sleep hygiene.” Regularly pulling all nighters, or sleeping in on the weekends so that you can make up for lost sleep, are both examples of poor sleep hygiene. Conversely, following a regular sleep schedule and avoiding things like caffeine, staying up all night, and bingeing on Netflix are good sleep hygiene practices. Listen, don’t beat yourself oup if you don’t practice perfect sleep hygiene. Even I don’t practice perfect sleep hygiene.

Michelle: Damn right you don’t. Because we stay up all night watching “The People’s Court.”

Gabe: That is an example of poor sleep hygiene. You hate sleep hygiene. You and I have been doing this a while now and we get asked different things that lead to or where the answer is sleep hygiene, and every time I say, “Look, you’ve got to pay attention to your sleep,” you literally look at me and roll your eyes. Why is the concept of sleep hygiene bother you so much?

Michelle: I don’t know why it bothers me so much. It’s just the question of you should really get sleep, because sleep is important, and if you don’t get enough sleep you won’t feel good in the morning, and then you might have a bad day. So sleep hygiene really is important. Case closed.

Gabe: I wish it was called, like, if you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll be a crabby ass and if you’re mentally ill and you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll be a crazy crabby ass. Like wouldn’t that be cool? Now you’re getting into it. If the name explained how sleep makes you not a crazy crabby ass.

Michelle: Well then, you need more sleep, Gabe.

Gabe: Oh my God. I would call it get enough sleep so you’re not an asshole.

Michelle: Yeah? Get enough sleep because you’re not an asshole? That’s your next book Gabe.

Gabe: All of my books are just gonna have “asshole” in the title. And like when we get really big and famous you know my book is gonna be called?

Michelle: Asshole?

Gabe: I worked with an asshole.

Michelle: I worked with an asshole?

Gabe: We should get shirts that say I’m with asshole and it points to the left and yours points to the right and then we’ll just walk down the street together.

Michelle: No, we don’t want to do that. I’ll walk on one side and you walk on the other side of the avenue view so everybody can think that we’re talking about everybody else.

Gabe: That’s right because we are a unit, and we would never call each other assholes in public.

Michelle: That’s right. I would never insult you, Gabe. Never. I never ever insulted you. I’ve never said anything mean about you.

Gabe: You know it’s being recorded right?

Michelle: Oh? There’s proof of that?

Gabe: There’s so much proof now.

Michelle: Oh no. What’s going on? Are people catching me in my lies? Maybe I told in my sleep. Do I need more sleep? Maybe I didn’t get my sleep hygiene enough? Oh no.

Gabe: All sleep hygiene is, is paying attention to your sleep and doing the things that allow you to sleep well so that you wake up refreshed. Going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning. How we sleep is very important. Like for example, do you get in bed and toss and turn all night? That would be an example of poor sleep. Good sleep is if you stay relatively set and there’s things that you can do that contribute to good sleep hygiene. Like, only use your bed for sleep and sex. Other people use their beds for everything. Like for example, Michelle, your bed is basically the corporate offices of A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast.

Michelle: I live in New York City. Where am I supposed to put a desk?

Gabe: You have a living room.

Michelle: Where am I going to fit a desk in my living room?

Gabe: You could put the desk in your bedroom.

Michelle: Where the hell will a desk fit in my bedroom?

Gabe: There is enough room for a desk.

Michelle: No there is not. You obviously have never been to my apartment.

Gabe: That’s not true. We taped an episode there.

Michelle: I have three people in a two bedroom, Gabe.

Gabe: All right I’ll give you that. I’ll give you that.

Michelle: There is no room for it.

Gabe: These are the struggles that people have then, right? What you’re saying is, “Look, I need to do things in my bed. This is important to me because I just don’t have a lot of space so I have my laptop. I sit in bed and I do things like record my show, do my writing, run my business. You do an amazing number of things in your bed.

Michelle: You don’t even know my bed, Gabe. Not my bed. It has seen things you wouldn’t even believe.

Gabe: That is not a sex joke. I’ve seen you prepare orders on your bed. You know, your T-shirt business and your clothing line and your leggings and all of that stuff. You know you get big orders and you’ve got packaging material, labelling, and everything all on your bed. You got like tape.

Michelle: But that’s not usually on my bed. I don’t want people thinking that I’m like putting stuff on my bed like that. I make like you know layouts and stuff but I usually do it in my living room.

Gabe: The point I’m making is that your bed is a flat surface in a place where a flat surface is at a premium so you can see why. But can you see why doing all of those things in your bed can create this idea in your body that when you were in your bed it’s not time to sleep? When you climb into bed, your body doesn’t know if you’re working on the next great project. Or if you’re trying to sleep. It kind of confuses you on a subconscious level a little bit. And that’s why the idea of just using your bed for sleep is good for sleep hygiene. For me in my house when I get into bed there’s nothing else to do there.

Michelle: You have an office and a desk, Gabe.

Gabe: Listen, you’re coming up with a lot of reasons that you can’t do it. But the bottom line is if you are having trouble sleeping.

Michelle: I’m not having trouble sleeping.

Gabe: Ok. In this case you don’t need to practice some of these sleep hygiene levels but there’s many people who do.

Michelle: That’s true. What about? Do you remember that time I was like I’m going to get back out of bed at 10:00 every day? And you’re like lie!

Gabe: Yeah.

Michelle: Isn’t that kind of go sleep hygiene of sleeping far too late?

Gabe: So not getting enough sleep is poor sleep hygiene, and getting too much sleep is also poor sleep hygiene. It’s getting the right amount of sleep and the next thing that I want to talk about is this magical eight hours. No, this is bullshit. It’s bullshit. It’s an average. The average person needs eight hours of sleep. When was the last time people with mental illness were ever considered the average person? So people are beating themselves up if they need too much sleep or if they’re not sleeping enough based on some number that they read on the Internet.

Michelle: Yeah.

Gabe: You can see where this would be. It’s like I slept 10 hours and I woke up feeling refreshed but I’m so lazy I slept two hours too long. If that’s the amount of sleep that you need that’s the amount of sleep that you need. And the reverse is also true. Well I only slept six hours I’m not getting enough sleep. Well do you wake up refreshed? Do you get tired throughout the day? Do you have enough energy? Then six hours is enough. You need sleep to survive.

Michelle: Yes. Agreed. Yeah.

Gabe: Yeah. You need sleep.

Michelle: Right. We are not robots right. But if we were robots, maybe we’d need a plug?

Gabe: Yeah. We don’t have plugs we’re not Priuses.

Michelle: Oh we’re not?

Gabe: We’re not. We’re not a Nissan Volt. I’m not a car. We’re not a Tesla.

Gabe: Well, maybe if you run like jump on my back I can carry on and I’ll be a car.

Gabe: There are so many reasons you’re not a Tesla. You’re not high quality.

Michelle: Hey!

Gabe: Nobody wants you.

Michelle: Hey!

Gabe: And you don’t run right.

Michelle: I had a Hyundai.

Gabe: Yeah? I can see you as a Hyundai.

Michelle: Hey, shut up.

Gabe: Hyundai’s are pretty, but they’re not very reliable, are you?

Michelle: Not very reliable? Well, I had 2002 before they got pretty.

Gabe: Oh, so you’re an ugly Hyundai?

Michelle: I’m an ugly Hyundai, yes. One time it got hit by a preacher.

Gabe: What? You actually had your car hit by God?

Michelle: I’m pretty tired. Let’s hear from our sponsor.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counselling. All counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist, whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counselling is right for you.BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Gabe: We’re back talking sleep hygiene. Michelle’s favorite subject. If you’re having sleeping problems, it can be a couple of different things. One, it can just be the makeup of who you are as a person and there’s things that you can do to sleep better. Again like the whole dreaded only use your bed for sleep and sex and yes I know you live in New York City but there’s other things that you can do as well. Like, I have a ritual surrounding my bedtime and I know that people think that they’re you know they’re boring and lame or whatever and they are boring and lame, but they pay big big dividends.

Michelle: What I was also going to say is that I do take a pill at night, and if I did not take that pill at night I would not sleep whatsoever.

Gabe: Now is that pill to help you sleep or is that pill to treat schizophrenia?

Michelle: No it was prescribed to help schizophrenia and.

Gabe: So an added benefit?

Michelle: Yes, it had the added benefit of knocking me out at night. If I did not take it.,I’d be up all night long.

Gabe: That’s an interesting thing too. I have the same thing. There is a pill that pretty much knocked me out as well but it’s not a sleeping pill. It just one of the side effects is that it makes me sleepy, so I moved it to nighttime and this is where it becomes very good to understand what your medication does, what the side effects are, and how you can benefit.

Michelle: Yeah, it’s one of those pills that always says on the bottle do not operate heavy machinery or drive a car when you take this medication.

Gabe: You know, talk to your doctor about taking that at night because if you took it in the morning you’d be sleepy all day. By moving it to night, you can use the side effect to your advantage.

Michelle: Absolutely.

Gabe: You can take that pill at the same time every day, which by definition will make you fall asleep at the same time every day.

Michelle: What usually happens is at night I get a little chatty with myself and I get told take your medicine. Have you taken your medicine yet? You need to take your medicine and I go Yeah OK I’ll take it because I start just talking to imaginary people going into the delusions and it’s kind of what happens.

Gabe: But the people that are telling you to do that they’re not saying that mean? Like I’m.

Michelle: No, not at all.

Gabe: Kind of in a mocking way. You’re just trying to be funny right now.

Michelle: Exactly. It’s not mocking it’s more like out of care. It’s like Are you OK. Did you take your medicine? Take it right now? Now you maybe you should go take your medicine now.

Gabe: Like because we see you not in reality at the moment, and then you take that pill, you go to bed and then you get up the next morning refreshed?

Michelle: Right.

Gabe: Now another part of your sleep hygiene is when you wake up in the morning. You also need to immediately take your morning pills. So even though that’s not technically sleep hygiene, because it’s more part of your morning routine it’s sort of tangentially based. It is it is a thing that you need to do when you awaken.

Michelle: Right. And if I get up and I don’t take my morning pills, I am just pacing around my apartment just just maybe for an hour just back and forth and I need somebody in the morning pretty much telling me go take your medicine. Otherwise I am just just going to dilly dally forever.

Gabe: So even though you hate sleep hygiene, you’re sort of admitting that you’re practicing it. You take pills at the end of the day at the same time. Those pills help you sleep. Once you take the pills you go to sleep. Then you wake up at the same time every day. You take those pills and that helps you and when you’re away from people who don’t keep you on this schedule you stay up all night. You sleep all day and it wrecks your productivity.

Michelle: Absolutely.

Gabe: So even though you hate sleep hygiene you acknowledge that you benefit from it wildly?

Michelle: Absolutely. But I just hate talking about sleep hygiene. Hate to talk about sleep hygiene and sleep. I think it’s just so annoying.

Gabe: One of the reasons that I love sleep hygiene so much is because as somebody who has experienced mania and stayed up for three, four, or five days at a time, that was very dangerous and it was very bad. It was very bad for my relationships, it was very bad for jobs. I could have died. I lost complete control of my senses and faculties and if I would have gotten in a car or jumped off a roof. These are things that really could have harmed me. So that’s really really important and I know when I don’t get enough sleep the next day is awful. Here’s an example from recent memory, I stayed up pretty much all night because I have insomnia and the next day all I did was walk around and tell everybody I know that if I was dead the world be a better place. I wasn’t suicidal but it was close because I felt so bad. I just felt so rundown and so awful and it fed the depression. You remember I texted you and I’m just like this is stupid we shouldn’t do it anymore and you’re like What are you talking about?

Michelle: I did not even know what to do at that point because I was just trying to comfort you I guess I was trying to be like What are you talking about, Gabe? I don’t know where this is coming from because that’s just not you. It’s not something you usually say. You’re usually very motivated.

Gabe: And this was an example of behavior that came directly from not getting enough sleep. So as boring as sleep hygiene is you can see why it’s so important to me because I don’t want to walk around telling people that I’d be better off dead.

Michelle: Yeah.

Gabe: And I imagine that you probably don’t want to hear that I think that I’m better off dead. That’s got to be scary.

Michelle: Yeah.

Gabe: I mean I’d like to think that you love me.

Michelle: I also want to bring up, do you not remember the little interview of Kanye West saying he’s not bipolar? He’s suffering from sleep deprivation? Do you know what a huge symptom of bipolar is?

Gabe: Sleep deprivation?

Michelle: Yes. As who is not practicing good sleep hygiene?

Gabe: I’m going to go to Kanye West.

Michelle: You’re right, Gabe. You’re right.

Gabe: Here’s some quick hints and tips for people that are having trouble sleeping to help fall asleep at night. One I really strongly suggest only using your bed for sleep and sex but I also I have a sleep machine.

Michelle: What if you have sex on your couch?

Gabe: Look you’re going to do what you want. Nobody is saying that you can only have sex in your bed.

Michelle: I’m just saying. Because then what if you’re having sex on your couch, you take a nap on your couch, and then you?

Gabe: Let me stop you there. You should not nap on your couch. You should not sleep anywhere but in a bed or your own bed. And this of course, for people like us who travel a lot, this is very difficult and I’ll get to that in a minute because I want to go back to the sleep machine. People are like What the hell is a sleep machine?

Michelle: What’s the sleep machine?

Gabe: Yeah it’s really a sound machine. It’s like a white noise machine. I call it a sleep machine because I only use it for sleeping. So I turn it on and it helps regulate the room. You know it sounds like this. Are you ready? [cooing noise] So when I lay in bed that’s all I can hear, so it blocks out a lot of the external noise. It keeps the noise from going high and low and high and low. Research tells us that it’s noises that are out of the ordinary that wake us up. So, for example, people that live next to train tracks, they can sleep through the train because after a couple of weeks their body is expecting that noise. So that noise doesn’t wake them up.

Michelle: That’s true.

Gabe: It’s the same thing behind those fire alarms. Those smoke alarms where instead of beeping, you can record your voice or you can record your spouse’s voice or your mother’s voice. So it yells like, “Wake up, Michelle, the house is on fire!” Instead of beep beep beep.

Michelle: I see what you’re saying.

Gabe: Now listen, I’m gonna wake up immediately when I hear beep, beep, beep. But that’s just me and this is also why some people have alarm clocks that play the radio because they get used to the beeping in the morning, whereas the radio is always going to be different songs different sounds different you know rhythms etc. So it kind of forces them up in the morning and then some people have so much trouble getting up that they have you know like a vibrating pillow case. Which I didn’t even know existed until doing research about sleep.

Michelle: I didn’t know that it existed until just this moment right now.

Gabe: Yeah. The way that it works is it’s got a cord. You put it inside your pillow and you sleep on it and then when it’s time to get up the pillow shakes.

Michelle: I would have never have guessed you sleep on your pillow.

Gabe: I do sleep on my pillow. I sleep with my head on my pillow. I don’t need a vibrating pillow case, but I found out about this through the research, and I found out about it because the deaf community uses it and that makes sense because they can’t set an alarm.

Michelle: Genius.

Gabe: Yes, they use a vibrating pillow case and they also have vibrating pillow cases that are so advanced that they can hook into things like smoke alarms. So if the smoke alarm goes off it automatically vibrates the pillow.

Michelle: You know I have an Alexa which connects to my partner’s cell phone and sometimes she’ll break into the Alexa going wake up wake up Are you awake? Wake up. But I’m like, oh my God, this bitch!

Gabe: Wait, wait. How do I do that next time?

Michelle: I’m not telling.

Gabe: The next time you miss a meeting.

Michelle: I’m not telling you how to get into my Alexa. Or it has like different alarms you can wake up to that whatever the hell his name is? Oh, I know what it was. That, that guy married to Gwen Stefani? What is his name?

Gabe: Who is Gwen Stefani?

Michelle: No, no.

Gabe: Don’t speak. Just tell me what you’re feeling.

Michelle: Shut up. His name is the guy that was voted sexiest man in America. What is his name?

Gabe: The Rock?

Michelle: No, Blake Shelton. Sometimes I wake up to just the alarm clock of Blake Shelton like Oh is it a morning? Can I get a beer or maybe I can get a coffee?

Gabe: So it’s actually his voice?

Michelle: It’s his voice waking me up. Yeah.

Gabe: Talking about beer and coffee and these things help you get up at the same time every day because one of the dangers of not getting up at the same time every day is that you sort of reset your cycle. So let’s say for example that you go to bed at 8:00 and you get up at 8:00. Now that’s twelve hours of sleep and that’s a lot but let’s say that that’s how much you need and it’s also easy math for me. So you go to bed at 8:00 and you get up at 8:00 and that’s your twelve hour sleep pattern. But let’s say that one of those days you go to bed at midnight. Now if you follow your same 12 hours sleep pattern you’re gonna get up at noon. Well if you go to bed at midnight and you get up at noon that day what are the chances you’re going to fall asleep at 8:00 that night? You’re not. You’re going to go to sleep at midnight again and then you’re gonna be on a midnight to noon, midnight to noon, and that’s really going to reset your sleep schedule. So the best thing to do is that even though you stayed up too late and went to bed at midnight, you’re actually pretty wise to get up at 8:00 anyway. Or maybe push it to 9:00, but don’t get the full twelve hours. You might drag a little bit that day. But then at eight o’clock that night you’ll go to bed again. Sleep just really really impacts. It just does. It just does.

Michelle: It does. I can’t tell you how many bosses have spoken to me about getting in on time and getting enough sleep.

Gabe: Yeah. Whether you have mental illness or not, sleep can really impact the kind of day that you have. Find the most mentally healthy person that you can find and keep them up all night and then see how they act the next day. And when you’re living with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depression, anxiety, OCD, etc. The way that the sleep interacts with those illnesses is huge. I know that sleep is boring but it really is important. And so often getting more sleep, just like getting more exercise or eating healthier or showering or doing self care or coping mechanisms or taking our meds on time, sleep plays a vital role in keeping us healthy. And I know it’s boring, Michelle.

Michelle: It’s just boring to talk about sleep hygiene. That’s what I think. But I understand sleep is important. I completely understand. I get it. Sleep yes sleep. I’ll go take a nap if you want me to take a nap.

Gabe: No, napping is bad.

Michelle: I’m sorry. Don’t take a nap. Don’t take a nap. Don’t ever take a nap. Naps are evil. Naps are evil.

Gabe: Another thing that I want people to understand is that sleep matters. Sleep is a medical thing. If you are having trouble sleeping, that is a symptom. Report that to your psychiatrist or to your general practitioner or to your family doctor. So many people don’t report issues sleeping and so many doctors don’t ask people if they’re having trouble sleeping. If you are not getting enough sleep, if you are having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, please talk to your doctor. I know it’s not sexy. But, for real, this could be why you’re having side effects from medication. This could be why you’re having issues managing your mental illness. It might have nothing to do with mental illness at all. It might be a sleep problem but because so many people aren’t asking about it they’re not getting help with it. You know sleep. It is boring but it’s real necessary.

Michelle: Gabe’s going to come out with a new shirt that says, “Sleep Matters.”.

Gabe: Sleep does matter.

Michelle: Sleep matters.

Gabe: Do you think people would buy it?

Michelle: I don’t see anyone who would buy that shirt.

Gabe: I’d be like, “Define Sleep.”

Michelle: Define sleep? What? No, sleep matters.

Gabe: Don’t be paranoid, you sleep fine.

Michelle: “Sleep matters if you don’t agree then stay awake.”.

Gabe: How many words are you going to put on this?

Michelle: This is going to be the longest shirt ever because when you’re done reading the shirt, you’re tired enough to sleep.

Gabe: Hey, maybe this is like it’s an all natural, vegan, gluten free sleep aid?

Michelle: Or by Gabe’s book. Mental illness is an asshole and it’ll put you to sleep.

Gabe: That’s just so mean, that’s so mean.

Michelle: No, you read enough, your eyes get tired you go to bed. Just get a little itty bitty book light.

Gabe: A little itty bitty book light to strain your eyes and get glasses? We’re going to do another show on make sure you have enough light to read.

Michelle: I didn’t know that that was a thing, that book lights were a bad thing. I’m so sorry I insulted book lights. Oh no I didn’t know.

Gabe: We’re gonna get letters for this one.

Michelle: I didn’t know. It’s a book light. Book light or bulb lights were bad. I thought book lights were good.

Gabe: Also, they’re not “book lights.” They’re “lights living for books.” Get it right.

Michelle: Oh my goodness. I can’t stop insulting the world about books and sleeping and and the world and Kanye West doesn’t get enough sleep. All sleep deprived and what’s going on? And setting alarms and Alexa wakes you up and there’s a dog sleeping on the floor right now. Who knows what’s going on in the world? Gabe, there’s a dog right there sleeping. Taking a nap. Peppy, no naps. Oh, you woke up. Good.

Gabe: You just yelled at my dog.

Michelle: He’s taking a nap and you said No naps. You said No naps. You said and he’s napping.

Gabe: You yelled his name and he jumped up like you fired a gun at him.

Michelle: You said No naps and I see him napping.

Gabe: He thinks he’s in trouble. What did you do?

Michelle: You’re not in trouble but your father doesn’t allow naps, Peppy. Behave.

Gabe: Now would be a good time to point out that the rules for animals and the rules for people often differ. For example, people should not see veterinarians. They should go to people doctors.

Michelle: People doctors?

Gabe: People doctors.

Michelle: People doctors? That’s what they’re called?

Gabe: Yeah.

Michelle: I agree.

Gabe: We need a closing. What do we got? What do we got?

Michelle: In conclusion. In conclusion, if you want to have a good prosperous life, practice good sleep hygiene and make Gabe happy because he really likes this topic. Everyone, if you like A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast, subscribe to us on iTunes. Listen to us everywhere, write us a review, give us five stars, tell us you love us, tell the world you love us, share everything. We love you and we hope you love us. Thank you everybody.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to A Bipolar, a Schizophrenic, and a Podcast. If you love this episode, don’t keep it to yourself head over to iTunes or your preferred podcast app to subscribe, rate, and review. To work with Gabe, go to GabeHoward.com. To work with Michelle, go to Schizophrenic.NYC. For free mental health resources and online support groups, head over to PsychCentral.com. This show’s official web site is PsychCentral.com/BSP. You can e-mail us at [email protected]. Thank you for listening, and share widely.

Meet Your Bipolar and Schizophrenic Hosts

GABE HOWARD was formally diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders after being committed to a psychiatric hospital in 2003. Now in recovery, Gabe is a prominent mental health activist and host of the award-winning Psych Central Show podcast. He is also an award-winning writer and speaker, traveling nationally to share the humorous, yet educational, story of his bipolar life. To work with Gabe, visit gabehoward.com.

MICHELLE HAMMER was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 22, but incorrectly diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18. Michelle is an award-winning mental health advocate who has been featured in press all over the world. In May 2015, Michelle founded the company Schizophrenic.NYC, a mental health clothing line, with the mission of reducing stigma by starting conversations about mental health. She is a firm believer that confidence can get you anywhere. To work with Michelle, visit Schizophrenic.NYC.

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lowdown0 · 5 years

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How to Monetize a Blog: My Experience

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Joining the over 350 million other blogs in the world is an exciting experience for the first-timer, yet could also end up being disappointing if they’re trying to make money from it.

While some bloggers do make enough money through their blogging efforts to make a living, most of us don’t even come close. Let’s talk about the challenges and possibilities of blogging by examining how to monetize a blog: my experience.

Types of Blogs

Among the hundreds of millions of blogs online, there are many different types of blogs to consider. Many blogs are monetized and professional, to the point where visitors can’t even tell they’re a blog. Really, they’re simply a website where someone posts their writings, drawings, paintings, pictures, videos, audio, videos, affiliate posts, etc.

What is a blog then, if it’s just a website with a unique domain? Blogs are websites where individuals or businesses can craft and publish their own posts.

The design and functions of each blog will vary depending on the platform using and the person building it. Site building sites aren’t blogs, but they allow users to build a blog within the actual website.

Unlike websites, true blogs don’t have a homepage; the last post published is the default home page. Also, blogs can have more than one article on the page; when readers scroll down they’ll find the latest posts published — the number of posts is chosen in the settings.

Here are some blog and site builder sites to choose from:

WordPress (.org and .com)

Blogger

Quora

Tumblr

Weebly

Wix

Squarespace

Joomla

Medium

Ghost

Duda

LinkedIn and Facebook also provide platforms to blog, yet are limited with monetization capabilities.

Whatever platform is chosen, there are different types of blogs as well, such as:

Affiliate blogging

News/Views blogs

Personal Journal blogs

Business blogs

Interest blogs

Art blogs

A blog could be a mixture of these as well, yet most blogs should fit into these 5 types.

Types of Blog Monetization Methods

Although the sky is the limit when it comes to monetizing a blog, here are the main ways:

Adsense (PPC ads)

Amazon Associates (affiliate marketing)

eCommerce

Selling eBooks

Donations

Subscription-based

Indirectly through shared links to other income sources

Selling music

Crowdfunding

There could be other methods, yet these should cover the majority of general methods available to monetize a blog.

How Much Money Can I Make Blogging?

For those just starting out or those looking for motivation for their on-going blogging efforts, you’ll want to know how much can I make blogging? I mean really, without the BS from an affiliate marketing system or the promotional CTA of a site builder platform; just tell me How Much!?

Well, this is a hard question to answer, as it involves so many variables. Some people invest into a system and have the time to work full-time on their blogs, yet others start a blog in their spare time and work on it a couple hours a week. One blogger just starts a free blog about their personal life, while another starts a professional eCommerce website with a blog about their product, etc.

Suffice it to say, without a full-time, dedicated effort and the know-how to begin, bloggers shouldn’t expect to make even $100/month after a year of building their blog. The challenges for most bloggers are finding the time to invest and having the knowledge to effectively build. I wouldn’t even say money is a big hindrance, yet money does help initially get someone started faster and with more professionalism.

With that said, if a person were so inclined, they could make a living blogging; even from a subdomain platform with a free blog, a blogger could drive enough traffic to their blog to make a living. It all depends on the amount of traffic and the conversion rates for each monetizing tool.

The amount of traffic a blog gets depends on these variables:

Frequency of posting

Topics posted about

SEO practices

Size of social media channels

Value of posts to visitors

Longevity of blog

The variables determining the rate of clicks and conversions are:

Topic of blog

Theme of blog

Effectiveness of monetization layout

Types of monetization

Mobile responsiveness

UX/UI design

Type of blog

For instance, an opinion blog about society and politics will have a low conversion rate for Adsense ads, yet might be able to sell books related to the topic through Amazon Associate modules or their own eBooks, etc. The topic and type of blog make a big difference when it comes to attracting the type of people that engage with ads.

Affiliate text links and modules can be more effective if they’re relevant to the blog and topic. This is what affiliate blogging is focused on, while others use affiliate blogging without actually blogging about the product or service — side panel widgets, etc.

Each blog needs a monetization strategy tailored to its unique subject matter, layout, purpose, etc. The main idea is to get a solid platform built and then work on getting the visitors. This is when the journey really begins — how much money a blog makes depends, ultimately, on the number of visitors they can attract and their ability to convert them.

How to Attract Visitors and Gain Traction

Seems easy to make money blogging right? All one has to do is build a solid monetized blog and then the visitors will begin coming in droves. Well, not so fast, this is the part about blogging that makes most bloggers give up and quit.

The best attitude to have is to appreciate any and all visitors to your blog. Blogging is a work in progress effort and only those with nowhere else to go usually survive. For the love of blogging, stick in there whether the money comes quickly or not, and you’ll be glad you did. Hey, blogging is fun.

Just remember, if everyone could simply start a blog, take a crash course in monetizing it, and then make a full-time living, then the secret would be out and everyone would be blogging their brains out. The truth is, most blogs fail to ever make money.

The blogs that do make money attract tens of thousands to millions of visitors every month. The amount of money made per 1,000 impressions is called RPM (revenue per thousand impressions). Impressions are basically counted when an ad loads on the visitor’s device, which means they’re basically visitors who didn’t bounce immediately.

There are many ways to attract visitors; each blogger will have their own marketing strategy. Here are some ways to attract visitors:

Post frequently and regularly

Include creative commons pictures

Include videos

Creating longer posts (600 to 3000 words)

Sharing on social media sites

Backlinking with small revenue sharing sites

Blog directories and feeds

Sharing to email lists (default with Blogger is Feedburner)

Participate in related forums

Including high ranking links in posts

Give out business cards with blog URL

Guest blogging

PPC ads with search engines or social media

Create videos and podcasts about posts w/backlinks

Submit blog’s URL to search engines

Ping the blog’s URL

These are only some of the ways bloggers can use to gain traction and blow up their blogs with visitors. In my estimation, it takes 100k visitors or more each month for most bloggers to make a full-time living ($1,400/mo and up).

Much of the success bloggers have with marketing their blogs comes from their tech-savvy ability and their drive for money, or their lack thereof.

Here’s an analogy to explain different blogging strategies: when there’s a line of people, those who fight tooth and nail to be in the front will seemingly prosper quicker and get more, yet those who patiently and humbly wait at the end of the line (without resentments) will eventually get there just the same, yet can feel good about how they did it.

In other words, in the process of attracting visitors to your blog, don’t sell out and become a slave for some corporation or money itself. There’s nothing wrong with making money, yet there needs to be a purpose beyond just making money with blogging. Maybe this manifests in an ethical eCommerce store or an opinionated sociological news blog; either way and with everything in-between, there needs to be a purpose beyond making money — in order to sustain long-term blogging efforts with joy.

Having a more enjoyable life is why we want to blog for a living anyway, right? The freedom of making a living blogging is an alluring goal to have; imagine not having to work for anyone else! Indeed, being able to work remotely and make a residual income doing what we love (blogging) would be great!

Even after blogging for nearly 5 years and only making a few bucks a month, I’m still working towards and believing my blogging efforts will one day make me a living.

I hope this blog post has helped you gain some ideas and strategies around monetizing your blogs. Just remember, there’s no one right way to do it, so dig in and keep the ideas flowing and maybe one day they’ll come to life. God bless in Jesus.

Originally published on Christian Blogger’s Journal July 13, 2018

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