#tumblr allowed me to use subscripts in the post editor and they show up fine on my blog but not on the dash

[unknought]

Stuff about the Kelly criterion

I’ve been off Tumblr for a little while, but there’s apparently been some discussion about the Kelly criterion, a concept in probability, in relation to some things Sam Bankman-Fried said about it and how that relates to risk aversion. I’m going to do what I can to explain some aspects of the math as I understand them.

The Kelly criterion is a way of choosing how much to invest in a favorable bet, i.e. one where the expected value is positive. The Kelly criterion gives the “best” amount for a bunch of different senses of “best” in a bunch of different scenarios, but I’m going to restrict to one of the simplest ones.

Suppose you have some bet where you can bet whatever amount of money you want, you have probability p of winning, and you gain b times the amount you bet if you win. (Of course, if you lose, you lose the amount you bet.) Also suppose you get the opportunity to make this bet some large number n of times in a row, you have the same probabilities and payoff rules for each of them, and they’re independent events from each other. The assumption that all of the bets in the sequence have the same probabilities and payoff rules is made here to simplify the discussion; the basic concepts can still hold when there are a mix of different bets, but it’s a lot messier to state things and reason about them.

Also suppose that your strategies are limited to choosing a single quantity f between 0 and 1 and always betting f times your total wealth at every step. This is a pretty big restriction, and it too can be relaxed at the cost of making things much messier. But even with this restriction we’ll be able to compare the strategy prescribed by the Kelly criterion to the “all-in” strategy of always betting all of your money.

So what is the best choice of f? The Kelly criterion gives an answer, but the sense in which it’s the “best” is one that it’s not obvious should apply to any choice of f. I’ll state it here but keep in mind that until we’ve done some more calculation, we shouldn’t assume that that there is any choice of f which is the best in this sense.

The Kelly criterion gives a choice of f such that, for any other choice of f, the Kelly criterion produces a better result than the other choice with high probability. Here “high probability” means that the probability that the Kelly choice outperforms the other one goes to 1 as n goes to infinity.

So why is this possible?

Let Xi be the random variable representing the ratio of the money you have after the ith bet to the amount you had before it. So your final wealth is equal to your starting wealth times the product of the Xi for i from 1 to n. Also these Xi are independent identically distributed variables. (We can describe their distribution in terms of p, b, and f but the exact details aren’t too important to the concepts I want to communicate.) Sums of random variables have some nicer things that can be said about them than products, so we take the logarithm. The logarithm of your final wealth is the log of your starting wealth plus a sum of n independent variables log(Xi).

Now, the expected value of that sum is n times the expected value of one of the individual summands, and the (weak) law of large numbers tells us that with high probability the actual value of the sum will be close to that. (To be rigorous about this: For any constant C, the probability that the sum will be further than Cn away from its expected value goes to 0 as n goes to infinity.) So for any betting strategy f, define r(f) to be the expected value of log(Xi). So if we have any two strategies f and f’, the log of your final wealth following strategy f minus the log of your final wealth following strategy f’ will be about r(f)n-r(f’)n, and so will be positive with high probability if r(f)>r(f’). (If you understood the rigorous definition in the previous parenthetical, you should be able to make this argument rigorous as well.) Thus with high probability the log of your final wealth will be greater using strategy f than strategy f’. Since log is an increasing function, this is equivalent to saying that with high probability, f will result in a greater final wealth than f’.

Then if you pick f such that r(f) is maximized, then for each other choice of f, you’ll outperform that choice with high probability. This is what the Kelly criterion says to do. Maximizing r(f) can be equivalently described by saying that at each bet, you bet the amount that maximizes the expectation of the logarithm of the amount you’ll have after the bet.

A pitfall to avoid here: Although the log of the final wealth can be said to be “about” a certain value with high probability, we can’t really say that the final wealth is guaranteed to be “about” anything in particular. Differences that we can consider to be negligibly small when we’re looking at the logarithm can balloon to very large differences when we’re looking at the actual value, and it is very possible for one experimental trial using a given strategy to yield something many times larger than another trial using the same strategy where you’re a little less lucky.

The Kelly criterion is not the strategy that maximizes the expected amount of money you have at the end. The best strategy for that goal is that is the one where you put all of your money in on every bet. This isn’t inconsistent with the previously stated results; in almost all cases the Kelly criterion outperforms the all-in strategy (because the all-in strategy loses at some point and ends up with no money). But in the very unlikely event that you win every single one of your bets, you end up with an extremely large amount of money, so large that even when you multiply it by that very small probability you get something that’s larger than the expected value of any other strategy.

What if, instead of trying to maximize the expected dollar payoff, you have some utility function of wealth, and you’re trying to maximize the expected value of that? Well, it depends what your utility function is. If your utility function is the logarithm of your wealth, the Kelly criterion maximizes your expected utility; in fact, in this case we don’t even need to assume n is large or invoke the law of large numbers. But going back to the case of large n, there are a lot of other utility functions where the Kelly criterion is also optimal. Think about it like this: the Kelly strategy outperforms any other strategy in almost all cases; the only situation where you might still prefer the other strategy is if in the tiny chance that you get a better outcome, your outcome is so much better than it makes up for losing out the vast majority of the time. So if your utility function grows slower than the logarithm, you care even less about that tiny chance of vast riches than you would if you had a logarithmic utility function, so the Kelly criterion continues to be optimal. More generally, I think it can be shown that when comparing the Kelly criterion to some other strategy, the probability of that other strategy doing better than it decays exponentially in n. Since the amount the other strategy can obtain in that tail situation grows at most exponentially in n, this implies that as long as your utility function grows slower than nε for all ε>0, you won’t care about the tail so the Kelly criterion is still optimal. If your utility function grows faster than that, i.e. if there is some ε>0 such that your utility function grows faster than nε, then I think for sufficiently favorable bets, all-in comes out ahead again.

Okay but how does this all of this apply in the real world? Honestly I’m not sure. If your utility function is your individual well-being, it seems very likely to me that that grows logarithmically or slower; if what you care about is maximizing the amount of good you do for the world by charitable donations, I think there is some merit to SBF’s argument that you should treat that utility as a linear function of money, at least up to a certain point. But even he acknowledged that it drops off significantly once you get into the trillions, and since the reasons for potentially preferring riskier strategies over the Kelly criterion hinged on exponentially small probabilities of exponentially large payoffs, I think that that trillion-dollar regime might actually be pretty relevant to the computation.

Really any utility function should be eventually constant, but in that case the Kelly criterion ceases to be optimal in the way discussed before. For large enough n, it will get you all the money you could want, but so will any other strategy other than all-in and “never bet anything”. Obviously this is not a good model of how the world works. To repair this we probably want to introduce time-discounting, but to make sense of that we need to have some money getting spent before the end of the experiment rather than all of it available for reinvesting, and by this point things have gotten far enough away from the original scenario that it’s hard to tell how relevant the conclusions from it even are. It seems like it’s a useful heuristic in a pretty wide range of scenarios? But I have no idea whether SBF was right that he was not in one of them.

To be clear, none of this is to excuse his actions; whether or not he should have been applying the Kelly criterion, I think “committed billions of dollars of fraud” does a better job of capturing what he did wrong than “was insufficiently risk-averse”.

#tumblr allowed me to use subscripts in the post editor and they show up fine on my blog but not on the dash #math

[faterpresources]

Anonymous:

Do you have any advice on how to start an rp blog? I feel like there's so much to do and so many specific things, it looks intimidating, but I really want to get into it (and your blog seems like a safe space to ask as a baby in the matter)

Hi! Thanks you for asking and for trusting. I do admit that rping on tumblr can look daunting and there is a series of things that are considered “etiquette” that might not be obvious for newcomers. And the only way to learn is to ask, right? As I’m not sure if you would like something more specific or a step-by-step, I’m going to go through the whole process.

note: this is a repost from an ask in a more reblog-friendly format

1.       Setting up the blog

You might want to make a new e-mail account for each blog you want. I recommend making a gmail/google account, so you may be able to use other services and associate them with your blog. I’ll go into more details in a minute.

Some people would rather have a personal blog and then making the RP blog as a side-blog. Or a “hub” blog and many side-blogs so they have everything centralized. The downside is that you can’t follow people with side-blogs, only the main – and some rpers are a little suspicious of personal blogs, so if you intend to go this route it might be a good idea to state somewhere in your blog that you have a RP blog.

Tip : It isn’t said too often, but I recommend saving your blog’s e-mail and password somewhere, maybe a flashdrive or even google drive. This way, if something happens you will be able to retrieve your account.

When picking the URL, for a very long time tumblr had problems tagging URLs with a hyphen ( - ). I’m not sure if it has been fixed or if there are still some issues, so I recommend only using letters and maybe numbers. Other than that, pick anything that sounds nice to you!

Themes are nice, but not entirely necessary. Not everybody has photoshop skills and all that. Some people do have commissioned themes, but if you want to try your hand at it my first stop is usually @theme-hunter  or @sheathemes . They reblog many themes from many creators, so there are always many options that might suit your needs.  Some creators offer very newcomer-friendly themes that you can configure a lot of things without much hassle but some might require basic HTML knowledge – a few creators have guides on how to properly set up their themes and are willing to and answer questions, so don’t be afraid to contact them! You can also send me an ask, I’m not a specialist but I can certainly help walk you through the basics.

Tip: @glenthemes have very good themes and a basic installation guide here.

When fiddling with the options, try to pick colors that have nice contrast and are easy to read. If you are bad at picking colors or have problems in finding the code for them, I recommend trying this link. There is also this one that auto-generate palettes.

Tip : If you mess with your theme, remember there is the Theme Recovery.

Tip: If you use Chrome or Firefox you can set up different profiles and associate each with a different blog, so you don’t need to log out from any of your accounts.

There are two pages that I recommend having: one is an about your muse. If they are an OC, it is always a good idea to have at least some information out there to make things easier. If they are from a canon source, not everybody is familiar with the material so it might be a good idea to state. For example, if you are going to roleplay as Altria/Arturia, it is a good idea to have a “RP blog for Saber (Altria Pendragon) from FGO/FSN “ somewhere visible. The other page that is a good idea having is a rules/guidelines page. This one can be a little intimidating, but it is usually a way to communicate important things. For example: are you comfortable writing violence? Do you have any personal triggers? There is something you absolutely won’t write? There are things you may figure out along the way and it is absolutely ok to fine-tune this session every now and then. Some people also credit source for their icons and graphics in general in their rule/guideline page.

If you are using the tumblr default themes, when you create a new page you can turn on the option to show a link to the page. If you are using a custom theme, most of the time you will have to link it manually.

Oh, and if you are planning to do a multimuse, it might be a good idea to list which muses you have. The same goes for a hub blog; list the muses and link to the pages.

Icons aren’t necessary but are considered commonplace. You can find some icons I’ve done here but there are plenty of other sources. If you want to do your own icons, keep in mind to don’t make them too big, as a courtesy to your mutuals.

Tip: Anything larger than 300 pixels will be stretched to fit the post. As of today ( 4/29/2021 ) the posts are currently 540 pixels wide. This can be useful as making banners for your blog.

Tumblr allow users to “pin” posts. This mean that they will always visible if you access your blog, even on dash/mobile. You can use this to set up a post with basic links for mobile users or something else. For example, if you are out on vacations and won’t be able to do replies, you can pin a hiatus notice and then remove the pin once you are back.

2.       Introducing yourself

Time to officially join the fun! (insert a “Hi, Zuko here” joke) Don’t worry if you don’t have a fancy promo graphic or anything, most people make their initial introduction with a simple post.

(as you can see, I’m not very good at saying ‘hi’)

Try to introduce yourself in a few lines, but make sure to state which muse you RP as. Some people also like adding their pen name/alias and establishing a brand. Follow as many people as you want that reblogged or liked your post, and tumblr is going to start recommending other blogs that are related to the tags you use normally or have any relation to the people you follow. You can put as many tags as you want, but tumblr will disregard more than 6 tags in their system. Try tags like “<fandom> rp” and “<fandom> roleplay” along with the media, such as “movie” “video game”, “anime” and so on.

It might also be a good idea to follow a few RP memes blogs. They often have options to break the ice, like one-liners that your mutual can send you.

Tip: Don’t forget to turn on the asks and the anon

3.       Practical advice

Alright, now that you have a few mutuals, it is time to get to some general tips:

Tumblr can be a little “iffy”, and a great quality of life extension for RPers and navigation in general is installing the New Xkit extension. They offer a number of options to enhance your tumblr experience, but the ones I consider essential are the “editable reblogs”, “quick tags” and “blacklist”. Get it for Chrome or Firefox.

As a rule of thumb I recommend writing your RPs using Google Docs before posting or replying. By doing this you can do some spell check and if your browser crashes for any reason you can easily recover your work. You can also use Word, Open Office, or any text editor you feel like.

Because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I also have Grammarly ( Chrome / Firefox ) installed for an extra layer of spell/grammar check. There is a subscription option, but the free one works perfectly fine.

To make things easier to locate, always tag the URL of your RP partner when doing a reply. There are other useful things you can tag, such as open starters, memes, and such.

Risking being obvious here, but when you are not interacting as your character it might be a good idea to tag as “ooc” or “out of character”.

Some people like making google docs with basic info and other useful stuff for easier access on mobile. It is a recent trend, it might be easier to edit as opposed to going through tumblr page editor and dealing with the HTML.  You can find some templates here and here.

Tumblr’s activity can be unreliable, so don’t be afraid of contacting your partner to see if they have gotten your reply after a few weeks. However, some people also enjoy using the RP Thread Tracker in order to be on top of things. It might be a good idea to check it out.

Because of Tumblr shadowbanning and shenanigans, it isn’t unusual for people to have NSFW sideblogs (sometimes referred as ‘sin blogs’). If you want to write smut, it might be a good idea to consider making one.

Some people don’t like replying to asks, as Tumblr won’t let you remove the initial ask. It has become common to see people making new posts to reply to asks.  This is a simple example:

As you can see, I used the mention to have the RP partner notified then I copied and pasted their question on my post and used the quote to indicate it. You can also have fancy graphics, like a line to separate the contents, just do whatever you feel like with the formatting or keep it simple.

To make sure your partner got the answer, I recommend copying the link to the post and pasting on the ask and then replying it privately.  An example sent to my rp blog:

4.       Basic Etiquette

Ok, this is a little subjective most of the time but here are a few things that are considered universal courtesy.

Never reblog someone else’s headcanons. If you enjoy it, maybe it should politely contact the author and ask if it is ok to write something based on their original idea but you should never downright copy or lift something from another creator. It is considered rude, or even theft in some cases.

Don’t reblog threads you are not involved with. It is ok to leave a like, but never reblog. This is because Tumblr can mess up the notifications and disrupt the flow of the RP.

Don’t copy other people’s graphics. It is very rude and sometimes they commission (aka: paid) for it.

Trim your posts. What does that mean? Every time you reblog with a reply, the post tends to get longer and longer, and it can cluster your and your mutuals’ dashes. This is why the New X-Kit’s “editable reblogs” is an almost must-have tool. If for some reason you can’t install X-Kit (if you are on mobile for example), then remove the previous post or ask your partner to trim for you.

Never take control of your RP partner’s muse. This is called “godmodding” and it is heavily frowned upon. It is ok to control your muse and the possible NPCs that you inserted, but never seize someone else’s character. Likewise, it can also be very upsetting if you use what people call “meta-gaming”, applying knowledge that your muse shouldn’t know about the other. For example, let’s say your RP partner’s muse is a vampire, but they have never disclosed that information to your muse, who also doesn’t have an excuse to know that (for example, being a vampire hunter) so it can be quite jarring sometimes. When in doubt, contact your partner.

This should go without saying, but RPing sexual themes with users under the age of 18 are illegal. It doesn’t matter if the age of consent in your location is lower, once you join Tumblr you are abiding by their user guidelines and the law of the state they are located in. If you are an adult, don’t engage minors with these topics, maybe a fade to black would be a better option. If you are a minor, don’t insist or you might cause a lot of legal problems for others.

Try to tag anything triggering. Violence, gore, NSFW. Both Tumblr and the New Xkit have options to block keywords.

When picking PSDs or graphics for your blog, you should avoid templates that change the color of the skin of POCs muses and try to pick the right race/ethnicity of the muse you are going to RP as. I won’t go through a lot of details, as it is a rather lengthy subject in an already lengthy conversation but keep this in the back of your mind.

Some RPers don’t like when you reblog memes from them without sending anything. Try to always reblog from a source or to interact with the person you are reblogging from, it can be rather disheartening to be seen as a meme source rather than a RP blog. This isn’t a rule and some people don’t mind, but it is always a good idea to try to do this.

This might be more of a pet peeve of mine than proper etiquette, but it is ok to use small font. What is not ok is use small font + underscript. Some people have disabilities that might make it harder for them to read it, so it might be a good idea to refrain from using it. Maybe if you feel like doing something fancier every now and then, but I wouldn’t recommend making this a habit.

Mun and Muse are different entities. Remember that it isn’t because a muse does something (especially a villain one) that the mun condones something. Never assume anything about the mun, when in doubt talk to them.

Be mindful of your partners and treat them the way you would like to be treated.

As a rule of thumb, always talk to your RP partner. It is only fun as long both of you are enjoying it.

5.       Closing Words

This got longer than I expected.

Despite all of that, don’t be too worried about not being very good at first. I assure you that you will get better with time, so don’t be afraid of experimenting as long you feel comfortable. And don’t be afraid of saying “no” if something bothers you.

My inbox is always open to questions and ideas, so feel free to contact me anytime!

I would also ask my followers: there is advice I missed/overlooked? Anything you would like someone have told you when you first started? Add your thoughts so I can update this.

Happy RPing!

#roleplay advice #roleplay help #rph #rp reference #rp resources

[eldritchsurveys]

929.

Do you ever actually enjoy going to "common" places like the supermarket, the post office, etc? If so, which of these "common" places do you typically enjoy visiting? >> I don’t think so. Most of these kinds of trips are predictable and tedious. I enjoy them more when I’m in an okay mood, but otherwise it’s just... work.

Have you ever made your own bumper sticker? If so, what did it say/portray? If you haven't made your own bumper sticker, what would you want it to say/portray if you did? >> I’ve never made a bumper sticker and I don’t want to make one.

How often do you "sort through" your Xanga subscriptions? Are you more of a person who often unsubscribes from people because you follow too many blogs or are you more of a person who does not often unsubscribe from people because you only follow certain blogs, usually only the ones that you really like? >> I don’t follow survey blogs on tumblr, typically, although I had to follow one recently because tumblr had stopped showing his posts in the tags (for me, anyway). Most everyone else I can find in the tags, so it’s fine.

Now often do you notice sexual references in songs that aren't necessarily direct, such as the emphasis that is put on "everybody knows I'm hung..." in Hot Chelle Ray's "Hung Up"? >> To be honest, it seems like most sexual references in songs nowadays are pretty goddamn overt. Like, WAP just came out...

If you do not smoke marijuana, how do you feel about the legalization of it? Maybe you are so sick of hearing about this that you do not even think about it enough to have an opinion? To guard against leaving anyone out, if you do smoke marijuana, how often do you smoke? >> The reason I don’t smoke it is because it causes adverse effects for me. I support its decriminalisation and I wish its legalisation didn’t immediately result in a fucking monopoly in this country but, you know, capitalism. Still, can you imagine telling someone from like 1980 that “Big Marijuana” was going to be a problem in 2020? It’d be like 12 Monkeys, immediate loony bin for you.

Do you currently live in one of the states that has legalized same-sex marriage? If so, which state are you in? Keep in mind, Delaware has recently joined this group! >> Well, it’s federally legal now.

In terms of the biggest news stories right now, how aware would you say that you are of what is going on in the world? You can judge this by your knowledge of the "Tebow Bill", the case of the Texas cheerleaders that were criticized for their religious banners, the guilty verdict that was handed to Jodi Arias on terms of the 1st degree murder of Travis Alexander, and the rescue of the missing girls in Cleveland who were held captive for a decade. >> (This survey is... uh, a few years old. In case you haven’t already noticed.) I’m relatively aware of the biggest news stories in the United States right now because they’re kind of everywhere (and also because I get daily emails from The Flip Side). Even people in other countries can’t avoid knowing about what’s going on in the US, unfortunately. Also, I should add that one of the biggest continuously-updating news points right now is a global pandemic, so, you know. Kind of hard not to know about that.

Obviously hypothetically speaking, your child is charged with a crime and could receive the death penalty punishment. Your child asks you not to testify for life in prison instead because he/she would rather die fairly soon rather than to live the rest of his/her life in prison. As a parent, do you think that you could obey their wishes in good conscience and not attempt to spare your child's life? >> If I couldn’t, I’d be really fucking disappointed in myself. I’m going to allow for the variable that I might feel differently about a child if I actually had one (since parents are always talking about how us childless people “just don’t get it”), but I really can’t see my values changing that much, and one of my values is respecting other people’s right to die.

Be honest, when you ask questions like "how are you?" do you actually expect a true, possibly elaborate, response or do you expect the typical "fine" or "okay" answer in which you are mostly just asking to be polite? Perhaps it depends on the situation? >> If I ask, it’s because I actually want to know what’s going on in the person’s life -- like, they’re a friend or something and we haven’t talked for a while. I don’t ask this out of obligation or weird social rules or anything.

Do you wash your hair every single day when you shower? Do you really believe that skipping a wash every now and then is better for the hair? >> First of all, I don’t shower every single day either. Also, I’m not white, so my hair texture demands more time between washing if I don’t want it to be dry and brittle.

Would you rather have long, damaged hair or short, healthy hair? In other words, which is more important to you, the length or the health of your hair? >> Who the fuck wants damaged hair? *thinks about all the white people with “dreadlocks”* Wait, never mind, don’t answer that.

Who was the last person in your life to have "car problems" and what happened? >> I mean, the only person really in my life is Sparrow and the last car problem she had was when she had that flat and tried to drive to Meijer on it and the whole fuckin thing just disintegrated, lmao. That was an Adventure.

When you text someone until you are about to go to sleep, do you usually send that person a goodnight/goodbye text, just reply to their message when you wake up, or does it vary? >> Depends on the nature of the conversation. If it’s really casual I’ll just let it taper off. If it’s more focused or serious, then I’ll warn them that it’s almost my bedtime so if they have anything pressing to add, add it now. Otherwise we can just pick it back up again in the morning (or let it end, whatever). ...This is also all hypothetical, since who the fuck am I texting.

What do you want the most right now? >> Nothing.

Are/were your parents/guardians more strict or easy going? >> Very strict.

How many items are currently in the recycling bin on your computer? >> Oh god. Like ~1100 files, because of that goddamn OneDrive fiasco a couple of months ago. I forgot to empty it, but I just emptied it now, so thanks for reminding me.

When was the last time you ate spaghetti? >> I don’t remember.

Does it bother you when surveys you've copied and pasted into an entry are formatted? For instance, the previous survey taker may have used Tahoma font in the entry or aligned the survey to the center. >> This isn’t a problem on tumblr. Usually the problem is that new!dashboard just jacks up formatting so when I copy from dash and paste into the editor, the spacing is all wrong. I solve that problem by copying from the permalink instead... which is an extra step and kind of annoying, but whatcha gonna do.

Do you actually find comedians with a style like Will Ferrell and Steve Carell funny or are they more annoying and moronic to you? >> Steve Carell can be funny sometimes, I guess. I don’t like most Will Ferrell movies. It’s just not my sense of humour, I’m not going to fucking insult it just because it’s not my thing.

#surveys #survey #random survey

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, July 19 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late June report, although some may be older than that.

I‘m still working on Etsy search testing and a few new blog posts and pages for my website, so it is still difficult for me to get this summary out more than 1-2 times a month. All suggestions on solutions to my time crunch are welcome. 

If you have an questions, comments or suggestions about my Tumblr or my blog, please contact me here or on my website. I’d love to know what you think! 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Latest change from Google: the free Google Shopping listings will now show up in US organic search as part of product knowledge panels. Unfortunately, since they are only doing this for product knowledge panels to begin with, it likely won't help handmade sellers, but could be useful to sellers of vintage & supply items that are known products that will have a knowledge panel. It may be a sign that they are planning on moving free ads to more Google "surfaces" over time, however. Note that it appears that all product knowledge panel ads will be free starting this summer (US only), so that means that any Etsy paid ads for these types of items will become free ads that you won't have to pay EOA fees on if you get a sale. Google claims the free ads are bringing more searcher engagement to Shopping.  

Amazon announced they will begin to show US sellers’ business name and address on the Seller Profile page as of September 1. The same requirement already exists in Europe, Japan and Mexico. 

The USPS will no longer be delivering mail as promptly every day, to cut costs. This potentially affects anyone shipping to a destination in the United States. 

How 7 different companies grew profits during the last recession - there will still be business opportunities during the upcoming recession, but you have to be positioned to take them. 

ETSY NEWS 

Etsy Labels no longer offer USPS international shipping options for all packages under 4.4 pounds other than Canadian orders, replacing them with the Global Postal Shipping Program (GPSP). Many US sellers dislike the GPSP, and have moved on to outside providers that integrate with an Etsy shop and other services, such as Pirate Ship, Shippo, Stamps, and Shipstation. 

The quarterly category & attributes updates are limited to face mask & hand sanitizer attributes for July. Etsy also made some other minor updates recently, including allowing us to set a message auto reply for up to 5 days. 

You may have noticed that Etsy is really pushing Etsy Ads on sellers right now, despite the numerous complaints about the average cost per click becoming far too high last year. I’ve turned mine off permanently, but if you are interested in trying them or fine-tuning them, Etsy released an article and a related podcast with a transcript.

Louisiana and Mississippi have been added to the list of states that Etsy collects sales tax from. 

Etsy raised fees on Reverb to 5%, “to make further investments on behalf of our sellers.” 

Etsy will release the second quarter results on August 5. We already know that April and May were record-setting, and June was also probably pretty good. 

The site has continued to receive decent media coverage for the mask initiative; Etsy is mentioned in several articles/broadcasts a day as a place to get masks, including stylish ones. This article briefly interviews a seller and looks at what Etsy will do next, as the mask demand peak might be over. 

Now that people think of Etsy for things like face masks, Etsy is continuing to market itself as a place to buy everyday items, something it shied away from for a few years. (Remember when Etsy was all about “owning special”?) They’ve added “Everyday Finds” links & Editors Picks pages, and have published tips on what pandemic shoppers are looking for. (Note that the year over year values compare this April to last April, and so were during peak lockdown for the US.)  “Keeping surfaces clean is top of mind these days, and shoppers are searching on Etsy for many types of cleaners, from all-purpose scrubs to washable sponges...134% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “ceramic sponge holder.”...”74% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “mug”...”352% YoY increase in searches on Etsy containing “diy”.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but this page on the search and ads algorithms appears to be relatively new. 

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

The sea change in online buyer behaviour during the pandemic may mean that you need to update your keyword research. Keyword volumes have changed, some very dramatically. For example “‘adult bikes’ shows a massive upturn.This represents over ten times as many searches for this term compared to just under a year ago. If you projected this back in 2019 you’d probably be laughed at.”

Speaking of keyword research, if you need a refresher on why you should do it and how to approach it, here is a recent article. 

There are many different ways to get backlinks; here are a few that are pretty easy [video & text]. 

Are longer blog posts better for SEO? Not necessarily, as long as you cover the topic well. The exception is that blog posts under 300 words are usually not worth writing. 

Most SEOs think there was an unannounced Google update around the third week of June. Some are reporting that sites that specialize made gains, as opposed to those who have more general material. That same study reports Etsy had one of the largest traffic increases, but not as much as Pinterest (I’ve been seeing a lot more pins when Googling lately, so this seems likely.) Government websites also seem to have received better visibility. “As Google has described in their document on how they fight disinformation, they describe that their systems are designed to prefer authority over other factors “in times of crisis”. If this truly is related to what we saw happen in June, these changes could possibly be reversed once the worldwide pandemic situation improves.”

Bing released a few basic tips on how to use its keyword planner. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

TikTok has moved out of Hong Kong, while the US government may be looking at banning them, following India’s move on July 6. With TikTok in peril, many people are now downloading its competitor Byte. 

If you use Facebook for your business, please read up on the changes required to comply with California’s new privacy law. 

Instagram is now testing an Instagram Shop tab, which allows users to filter by category. 

Twitter is planning on starting a subscription service, but deleted some of the details  from the job listing just hours later. 

One of the results of the big Twitter hack on July 15th was Google removing the Twitter carousel from its search results. 

Pinterest searches involving Christmas started way earlier this year, with a 77% increase YOY in April. “That includes a 3x increase in searches for “Christmas gift ideas”, while other queries like “holiday recipes” and “Christmas” were up more than 90% and 80% respectively.” These are good stats for marketers to have, helping us decide when to release and promote new products.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Spending too much on Facebook ads? Here are some common mistakes and some suggestions on fixing them. 

If you already know that ROAS stands for “return on ad spend” then some of this article may be old news to you. 

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

If you are using Google Shopping with your website, be aware that the Google bots may be inflating your abandoned cart rate. 

Google Analytics can help you track the effects of changes to your website, or other business conditions. You can also get alerts when certain types of events happen, or when traffic is abnormal. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Walmart is expected to launch Walmart+, similar to Amazon Prime, this month. But note that while many brick & mortar businesses are now doing a lot more business online, it is more expensive for them. 

For those of you who use Stitch Labs, they have been purchased by Square, and the existing services will likely be cut in 2021. 

Deja vu for Etsy sellers - eBay was apparently offering incentive payments for signing up for their new Managed Payments system by mid-July. (Etsy did the same with its Etsy Payments system, but only for Americans.)

Is Amazon Handmade as good for small makers as it claims? Maybe not. If you sell on Amazon, consider these strategies to protect your core business from being swamped by the big A. 

Wix has introduced an ecommerce version with a lot more options and integrations. 

Shopify’s new “Shop” app has some good features but also some issues. [podcast & edited transcript]

BigCommerce filed to go public, and added Ayden as a payment option. More details on the Ayden move here. 

Did you know there are sites you can use to sell your ecommerce business? Here are 10 of them. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

US ecommerce sales are now expected to grow 18% this year, while overall retail is predicted to be down 10.5%. “In a pandemic economy, consumers have gravitated toward trusted and reliable retailers. As a result, we can expect the top 10 ecommerce retail businesses to grow at above average rates (21.8%). Amazon will gain US ecommerce market share this year, while Walmart's accelerating ecommerce growth will take it to the No. 2 position for the first time.”

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a factor you can use to drive sales; here are 6 tips. 

Generation Z is acutely attached to internet use, and is more likely to be planning on starting their own business than any other generation. 

MISCELLANEOUS 

It’s possible that the increase in people working from home will lead to more work hours and therefore more burnout.

#search engine optimization #etsynews #content marketing #smallbiz #ecommerce