I've been showing you some screenshots from my interactions with ChatGPT, you can see a couple already posted here.

However, something has been bothering me about one of my recent interactions with ChatGPT. I asked it a simple question, but it gave me an odd response that made me feel like the AI has been programmed with a certain, hmm how should we say...? "political bias." Essentially, many interactions have shown me that ChatGPT is "woke."

Here's some background: I saw a friend's Facebook post asking "what animal comes to mind when you think of thick thighs." (I'm paraphrasing). I didn't care about the reasoning behind the question, but I thought it would be interesting to see what ChatGPT would say.

But instead of answering the question, it gave a response that felt like it was implying that I was using the AI for a degrading or demeaning purpose.

Let's take a look at the screenshot.

I don't understand why this response would be included in ChatGPT's programming. The question is simple and neutral, and the AI has no context to interpret it that way. It seems like is pretty obvious that this response can only come from the people who created and trained the AI, and it makes me wonder if they've intentionally added this sort of "woke" response logic.

The correct or more human-like response should have been a list of animals that seem to have "thick thighs" from a human's perspective. Or it should have said, I don't know what you mean by "thick thighs", OR perhaps you can give me some context to be able to answer more accurately.

I hope this is just a glitch or a fluke and that the creators of ChatGPT are working to fix it. But if this is a deliberate move and it continues, it concerns me. Next post, I'll have the rest of this ChatGPT conversation.

The post Unveiling the “Woke” Agenda in AI: A Personal Experience with ChatGPT. — Is ChatGPT Woke? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So what's next? We're going to see an explosion of new apps and systems and tools that leverage the knowledge and API that OpenAI has, we're also going to see competitors of OpenAI, but I think that OpenAI has a first-mover advantage in a way that may be impossible to beat.

Anybody can write a layered wrapper on ChatGPT and build something cool.

We're going to see a million of these. For example, I ran into Adept earlier.It's not even working, but they're pushing their idea out there.

is it a good idea? sure why not? an AI to interact with the web. Sure, I'm on board. On TikTok, I ran into GPTBOSS, or CHATBOSS or whatever. An "AI" let's you talk to "employees" to get their take on particular issues ok, cool, but a bit gimmicky.

There's Adept which promises to do stuff for you online, take info from here and fill out stuff over there. Cool, yeah that's neat. And there's Character.ai which pretends to be a specific person when you chat with them, but it falls short from the mark, I mean just look at the screenshot.

There are 1000 new "ai" systems, but really, they all leverage OpenAI and a couple of automation. I can't wait until Open AI has real competitors, and it will be amazing.

In the meantime, keep playing with ChatGPT, Midjourney, Dall-E. And if you feel inclined to, start an app using OpenAI's system. I mean, chatGPT will even write the code for you!

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So I asked chatGPT about it. This screenshot isn't about the company itself at all which apparently is still in business, I just wanted to give you some content. But this is about chatGPT lying. So much, just like a human. Here's example number one. I will have more later.

So you see the contradiction. Ah, the lies I tell ya! - Ok, Chat GPT, if you don't have information about specific companies how you could answer the 2nd question?

By now I understand how this works and why it can answer one and not the other. Obviously, it's a data set issue, but did you figure it out yet?

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I hope to make some videos about it and share some tutorials, but for now, I'll share some of my prompts. I feel like some of these should be self-explanatory, but Here's the first one:

I knew the ultimate answer to this one because, currently, there is no way to do what I asked it to do; it was odd that it gave me an answer that ignored my request to make it a batch action, and specifically said I wanted to avoid doing it by hand, one at a time.

Sometimes it flubs like this. Or did I goof? Based on some new tricks, I might have found a way to ask a better question. Maybe I'm the one that messed up on this one. This was one of my early prompts.

If it isn't clear where it (chatGPT) made the mistake is that the tutorial only allows me to export the files one at a time by hand. It doesn't help me do what I wanted which is to export all the cut sections of the project into individual videos independently, in sequence, and automatically.

If you aren't a video editor, what I mean is that I want to know how I can take a 5-minute clip for example, and mark it or cut it in the places where I want to extract certain segments from and then automatically have the editing program, Final Cut Pro extract each of those segments into their own files. Doing this by hand in Final Cut Pro can be a pain in the you-know-what.

And before you totally dismiss it as a failure, look a the next prompt, #2.

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I found this great video. It's by NetworkChuck and explains how Docker/s work. Excellent video.

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It's a type of AI where you can have a dialogue. But you can also ask for information, in a "what-do-you-think-of-this" line of questioning.

Here's one that really blew my mind. I asked: do you think objectivism overlaps capitalism?

This was the response:

Objectivism and capitalism are two distinct philosophical and economic systems, but they do have some overlap and commonalities. Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by the philosopher Ayn Rand, which emphasizes individual rights, rational self-interest, and the pursuit of one's own happiness. Capitalism, on the other hand, is an economic system based on private ownership and the creation of wealth through the free market.

One of the key overlaps between objectivism and capitalism is the emphasis on individual rights and the pursuit of self-interest. In objectivism, the individual is the ultimate moral authority, and each person has the right to pursue their own happiness and goals without interference from others. Similarly, in capitalism, individuals are free to pursue their own economic interests and make decisions based on their own self-interest.

Another commonality between objectivism and capitalism is the emphasis on the free market. In objectivism, the free market is seen as the best way to allocate resources and promote individual freedom and productivity. In capitalism, the free market is the primary mechanism for creating wealth and determining prices and production.

Overall, while objectivism and capitalism are distinct philosophical and economic systems, they do have some overlap and commonalities, particularly in their emphasis on individual rights and the pursuit of self-interest, and the importance of the free market.

That's mind-boggling. The response was nearly instant too. I mean, it will not win a Pulitzer, but it certainly would pass as a short essay for a college class. Wow, this world is changing.

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The problem is getting a list of URLs from a website.

Seems simple enough, but it isn't. There is a dozen type of URLs you may want to catalog, regular web pages, images, and media files. Then there are private and public URLs.

The easiest way to get a list is to get the sitemap.xml file. But not all websites have one, and it only includes what the content engine or website administrator has decided to add to it.

You could also ask Google what pages it knows from a domain, which is based on index status. So if a particular page isn't indexed, it may not show there.

You could use a custom wget script; there are plenty of those in Github and other people's websites. But they never seem to work right, or they don't do what's needed, or sometimes they do everything except what you need.

Just a simple list of all the URLs on a domain.

Ideally, the solution would have the option to show all public-facing URLs and private URLs, and it would be nice to filter through a type of content that is at the end of the URL, text/HTML, media, CSS, etcetera.

The closest solution I've found for this is a little app called Screaming Frog. It does everything needed to get a list of the URLs of a website. At least it does a good job of getting all the links that are public-facing and available; there's a limit on the free version, but if you do this a lot or with a large website, you may need the paid version.

The post A Common Interesting Problem – Getting All the URLs from a Domain appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

network-tools.com is no more.

It appears to have been acquired and rebranded as part of broadbandsearch.net I don't know how I feel about this, but hopefully, the original owners cashed out nicely because the value this site has provided to me for the past 20 years is immeasurable.

I think just in July I did an audit and like most audits, it begun at network-tools.com Today I was surprised and found the domain redirected me and I was greeted with this:

I tried to go to the Wayback machine to grab a screenshot of the classic look that we grew used to for the past decade, but they had blocked it; I might have a screenshot of my own.

Indeed, the end of an era. RIP network-tools.com

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I lost interest because I didn't care for the proprietary aspect of it. And I thought we would all just move to the cloud; everything would be in the cloud, I had resigned to the idea that was just the way it was going to be.

And for the most part, most people that want to have what I call "cool and useful" tech, like home-automation, or pantry-inventory, are in fact using cloud services, or apps. There's an app for everything; nevermind how much of your information they collect!

Despite being a technophile, I do not trust most online services. Ring cameras? no, thank you, they share your video with anyone basically. I've been very slow to adopt any sort of "smart" device into our homes, no Siri, no Alexa. We use some Google home devices, but we unplug them when not in use.

I don't like the privacy compromise.

But I've now been learning a lot about open-source software and hardware that replicates pretty much all of the "smart devices" functionality that is commercially out there but with no-cloud and no-internet-required parameters. There's even a "Siri" or "Alexa" type of assistant called Genie.

This is good! Free, open source, private. Good!

Ultimately, I would like a home server/network setup vaguely resembling this:

• Home Assistant server for automations,
• A big NAS (50+ TB),
• A media server accessible easily from any screen device in the network.
  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Movie Collection
  • Music Collection
  • Locally downloaded podcast subscriptions
• Multi-cam monitoring & security system with "a doorbell feature."
• Grocy
• Pi-Hole

I want to add a media player like Kodi maybe, and a Google photos replacement like Libre. For now, I have a Home Assistant box, Pi-Hole and Grocy running. They're all running on individual virtual machines directly on my laptop with Virtualbox.

This configuration obviously is not ideal since the services are unavailable if my laptop is unavailable. But at least I am getting to play with them and learn what they can do.

Wouldn't it be cool to integrate Grocy into Home Assistant and have Home Assistant automatically add items to a grocery list the moment you consume one of your must-have ingredients? This could be done for food ingredients or household consumables like dish soap or laundry detergent.

Take it a step further, imagine integrating a computer in your car connected to the ODBII sensor which in turn alerts you of upcoming oil change and adding oil to your shopping cart, or tells you when your car has any kind of trouble or needs some sort of service.

For a car computer, I would like:

• List of obvious things like Navigation, Bluetooth calling, etc.
• A big-screen android display.
• Automatically download podcasts, and select videos to local storage when connected to the home's WiFi.
• Run up to 24+hours on a dedicated battery; the battery automatically recharges while driving.
• ODBII integration.
• TPMS.
• Integrated with data/cell service, so it should be able to accept a SIM card.
• Would be nice to have the device be a hotspot as well (but this is debatable).
• Integrate various sensors and monitors to a dashboard.

Those are lofty goals, but it's fun to imagine those. Back to what I have for now.

Pi Hole

The easiest to start was PiHole. I setup a small Virtual Machine, installed basic inimial ubuntu linux and then followed the Pi-Hole instructions.

Cox, my ISP does not allow me to change DNS servers on the router we have from them, so for the time being I set a number of devices to use the Pi-Hole by configuring their own network settings.

Ideally Pi-Hole would be the DNS service for all devices network-wide, and this would then prevent ads from getting to any device within the network. But using it only in a few devices lets me learn the system and also fine tune it before making all the devices be forced to use it.

So far it is working ok. At first, the percentages of "queries" blocked was under 10%. After googling around a bit I found that there are lists all over the place which you can include in your blocklists. This helped bring that percentage to about 15% and so far it's been around 16 like the screenshot shows.

Pi Hole is cool, but it's far from perfect.

I would still recommend using Brave with the shields up as the default browsing environment for most people. Pi Hole's purpose is for all the other devices that cannot use Brave as a browser, the main example is my TV.

Also, sometimes I have to use Firefox, or Chrome, heck I use Vivaldi and Opera in a regular basis too and I always miss Brave's ad protection. This is where Pi Hole helps a bit by just blocking access to ads altogether.

What about Grocy?

Grocy is an inventory control system for your kitchen. It's perfect to help you manage your pantry, fridge, and freezer. If you keep it updated, you can quickly see what you have in your house when you want to make dinner. It can also keep track of chores and the members of the family that are assigned to each chore.

Grocy lets you keep track of your recipes and it can easily generate shopping lists based on recipe ingredients that are currently missing from your pantry. It can also generate shopping lists based on pre-determined thresholds. You could program it to always have 2 jars of pasta sauce on hand, so when your inventory goes lower than 2, it automatically adds pasta sauce to your shopping list.

The downside of Grocy is actually using it. It's been a challenge getting anybody besides me in the house to use it. I think the solution for this will be some NFC stickers that we can just trigger with our phones.

There is a way to integrate Grocy with Home Assistant, so it can alert you when things are low or remind of chores that need to be done.

That's it for now.

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I created some promotional graphics for my client, and I thought I'd make one for my blog as well. Here is the cover I made for me and the ones for my client:

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Uphold describes itself as the place to trade "anything to anything." And while that's a pretty broad and bold statement, it is obviously a marketing campaign to attract traders, they can't possibly trade any crypto for any crypto.

They do, however, have an incredible long list of cryptocurrencies you can trade. A lot more than I see available on other big exchanges.

Check it out here: sign up with Uphold with my link here, and they'll give you $20.00 and give me $20.00; we both win. And you get to trade XRP.

I use Uphold to trade BAT, XRP and HBAR.

There are other benefits Uphold offers, like integration with other apps and staking right in the platform.

The post Where Can I Buy XRP if I’m in the United States? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I love Trip Advisor as a reviewer. I really like their detailed rating system, and I think it gives us a chance to dive deep into the nuances of our review. The overall system doesn't encourage the usual all-or-nothing rating system you tend to see on Google or Yelp.

Even though Google and Yelp offer 1-5 levels of review, most people stick to 5-star reviews if they liked the place or 1 if they didn't like it. Trip Advisor reviews seem more realistic.

I think Trip Advisor reviews are great. I specifically like their rewards system for reviewing places and experiences. Like Google Guides, they give the reviewer points and badges for completing certain milestones.

This is where I stand right now, but I haven't really updated it since the lockdowns started just at the end of 2019. If you're on Trip Advisor and would like to follow me, here's my profile at Trip Advisor.

Trip Advisor Badge Collection

Trip Advisor has a lot of badges available, it seems that they have put a little more thought and effort into them than Google has for their own, and I like that.

I have received the following ones:

These are the rest of the badges.

I'm missing a lot of these, but I'll get there and hopefully get them all. Some of them will be really easy to get. Some of them may be more difficult.

I have some interesting observations about the badge system at Trip Advisor. Some of the badges are based on other visitors to the site, like the readership badges, other ones are solely based on our own activity on our reviews, like the photographer badges. Also, if you notice, some of them have levels.

The level threshold for the badges that have one is indicated when you click on a badge. For example, the Resort Expert Level 1 requires three resort reviews. Most of the badges that have levels increase in level after 3 reviews.

Some other badges, like your "Passport", just include how many cities you've reviewed places in.

I guess my goal is to light all of them up and then just keep leveling up. It shouldn't be too hard.

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The place is in a good location, close to a couple of major streets, the only downside is that the parking lot can get a little crowded during busy times, but you’ll usually find a spot in a minute or two.

You can find this location at 13041 Newport Ave, Tustin, CA 92780. Bronx Sandwich Co. has a few other locations throughout Orange County as well.

My favorites here are The Bronx Club, King of Queens, The Mobster, and the B.B.Q. Brisket (pictured above).

I’ve had other sandwiches and they’re all good, but these are my favorites. I have tried the salads as well, and they’re fine. But their strong offerings are the sandwiches for sure.

The fries are also delicious, I always get them well-done and they come out super crunchy. Definitely, a place to come back regularly.

This is my latest review in Google Maps, follow me there if you'd like.

The post Bronx Sandwich Company in Tustin – 2022 Review appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

As I've been preaching for years, YOU need a website. It used to be that only publishers, bloggers, or sellers would need a website, but nowadays with the future of the Internet at stake, everybody needs a website. Heck, I have a website for my kids, I locked in their domain names long ago.

Censorship and control in social media are at an all-time high. Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, and every other social media platform out there have control and censorship guidelines that are restrictive and censorious at worst, murky at best.

You could post something that seems innocuous to you but inadvertently puts your account at risk of suspension or outright deletion. This happened to me.

I've had my own TikTok videos restricted without a clear understanding of why.

This is why you need a website. Yes, build an audience on your favorite platform, use Instagram, use TikTok, use Facebook even. Use whatever social platform you want, but always have a place that is your own, and make references to it frequently as a place for your followers to connect.

A website can be simple, one page with a "sign up form" where your followers can join your email list, or find what other platforms you're involved with. This way, in case you get suspended, restricted, or simply move on to the next "big thing" your friends, fans and followers can still find you.

The original video from Tiktok is here, and it's part of a series that I'll document here on the blog. If you want to jump ahead and get hosting, Inmotion Hosting (my host & sponsor) is currently having a sale where their Power plan is the same price as their Launch plan, check it out here.

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Are you interested in writing blog posts for it?

The topics are web development, web technologies, WordPress, SEO, blogging, content creation, web hosting, web servers, social media, website marketing, graphic design, web tools, and other ancillary topics.

Ideally, you will write at least 3 articles. But there is no limit. The articles must be 100% unique and original.

What's in it for you? You'll get an author byline on every article that gets published, at least one do-follow link on each article you write as well as a spot on the resources page.

I'll be launching when I have 50 or more articles ready. I wrote 12 so far, and have 10 in progress at about 60 to 80%. I hope to have 30 by month's end and launch towards the end of February.

Let me know if you're interested and we can go into more details.

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I thought it was pretty nifty. After a while, I found better ways to do this, for example, Acorns. The Acorns service does the same thing, but better and it also lets you add recurring savings programs and round-up multipliers. You can ask it to automatically take a certain amount every month and put it towards your savings and investment goals

Update 2021-12-29

I'm disappointed and I should have done more research before jumping into this. Please note, RoundlyX might still work for you, but it won't work for me. Acorns (mentioned below), actually withdraws the round-up amounts on a regular basis, so you don't really notice it in your bank account. RoundlyX doesn't.

For all intents and purposes, RoundlyX is just a glorified savings/investment plan that you still have to monitor and execute. If you decide you want to buy crypto in increments of say, $50.00, then RoundlyX will monitor your account and when you have accumulated that amount of "spare change" they will withdraw that entire amount $50.00 and make your purchase on your behalf. In other words, you're better off using your exchange's own recurring buy system to just buy $50.00 every month and save yourself the fee of RoundlyX.

This might work for you, but it won't work for me; YMMV. I've already canceled my Acorns account and will probably cancel this as well. I also use Digit, which I think can easily replace both services. Here's a Twitter thread where I had an exchange with the RoundlyX folks if you want to read it.

TL;DR

RoundlyX has a "spare change" round-up savings program that allows you to buy crypto automatically. It tracks your transactions, rounds up to the nearest dollar, and then takes that amount and buys whatever cryptocurrency you want in your favorite exchange, you can sign up here.

Acorns basically invests your spare change for you

The best difference between Acorns and a regular "keep the change" program is that you can have Acorns invest the money for you.

You don't get to pick individual investments, instead, you pick the levels of risk, moderate, conservative, aggressive, and they take care of investing it. I guess it is similar to how you invest in a mutual fund.

The returns aren't going to make you rich anytime soon, but they're better than the fraction of a percentage you get from a regular savings account with any bank today.

But now everything is going to the blockchain and crypto, so it was just a matter of time before someone replicated the spare change savings idea into a crypto-based system. RoundlyX just rolled out earlier this year.

RoundlyX buys cryptocurrency with your spare change

Enter RoundlyX. RoundlyX is the same as Acorns in principle, but instead of investing your spare change into mutual funds, or stocks or EFTs, RoundlyX buys crypto for you.

This could be one of the easiest ways to stack sats, without any effort on your part.

The account is pretty easy to set up, there are no complicated steps to create wallets or copy and paste your codes and all of that stuff that often comes with working with the emerging crypto space.

RoundlyX uses Plaid to connect to your bank and immediately starts going through your transactions to grab the "spare change."

Similar to Acorns and other "keep the change" and "save spare change" programs, they have multipliers, so you can accelerate your savings by adding a 2x, 3x, or 10x multiplier. So that if your transaction was $10.35, RoundlyX will take 65 cents, but with a 3x multiplier then the savings will be $1.95.

Once you accumulate $45.00 in your RoundlyX account, RoundlyX will buy the cryptocurrency of your choice in the exchange of your choice, the options include any token or coin traded in some of the big exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Binance International, Okcoin, and others.

I've signed up for this now and have it active, I have canceled my Acorns subscription too, there's no sense in paying for that if I'm not going to use it. That's another benefit with RoundlyX, their service is only $1.00/month (the first month is free). Acorns plans start at $3.00/month. There's nothing wrong with Acorns as far as I can tell, and my experience with them has been great. But the future is here and the future is crypto.

If you haven't started using, accumulating, and transacting with cryptocurrencies, this could be the easiest way to dip your toes in the water with minimal risk. Check it out here if you want to join.

A Brief Introduction Video of RoundlyX

Here's an intro video about how you can use them to buy crypto with your spare change.

The post Save Your Spare Change in Crypto With RoundlyX appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I imagine that when you go to look for a job, or when you're in a conversation with someone at a networking event, the questions "what languages do you know? or what languages do you use?" will be pretty normal.

Back in the day, there were really only two options to learn to code. You either learned everything yourself by digging through some really dense mind-numbing books and going through many trials by fire, or you paid for a really expensive course.

Now, you can learn to code for free, on your own time. It also can be fun, and there are hundreds of different places you can go to and get exactly the kind of guidance that works for you.

I've just started going through the FreeCodeCamp curriculum. I want to learn 2 languages in the next year. My goal is to be able to use these languages to increase my ability to build solutions for my clients; it should make me more valuable.

I encourage you to spend time learning about coding, improving your math skills, reasoning skills and learn a language that you can use. It's free, it's needed and it's the future.

As for me, I'm starting with Javascript. I've learned enough Javascript over the years to be able to read and modify some of it. I've done this out of necessity when I have to work on code on an application or web system. But I believe that having a more structured approach to learning and using the concepts acquired will be much more fruitful.

Cover photo by Markus Spiske from Pexels

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I can't help to think how interesting it is watching this evolution in digital. At first, I noticed that the crypto world had more or less taken over the names for established network layers. I started noticing that each project usually describes that they're a "layer 2" or "layer 1" level project or whatever layer they're part of.

I guess it was a little irritating for me because I thought we already have definitions for layers in networking. Isn't all this blockchain stuff, just software on a network?

The OSI Layer model has definitions for layer 1 through layer 7. We've had it since 1984, ironically. Turns out the blockchain has 6 layers.

Why didn't they (the crypto world/blockchain) just pick up at layer 8, and 9, and so on? I mean they still need routers, storage, servers, and databases, right? To the uninitiated and ignorant, like me, it seems that most of the projects I've seen actually belong to layers 4-7, and maybe even 3.

A quick refresher if you didn't know about layers:

• Layer 1 - physical
• Layer 2 - data link
• Layer 3 - network
• Layer 4 - transport
• Layer 5 - session
• Layer 6 - presentation
• Layer 7 - application

If you want to remember it, remember this: Please Do Not Teach Students Pointless Acronyms.

But then I started thinking a bit more and I realized. Sure, crypto needs all those things, but what if they didn't? What if storage as we know it changes drastically in the next 10 years.

What if we no longer need servers because we have a petabyte of storage available in our mobile devices which are connected to a near-instant peer-to-peer communication system, making the need for anything centralized (like big routers & DNS, etc) pretty much obsolete.

It could be more or less a "living and breathing" mesh network. Paths to information would be generated and cached through faster and more reliable nodes. And at that point, what is a storage device? Is it the individual node? is it the "memory" of that preferred path of information, or is a storage device the collective of data that mirrors and verifies the data itself?

To think about this is mind-bending. Everything is changing.

Perhaps this realization is an indication that we're not just in another iteration of the Internet with "better apps" or a "better social network" or an "easier way to pay. We're in fact reinventing the entire digital world.

And when I say "we" I mean we as in people, as the world, because personally, all I'm doing right now is farting around with pocket change in retail exchanges. But some people really are investing their life into this.

And maybe that's why they decided to use new definitions for layers and ended up with six layers instead of 7. IDK, the amount of information I've absorbed about the blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and all that over the past 2 to 3 months is astounding.

It is overwhelming, but I thought I'd put down some thoughts about this specific topic just to clear ideas floating in my head.

Thanks for reading.

The post Thoughts about the OSI layer and the layers in crypto and the blockchain appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

One of these mysterious enigmas of this new world for me at least, are NFTs. NFT means non-fungible token. And one of these "tokens" is supposed to be represented by a digital file of some sort. It could be a jpeg, a gif, an mp3, and others (if I understand correctly).

Anyway, I go on to explain some more about what I understand about NFTs below but I came across this clip with a guy explaining to Quentin Tarantino how an NFT could fund a movie project.

You can see Tarantino's head go into ? overdrive as he responds... You know he's going to do something with NFTs in the near future!. But watch for yourself, this helped me understand a lot as well. The full video is below as well.

Tarantino Has His Mind Blown with NFT realization

Some more of my thoughts

But when you look at the pricing that is surrounding these NFTs in some cases seems unbelievable. Some NFTs sell for a couple of hundred dollars just to be resold a few months later for over one million dollars or some other equally astronomical number that seems unreal.

Why would someone pay a half-million dollars to own a digital file? Well, the answer is mixed right now.

Some of it seems motivated by part from the desire to be part of the cutting-edge pop culture, to be cool. Another motivating factor I found is that some people just want to be part of the "revolution," to be part of a huge shift.

Something that was hard for me to get my head around is that these NFTs are digital collectibles like baseball cards can be collectibles, stamps, coins, etc. I have so much to explore on that aspect of it, but for now, there's one more reason NFT's are interesting for me. The big part I'm most interested in is the utility that may come with a given token.

It's hard to explain, but think of an NFT as having potential for all kinds of things, like fan-relationship components, or as a fund-raiser for your next project.

If you're a stage performer, like a singer or a rock band, you could create a number of NFTs to sell in limited supply and include "stuff" that the holder of that NFT is entitled to, such as backstage passes, or lifetime first chance to buy a new releases, or VIP club access, free t-shirt each month. You can get creative. You could create 1,000 of these and sell them in batches or in auctions.

Here's the full video

Quentin Tarantino on a Panel about the Future of entertainment and NFT

The post You Can Almost See Tarantino’s Head Explode When NFTs just clicked. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

A satoshi (sat) is the smallest unit of Bitcoin you can buy. In case you didn't know, amongst the many differences between Bitcoin and regular currency, is that one single Bitcoin can be divided into 1,000,000,000 pieces. Each one of those is one satoshi.

The analogy to regular currency, like the U.S. Dollar is like this. Think about 1 dollar being the "whole" unit, while 1 penny is 1 tiny fraction of a dollar. In the same way, 1 Bitcoin is a "whole" unit, while 1 Satoshi is a tiny fraction of that.

Stacking sats means buying satoshis.

Before Bitcoin's value shot up, past a few hundred dollars, it was inexpensive to buy a full coin. But as the price of Bitcoin (currently around $60,000 - check real-time prices here) goes up, buying a full coin can be out of most people's reach. So instead of buying full bitcoins, you can buy satoshis which are of course a lot more affordable. The whole goal is to "HODL" Bitcoin, meaning buy and hold as much as you can.

Currently, as the price of Bitcoin hovers around $60,000 USD, you can buy around 1600 satoshis with $1.00. If you want to check this in real-time for an accurate price, you can use a USD to Satoshi calculator like this one.

Now that you know what stacking sats means, check out this video, it's my response to @BrainnHarrington and why I decided to write this post, and now you know.

The post What does Stacking Sats Mean? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've been learning about cryptocurrency for a while now. Enough that I'm going to share a few things here and there as I learn. Blogging about it will hopefully help me understand things better.

First, KYC is an abbreviation and it stands for Know Your Customer. It's often used in Marketing, Sales, and other industries.

So what is KYC when it comes to cryptocurrency?

KYC stands for know your customer. KYC in cryptocurrency is similar, to KYC in banking and finance, and investing. When you deal with KYC, it means the institution knows everything about you and monitors your account, transactions, and other activity.

One of the things that makes many cryptocurrencies attractive to the users/buyers/traders is their ability to be traded anonymously. I get it that not all cryptocurrencies are anonymous and that in some cases even if you try, it can be nearly impossible to maintain 100% anonymity.

But you have to consider this, as more and more authorities get involved with crypto, the more regulations that come into place. When you use a mainstream cryptocurrency exchange, like Coinbase, or Robinhood, then you have to reveal your personal information.

This information is required for you to participate in their services, and they need the information for the purpose of implementing KYC protocols, processes, and compliance.

Once you sign up for an exchange, like Coinbase, they now know who you are and they know their customer, they KYC. KYC is a system and collection of processes and protocols that verify the identity of a person transacting business. Generally, this is done in response or in compliance with self-imposed policies, industry regulations, and/or government regulations.

KYC in the investing world

KYC is used in the investing world which also affects cryptocurrencies now and will more in the future. Investopedia says this about KYC:

What Is Know Your Client (KYC)?

The Know Your Client or Know Your Customer is a standard in the investment industry that ensures investment advisors know detailed information about their clients' risk tolerance, investment knowledge, and financial position. KYC protects both clients and investment advisors. Clients are protected by having their investment advisor know what investments best suit their personal situations. Investment advisors are protected by knowing what they can and cannot include in their client's portfolio. KYC compliance typically involves requirements and policies such as risk management, customer acceptance policies, and transaction monitoring.

- Investopedia

But your bank, doctor, insurance, and investors all use KYC

This isn't too bad, right? I mean if you've always and only dealt with Fiat money for your entire life until now, you've always given the bank your information, so this is similar right? The bank uses KYC almost anytime you deal with them. Your doctor does too, your insurance agent does too.

Yes, this is exactly like your bank.

It's okay to share information with them until it's not. It's okay for them to know who you are until the authorities request access to your bank account because they want to investigate it and your bank simply gives them all your information.

What is KYC you ask? That's what KYC means.

It means they literally know you and verify your identity when you transact with them. In crypto, you try to avoid interactions where you are exposing your identity. - Here's a great article that helped me understand more about kyc.

Think of real-life and how you can meet with someone in private and exchange cash for goods or services. Imagine they give you the cash, and you give them the goods; nothing more, nothing less. You don't ask for ID, name, date of birth, or anything. They also don't know who you are. You complete the transaction and remain [mostly] anonymous.

That's more or less how you want to do transactions in crypto, anonymously. If I understand correctly, when you're dealing with big amounts or long-term investments, you want to avoid KYC institutions as much as possible. I guess part of avoiding KYC is that you most likely will need cold storage or a cold wallet. I might tackle that subject next.

So that's really it for now. Being that this is my first post about cryptocurrency, I'll leave it at that short and sweet.

The post What is KYC in cryptocurrency? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

For this, I thought CartFlows would be one of the best ways to make that experience both unique and profitable. I've heard Adam Preiser talk about it a lot and I think this is a good use for it, time will tell.

I'm not reviewing CartFlows now. But I've heard some people say that CartFlows is "just as good or better" than ClickFunnels. I've heard one or two variations of that phrase before and always makes me raise an eyebrow in slight disbelief.

I might get into all the features and review the product later, but so far, so good. CartFlows is different in many ways, but the most important differentiator about it as compared to ClickFunnels is that it is built for WordPress. Clickfunnels is a software as a service offering (SAAS), while CartFlows is a self-hosted software package.

As with everything built on WordPress, it comes with benefits and trade-offs. I will look into these as I progress through the project.

So many questions! I'm going to list the questions I have so far right here and maybe if this turns out to be awesome, I'll do a series of posts with tutorials or q&a. So here are some questions and notes.

• Can we use the Woocommerce standard check-out WITH the cartflows offers?
• Should we disable woocommerce checkout and use cartflows checkouts exclusively?
• If we use only CartFlows will the "shopping cart" be missed by customers?
• Can we tie multiple "flows" to each other and sort-of-daisy-chain them?
• The integration with Elementor is ok, but I was hoping for a bit more.
• It seems "heavy" maybe this is just me right now, bogged down with building, testing, designing, etc.
• How well does it integrate with its cousin, cart abandonment plugin.

The post My First Taste with CartFlows. A Clickfunnels Alternative. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I like services and solutions where you get to own your data. This alternative to Mailchimp natively holds your data on your own website, so that is one of the upsides I really like about it.

As a quick disclaimer, I still think you should pay for your email marketing service from the beginning. This creates a little bit of pressure for you to follow through. There are also some logistical problems every time you need to migrate your email list.

For example, if you start for free with one company like Mailchimp and then you want to move to another one because of better features, you'll find that transferring your list successfully doesn't always work.

It's cool when you see a feature in a service you don't have and then you want to move over to it. But when it comes to email lists, you have to consider a lot of factors that can affect you. Email service providers look at opt-in method, frequency of contact, spam reports, and how you built your list. And that's not even going into whether the new service even allows you to import an existing list.

If you want to follow that advice, my go-to email marketing service is Aweber, you can get started for free here using my link. I've been with them for years and never had a problem.

But if you're still looking for free, this alternative to Mailchimp is free for up to 1000 subscribers, and it is highly dependent on your web host.

They work great with most hosts, AND they specifically have GreenGeeks as one of their recommended hosts, so that's a good thing. It is free, for the sites I've used it on, it works great to send out newsletters and updates to your subscribers and you can manage it all within your WordPress dashboard.

The alternative is an email marketing plugin for WordPress

This free alternative to Mailchimp is a plugin, called MailPoet. You install it like a normal plugin, configure the basic options, and voila, you now have an email marketing system within your blog or website. Using it is very easy and intuitive.

The free version allows you to have up to 1000 subscribers, and you get the premium features. After that, the pricing is comparable to other services. They have templates and customization options for your emails and newsletters so everything matches whatever branding you want, and they offer statistics such as open rates, click-through rates, and all that good stuff.

MailPoet form editor video

I'm not going to go into details on how to use it or have a full tutorial about it on this blog post, but here's a very helpful video by the Mailpoet team showing you how easy it is to use it.

The post Another Free Alternative to Mailchimp appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Deleted for affiliate links

First, they frown upon the use of affiliate marketing links in your emails. They will outright suspend or delete your account. They say they don't but there are many stories where accounts have been deleted without notice for this reason. They even have an article on their website trying to explain the difference between affiliate marketing links and affiliate links.

Yes, there are differences, but the line is so blurred, I wouldn't take a chance with Mailchimp. It's almost like they have that in their terms of service just to have a way to delete your account if they feel like they want to. Technically speaking, the definitions are clear, but practically speaking things can be confusing. An algorithm and some sort of filter will determine if your links are good or not. How do you decide beforehand? I don't know. Don't worry you're not the only one confused.

Mailchimp has this section in their "clarification" post:

Deleted for "inactivity"

This one is tricky because I can understand their point of view on this. If you don't use it, you lose it. Maybe they're doing it to save resources, or to keep some of their metrics up. I don't know exactly and frankly, I don't care to find out. But the bottom line is that if you don't use your free Mailchimp account often enough, they may just delete it outright. I just had this happen to a client.

My client had an email list with just over 1000 subscribers and they hadn't used it in a while. Despite the fact that the list was built slowly, over time, with subscribers looking for the content my client provided, using double-opt-in, Mailchimp decided that he hadn't used it often enough so they deleted it. No warning, no heads up. And he's not the only one, there are many stories about this happening, like this one, or this one.

Out of curiosity, I went to check on a list I had created for my daughter's website. It had a very low subscriber count, we built it just for fun. Most of the subscribers were just family and friends so I'm not too concerned. But that account too was deleted.

Apparently, Mailchimp wants you to spam your list regularly, send them stuff all the time, even if you don't have anything real to say. Go figure!

On one hand, they don't want you to use affiliate marketing links, but on the other hand, they want you to behave like an affiliate marketer by sending emails even when you don't have anything to send.

What's the alternative?

I believe the alternative is paying for your email list. Even if you start with a free account, think about it as a paid service and treat it like a paid service. I think if you pay for it, you'll have more skin in the game and you'll develop your list more and make a better effort to maintain it and use it.

Incoming shameless plug: my list is in Aweber, and I recommend that. They offer a free account as well, but they won't delete it and they won't delete it for using affiliate marketing links. Also, they will help you grow your list. I have used them since I started and they have always been great. Use my affiliate link to sign up with them.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The post Mailchimp is Free, But They’ll Delete your Account appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I was invited as part of the influencer and social media group to cover the event and we had a blast. I was so happy to be out with people, to be able to see them and talk to them, hug them, laugh with them. I'm so glad we're back to normal.

With everything going on lately, I was also thrilled to see the theme for the Pageant of the Masters is "Made in America" to celebrate our country's history and how art and artists have helped shaped this great nation.

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure ‘Made in America’ will be full of thrills, amazing and inspirational stories, beautiful music, and extraordinary living pictures under the stars.”

Here's what the official website says about it:

In the 2021 Pageant of the Masters, audiences will meet the artists – revolutionaries, innovators, dreamers – who not only made this country their home, but let their creativity be inspired by the freedoms upon which this nation was founded. Through their lives, artworks and voices, a compelling portrait of our artists will come to life with all the theatrical magic that makes the Pageant a one-of-a-kind, must-see summer tradition.

Asked to reveal some of the artists whose stories and works will be included in “Made in America,” Pageant Director Diane Challis Davy shared several, many of them acknowledged masters of American art: Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, Norman Rockwell, Daniel Chester French, Luis Jimenez and John Nieto. She continued, “We’re going to ‘flesh out’ and ‘paint’ more detailed portraits of the individual artists. I want to make these artists, regardless of their time periods, REAL and identifiable for the audience.”

Festival of Arts, Laguna Beach 2021
https://www.foapom.com/pageant-of-the-masters/pageant-theme/

So what is the Pageant of the Masters anyway?

Pageant of the masters is a full feature show with music, narration, and living pictures.

What's a living picture you ask? Well, it's a bigger-than-life-sized representation of a famous painting, or photograph, or scene, put together with 3-dimensional props and live actors.

The "frames" of the paintings are 10-20 feet wide and 10-16 feet tall (just my guess) and the actors portraying the painting hold completely still for the duration of the display.

The painting is in display anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds and it's hard to find something as amazing as this. I've had a chance to explore the backstage preparations of the pageant and it's amazing.

Here's a demonstration of how it works, and believe me, even this video doesn't do it justice. But you'll get the idea.

The Festival of Arts has dozens and dozens of artists showcasing their work, there are live music performances, food tasting events, and a plethora of activities scheduled throughout the summer.

Follow the news and happenings on Instagram at #festivalpageant on Instagram, and you can get the full schedule and tickets on their website.

Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

The post Festival of Arts in Laguna Beach, 2021 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It's making the rounds in TikTok with all the inspiration and quote accounts so I don't want to devalue it, but it definitely needs to be heard by all my fellow creators, coaches, mentors, teachers. Also, you should be put on notice if you're one of the people not listening.

I memorialized this with a little TikTok. The full video with Jordan B. Peterson is below the TikTok video.

Full Video:

The post Pull Back From People Who Won’t Listen To You appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The hot term right now is influencer. So and so is an influencer, this person over here is a micro-influencer, you've heard it before.

Eyeballs. Views. Clicks. That's the beginning part of being an influencer, essentially, traffic. Do you have an audience that watches your content? Then you're an influencer.

It doesn't matter if you have 117 million followers and almost 10 billion likes as Charli D’Amelio does, or if you have 3000 followers and 10,000 likes. You are an influencer.

And believe me, I'm not keen on the term "influencer" term or the connotation and rapport behind it. But it is what it is.

Influencers and Influence

What matters is how many of those people who follow you are true fans and will follow you across networks and across time. How many of those people are willing to listen to you when you tell them to go check something out or to visit some other website or property because you like it or endorse it.

There are two factors that really matter when making money online. Traffic, and conversions. You can have a viral video get a million views, but it could also net you $0.00. That means you have traffic, but no conversions.

On the other hand, you can have a video that gets 10 views every day but makes you a few hundred dollars each month, which means you have a little bit of traffic, but it converts.

Now, what if you had a video, or several that get hundreds of views AND convert into money? That's what we're after. Making money as an influencer, or making money online for that matter takes fine-tunning. It takes some practice and trial and error, but if you don't have the basic elements to work with then you'll never be able to fine-tune them.

Are you waiting for a viral moment?

You could blow up and become an Internet sensation and capitalize on that. Like Nathan, the guy with the Oceanspray juice and Dreams song. You could also win the lottery. But who's actually counting on that?

Even after all the success Nathan experienced when his video went viral, I know he left hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars on the table.

Let me tell you what you need to have a steady income, a long-lasting legacy, and a path to go from a lucky (or unlucky) influencer to a true digital entrepreneur.

Be Prepared

Part of going viral, getting free stuff, getting sponsors, making money, and all that could be luck, but the other part is preparation. And as they say, luck is when preparation meets opportunity.

The following are the things you need to do to make money from your social media presence. I'll go through them in a quick list kind of way. If you'd like me to expand on any of these, let me know, leave me a comment or send me a message here, or on Instagram and I'll be happy to answer your questions in greater detail, in a video or in a dedicated post.

What you have

An audience

Don't worry if you only have a few followers. Everybody starts at 0. You don't need to have a million followers. Don't worry if you don't have 10,000 followers. Really, you can start this with 50 followers. The part that is important is that you have a profile and you're going to develop it.

A little bit of time

Let's face it, we're busy. Everybody's busy. I recently posted on Facebook about this and the common response is that we have 1000 things to do. But if you've got time to scroll through Tiktok for 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, check Instagram for 15 minutes, then you can make time. If you're up to speed with the latest bingeable Netflix show, then you have time. Especially if you can get paid for this time.

A desire

This is key. I can't force you to do this. I can't compel you to do it. You either want to or you don't. Could I persuade you to do what I'm saying here? Of course, I could use psychologically powerful words to convince you; I could promise you riches; I could offer all the assistance in the world, but if you don't have a desire, then you might as well scroll on by and keep spending time on TikTok without earning any money.

What you need

A website

I will tell you until I'm blue on the face. You. Need. A. Website.

A website does a few things. Number 1, It legitimizes you in the eyes of reputable companies. Number 2, it locks in your fans and audience. Number 3, it establishes the foundation for your legacy, independent of the social network you want to use.

With a website, you aren't subject to the social network's terms and condictions, your posts aren't banned, your comments won't get you shadowbanned, you control the narrative.

A list

This has evolved overtime, but the principle is the same as it has been for 100 years or more. You need a list of interested parties. A mailing list. The easiest and most common is an email list, yes believe it or not, people still read email and it's in fact the most trusted and relied upon messaging system in the planet.

Not everybody has a Facebook account, not everybody has an Instagram account, some people don't even have a phone number that can receive a text message. But almost every person that has access to a computer has an email account. It's how banks, hospitals, doctors, schools, and other institutions keep in touch with you.

Get an email list. Plug it into your website and this will let your audience and your fans stay in touch with you no matter what platform is hot today, and no matter what you're promoting (see the next item). Remember when Snapchat was all the rage? Yeah... who cares about them anymore?

An item or something to promote

This is the trickiest part because it is a universe in and of itself. I can't quickly tell you what item to promote, but the opportunities are endless. There are three big areas that you could explore to make money with this. One is affiliate relationships, two is sponsored promotions, and three could be your own product. There are a few other notable mentions, but they pretty much fall into these three categories.

A good amount of companies that you use everyday have affiliate programs. Take for example, the trends on TikTok. One of the trends is summervibes, summer bodies, etc. If you're a girl and you're already posting bikini videos or dancing videos, one easy way way to make money is to become an affiliate for those products. Shein has an affiliate program that pays 10 to 20% commissions.

Sponsors work in a couple of different ways. You can get paid just to be an ambassador or spokesperson for a brand --this requires a highly engaged audience and generally a large audience. But you can also do one-off sponsorships, where a company will pay you a flat fee for posting a number of posts.

Your own product can mean that you develop and engineer an actual physical item. That's a lot of work, but it is profitable in many situations. You could sell your art, or crafts.

You could also create a digital product, like a course, a book, or even a private membership site. You could become the product, or you could offer your services.

I know what you're thinking, but no, I'm not suggesting that you go out and join OnlyFans, but you can have a private membership area on your own website where you give your audience what they're looking for or an extended version of what you post in your public social media profiles.

While OnlyFans is making all the headlines right now, the private membership area concept isn't a new thing and there are many other platforms besides OF that you can use for this. Your website for one, but there are also others like Patreon, SubscribeStar, Thinkific, Kajabi, and the list goes on.

In Conclusion

You can monetize your social media profiles. I know people that make 4 or 5 figures per month; that's nothing to sneeze at as a side hustle. Others make over $100,000. You can do it from anywhere in the world where you have an Internet connection.

You don't need to be a huge celebrity. It takes a little bit of effort, some time, and preparation, but at the end of the day, the opportunities are endless, the payouts are fantastic. You can do this, doesn't matter if you're 16, or 73.

Dedicated to my TikTok fam, You guys are killing it. Shout-outs to you guys @ayuputurossa @marivic59mommy @dumb_bricklayer @iamtiktokelle @findingmea

The post How To Monetize TikTok Influence appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

When we arrived, it looked just like any other restaurant. It has an outdoor patio and due to the so-called pandemic, we just stayed outdoor but there is a lounge area you can see from the window. Later we found out, this room turns into a dance floor or a hookah lounge, depending on the night I guess. But behind the plain look lives an explosion of flavor and hospitality that we didn't expect.

But Let's Get To The Review.

First the bad, we ordered quite a few dishes, amongst them, we had Crazy Fries and Turkish coffee. Those were the least favorite, they weren't bad, but also not great. On a second visit, we ordered onion rings that were less than spectacular. After trying a few other dishes and visiting twice, I would suggest you stick to the traditional middle eastern dishes. But that's it for "the bad."

The Koobideh and Kabobs plates are awesome, the Tzatziki Sauce is great, the grape leaf wraps (Dolma), to die for. And if you are an amateur chef, or just like to cook you'll appreciate how magnificent their rice is. I would go there just for a plate of rice.

If you're looking for a cool Mediterranean-inspired restaurant in Orange County, you'll probably like Divan Grill. As the evening got underway, our friends left, but my wife and I stayed for the music and decided to order a hookah.

I hadn't used a hookah in over 15 years, but this added to the overall enjoyment of the night. Everyone there was happy and joyful to be out celebrating with friends and family, having great food, listening to live music, and enjoying a drink or two.

As the night progressed, different performers went on stage and we were treated to a few great performances by Tina. I have a few videos of her on my channel. You can see her performing Rolling in the Deep and Someone like You on my Youtube channel. You can get a few glimpses of her in the video above too, and I have more videos coming up with her performances. She's great!

Divan Mediterranean Grill & Lounge is a great local spot. They're open for lunch, all the way to dinner and beyond. They have live music on Tuesdays and Saturdays and after chatting with Mike and Shelly, the owners I know they're trying to add a few more nights with more variety. We've gone twice now, and my wife has taken her girlfriends as well. Everyone loves the place so far.

The post Divan Mediterranean Grill & Lounge in Tustin – Review appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

We're going to be reading Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. If you'd like to join us, come and join my mastermind group on Facebook (yes, it's free).

Following that, we'll be reading other business-related books. We might pick from the books I posted recently or new ones based on suggestions from the group.

The post Think and Grow Rich for my Book Club Jumpstart. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

BTW, did you know they have a desktop app as well? I haven't tried it yet, because the web UI is really good. You can do almost everything you can on mobile (unlike Instagram). You couldn't comment on videos before, now you can.

As much as everyone praises the "mobile-first" approach, it is undeniable that desktop/laptop traffic is still an enormous portion of the traffic on the Internet. TikTok is realizing that.

Here's something they just added that is really interesting. Scheduling. You can now, it seems upload videos and schedule them for future release.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

This is Awesome!

This is a game-changer and it shows the leadership or trailblazing actions that TikTok is taking to gain more and more market share.

While Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and other networks are getting pummeled by TikTok magnetism and worried about how to keep up, TikTok is here doing its thing, listening to what people want.

We've all been wanting scheduling features in Facebook, and Instagram, and even Twitter, but they won't do them it. I admit, some of Facebook has scheduling features now, kinda.

For the most part, FB, and IG and Twitter allow other companies like Hootsuite, or Later, to do the heavy lifting and then just control the access to the data and infrastructure. Whatever. That's their way. It sucks IMO, but it is what it is.

TikTok on the other hand, pretty much just says f*ck that! Here, we added scheduling. Go nuts, done and done!

Schedule Posts on TikTok

Here's what scheduling on TikTok looks like on a regular web browser:

After you accept a disclaimer saying that the videos have to be uploaded to their servers first, then you can just pick a date and time for the video to publish. Just as you'd want on your Facebook post for example.

Many people I have told about TikTok say "I don't have time" or I can't post to another network.

I can understand that sentiment and it's a legitimate response, but now that you can schedule posts on TikTok, does this change things for you? If you aren't using it already, does this make a difference for you to start using TikTok?

By the way, if you want, you can follow me over there as @notagrouch.

The post TikTok Adds Scheduling Future Posts Feature. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

In recent months I started reading a lot again. I've had a few calls with clients and they've asked me which books I recommend for them. Here are a few that I think everyone should read.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

At first, the book sounds preposterous and on occasion, it reads like a script for a late-night get-rich-quick infomercial, but it isn't. It's a really old book, but the message and guidance is timeless.

Take off your cynical and skeptic hat to read this, when you're done, read it again and as you go through it change your mindset. Literally, think and grow rich.

This is a book everyone should read with an open mind, at least once. 

The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber

I just recently read this. I had been told by many people to read this going back 10 years, if not longer. I wish I hadn't waited this long. This book helps you clarify the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, why, how, when, and maybe even help you decide if that is the right thing to do.

Talks about process, and boundaries and how to set realistic expectations as you strive to build a successful business. What does taht even mean? What does a "successful" business look like? This book will tell you.

Jab Jab Jab Right Hook, by Gary Vaynerchuk

I think this is by far Gary's best book. It encapsulates the modus operandi of how businesses should market themselves in today's cutthroat business world. I reviewed it a while back, you can read that here.

It boils down to change your mindset and how to stand apart from the crowd by jabbing constantly and THEN landing the right hook. Easy to read, inspirational, motivational, for some, it will also be enlightening.

How to Be Better at Almost Everything: Learn Anything Quickly, Stack Your Skills, Dominate by Pat Flynn.

This was another book I read in the past couple of months. I actually "heard" this book. It's authored by Pat Flynn, one of today's digital entrepreneur leaders. 

Pat Flynn's story is amazing, but this book isn't too much about his story as much as it is about your story. In the book, Pat talks about the oft prescribed (and ill-prescribed in my opinion) notion that you have to be a specialist instead of a generalist. 

Most of us are generalists and Pat Flynn articultes this beautifly while proposing a way for us to monetize our abilities successfully.

I'm Reading three or four books per month

I've been reading three to four books each month for since January now, but these I listed above really stood out for me and I think you should check them out.

Last year when the Covid lockdowns started, I subscribed to Scribd and that's how I get most of my books. If you have it already, then there you go, you can get started right away.

If you don't have Scribd already, you can get 60 days for free when you use my link and you could read all of these books and then some. 

Not a bad deal! Check out the banner above to get started, or click here to get 60 days for free.

The post Four Books Business Minds Will Want to Read appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

LastPass keeps your passwords, secure notes, and using the matching browser extension or app on your mobile device, it can autofill passwords when you need them.

Lastpass goes one step further and lets you share a username and password with someone else without actually revealing your password. This is particularly useful when you need a staff member, or a consultant to log into one of your accounts but you don't want to actually share the password.

They're currently running a special for Earth day, offering a 25% discount. I would definitely recommend you take a look if you don't already use it. Here's the link to check it out.

The post LastPass Earth Day Sale 25% Off appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

One of my favorite financial tools online recently sent an email out. This is what I received from Digit.co

We wanted to make sure you saw that the cost of a Digit membership is changing to $5/month. This goes into effect on May 12th, 2021 and is updated in our Terms.

Digit has been $5/month since 2019, but we’ve kept early members like you at a lower price ($2.99). This update will help us continue building powerful tools for your money.

They go on to justify the price with a list of stuff they've added to the service...

Over the last 2 years, we’ve added features that help you avoid overdrafts, pay back debt, save for retirement, and easily invest for the long term. We’ve got even bigger things planned in the months ahead, so stay tuned.

If you have any questions at all, please visit our help center or contact us. If you’d like to make a change to your membership, you can do that anytime here.

We’re excited to keep helping you achieve your money goals.

But I am not thrilled about this change. Let me explain. I first fell in love with Digit with their initial offering to make saving easier.

The way Digit works is that you can set up a savings goal, and over time they withdraw small incremental amounts from your account in order to fulfill that goal.

It's actually quite good. Check it out, and if you use my link, you get $5.00 and I get $5.00.

I use it for discretionary spending, like buying a new gadget. I also use it to put money aside for vacations. But I primarily use it to put money aside for recurring yearly subscriptions or renewals. Like the DMV registration in my state, or the renewal of Grammarly, or Vimeo.

It's great, when it's time to pay for that stuff, I have the money (or most of it) put aside so my immediate, day to day cashflow feels unaffected.

But let's just say I'm not happy about going from $2.99 to $5.00 per month. I'm not happy about it because obviously, it takes more money from me. Ok, so an extra $24/year isn't that bad, right?

But then there are other services. And another one that is $0.99/month, and the other one that is $36/year and so on and so forth. 

In fact, I really hate this monthly model that many companies are trying to exploit. Mark my words, it will be the death of them eventually.

At some point, the economics will break and many consumers will have to make hard choices about what systems and products they use.

But Back to Digit

What Digit should do in my opinion is this: grandfather loyal customers with their "old" pricing, and sign up new customers under the current pricing. Just like Elementor did for the WordPress community recently. -- It's worth mentioning that Elementor is a totally different beast and the price is completely different; I'm only drawing attention to how they cared for the community that has helped them grow to where they are now.

Then Digit should revamp their rewards program so more people are happy and willing to share how great the service is and they get rewarded.

Right now, it seems that you can only get rewarded for sharing the beauty and awesomeness of Digit with 5 people.

Something else that would be good I think also would be to tier their services.

The main reason they are doing a price hike, it seems to me, or at least they say so in the email is to enable them to continue adding features.

But I have to ask, who asked for those? I didn't. Why do I care about all those things if I just wanted the ability to save automatically and incrementally? That idea, while it is not new, was masterfully executed.

It would be nice if they just tiered those new products.

I still like Digit and think you should get it. Even at $5/month, but I'm just torn about this price hike.

Update!

Just before I wrote this post, I replied to Digit's email with a short note to let them know my dislike for their decision. This is what I said: 

Not cool.

You should be grandfathering your oldest customers on their current rates.

I didn't expect anything in return. I know I was just kind of griping at them, but shortly after I sent my email I received the usual response about how I had requested support and a ticket was created; someone would respond soon.

I thought "whatever" and forgot about it, but a few hours later they responded with the following:

Hi Oscar,

I appreciate you reaching out, and I know this news may be disappointing.

At this time, we do not have plans for grandfathering in members into their former price or offering discounts. But, I did pass this feedback along to the rest of the team to consider for the future!

As a way of saying thanks for your support this far, I've added 2 free months to your membership.

While we hope you'll stick with us we understand if you do need to make a change to your account. You can do that here: https://digit.co/close-account.

I hope this clears things up a bit, but please don't hesitate to reach back out if I can assist with anything else at all. Take care.

What a turn of events huh? I'm glad I sent that quick email out. I mean, the increase of 35 to 60 isn't a huge deal.

But with the response to my gripe and the $10 they credited me, I'm definitely sticking around.

I mean, they have to make money. I get it, and the way they handled my complaint means they really do care.

So I changed the cover image for this post too, correcting their logo back to their happy wink face.

In Conclusion

I'm not happy about the price hike. But I do love their service. I think the $5/month price is fair.

Would I still recommend the service? Absolutely. Especially now after I saw how they handled my gripe. I love their SMS bot, I can do almost everything I want to do with my account via text messages. It's brilliant. If you want to check it out, try it here, you'll get $5.00 and I'll get $5.00.

The post Not Happy About Digit’s Upcoming “New” Pricing appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

My Story with metromile

I'm a pretty simple guy. My car is over 10 years old and last year I hardly drove at all. Mostly because of the lockdown.

Prior to the Covid lockdowns, I would drive little compared to most people where I live. Most drive 10,000 - 20,000 miles per year. I usually drive much less than 10,000. I've driven about 6,800 miles per year on average in that car.

Recently I decided to switch car insurance and I decided to give this pay-per-mile insurance thing a try. I had heard about "pay per mile" insurance here and there but didn't know much about it. I remember telling my friend about it a couple of years back when she decided to sell her car, and now she and her husband share just one car.

I thought it could save them money if they didn't drive as much. I never checked with them to ask if they ended up trying it or not. Then I forgot about it until now.

As soon as I started searching for pay-per-mile insurance I found Metromile, they are the biggest company of this type. I used their website to get a quick quote and about 15 minutes later I had signed up for new insurance.

If you don't want to sign up right away, they have a trial program called Ride Along where you can try out their service for two weeks.

Overall, I like the service so far. I've only been using them for a month, but If my driving patterns remain as they have been, chances are I will be very happy with them in the long term. Or rather, my wallet will.

This is NOT Sponsored

By the way, this is not a sponsored post; it may sound like it but it isn't. I'm not an affiliate for them either, and unfortunately, it seems that they don't even have an active affiliate program. Their referal program is silly right now, but we won't get into that for now. ?‍

What is Metromile?

Metromile is an online car insurance company. If you're in the U.S., and you want to drive on public roads, you must have car insurance. 

You've seen commercials with an animated gecko requesting 15 minutes of your time. Or you might remember President David Palmer trying to sell you insurance, reassuring you that you're in good hands. 

Well, that's the same thing Metromile does, but in a slightly different way. They do it, the 21st century way. 

Metromile is different from traditional car insurance in a few ways that I can tell right away. There are no third-party insurance agents or insurance brokers, you do everything online, directly on their website, and the most interesting part for me was that your bill is based on miles driven.

Mark Cuban is an investor, and they are one of those industry disruptors. They have their own insurance carrier. At first, when they started, I believe they had partnerships with existing insurance companies, but in 2016 they acquired a small insurance company so they could  underwrite their own policies and process their own claims.

They believe that most people drive a lot less miles than they actually pay for. They claim that this group of drivers would save money if they paid per mile driven instead of a yearly or biyearly set price.

Pay Per Mile

So how do they charge you per mile? That was my first question too, so here is how they explain it, better than me rambling on about it.

You'll pay your base rate to sign up. Then, at the end of your first month, you'll be charged for your mileage from that first month and a base rate for the upcoming second month. The same thing happens the next month: you'll pay a base rate to cover the next month and a per-mile charge for the miles driven in the previous month.

My Experience Getting Started

So after I signed up, they sent me a device that plugs into the ODBII port of the car. This is how they track the mileage accurately. Unfortunately, and this is the only downside I've found so far, is that it's also a GPS tracker. This is how they track your actual miles driven.

They know where your vehicle is at any given time, and they can also track your speed and general driving behavior. An actuary's dream.

From a privacy perspective, it feels a little intrusive, but then, if you think about it, our phones are tracking us 24/7 and in some ways we can't even opt-out of some of that tracking without turning off our phones. This "intrusion" in this case, seems more justified and reasonable.

One of the downsides of Metromile is that they know where your car is at every given moment, they know your speed when you're driving and where you go Friday mornings. One of the best things about Metromile is that they know where your car is at every given moment, they know your speed when you're driving and where you go Friday mornings. Think about it, it really is a double-edged sword.

But I'm going with it for now. And I like the detail I can see in my dashboard. Remember, my car is 14 years old! so I don't have any fancy on-board computer systems.

Pictures, or 1000 words

main-dashboard-metromile
The dashboard in Metromile shows you the analysis of a trip. Including estimated fuel cost.
(I think that may be inaccurate, or based on an average that isn't mine.)


billing-cycle-dashboard
This shows the current miles driven, on a graph and it has measurments for the estimated cost of future miles.


cost-per-mile-trip
This shows the mileage cost against your policy.


great-customer-service-online
Customer service chat was quick, friendly and knowledgeable. First I had a question about how the mileage is calculated, then other questions followed. Great interaction.

TL;DR

Metromile It really is an excellent service. Hassle-free, easy to sign up. Easy to get started and although at first, I found it a little concerning that they would know my driving behavior and where my car is at all times, I'm okay with that now.

The more I think about it, the more I wish they had an affiliate program. It would be a great way to make money by saving you some money.

I still have to wait a little bit longer to see if I will really save money. I'm thinking that I'll need 3-6 months to get a more accurate assessment in that regard. Right now, it seems that I will end up saving money. 

Maybe you want to check it out as well. Head over to metromile.com to check it out.

The post Metromile My First Month appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Believe me, I've been there.

So yesterday morning I put some of my thoughts in this little video, for you.

If you follow me on Instagram, you can also find it overe there.

The post I Know You Want To Give Up appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Some restaurants aren't having any of that and are defying the orders to close down. I don't blame them and I can't hold it against them. The first round of lockdowns did nothing except make some of their competitors shut down. Remember it was supposed to be for 15 days? Yet here we are, what a fucking joke.

Pardon my french but this is bad for everybody, we're tired of these lockdowns, we're done! Businesses are going bankrupt, families are breaking apart, people are going homeless. WTF.

Now, this is supposed to be 21 days. If you believe that they'll last 21 days, I have a bridge to sell you.

Another lockdown against the recommendations from the WHO and against models of no lockdown like Sweden could make many of the remaining restaurants close down.

But with that said, we went to Saigon Beach in Newport Beach, one of the small places I'm talking about. They need to stay open to stay in business. This is their store.

The place is already small, that's good because they can keep staff costs to a minimum but you still need at least 3 employees to run a restaurant. This place is in a prime area, in an expesive city, rent can't be cheap.

And remember this order came down after Newsome thought it was a fine idea to go out to a fancy restaurant and have a private dinner without masks or "social distancing" -- what a cocksucker.

I think I have to take the side of some of the Sheriffs and basically tell Newsom to go suck it. I wish more restaurant owners would defy the order and just continue business as usual. I mean they already spent all the money on plexiglass divisions, retraining their staff, they cut their tables by 50-70% they cancelled buffets and similar hands-on features. What more do you want?

At some point, you have to wonder... are these restrictions really because of safety? Really?

Saigon Beach - Vietnamese Food in Newport Beach (video)

This is a video froma previous visit. Enjoy!

The post Covid-19 Lockdowns Again!? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But as I was trying to come up with some new graphics for the homepage, I noticed that my images were being served from a Jetpack-based URL. This served as a good reminder to be mindful of the size of the new banner I was making.

I thought I'd share some thoughts about image size with you if you're interested. After I finished my design, I went to export the image from Photoshop and this is what I found:

Using PNG

The image is 680px by 358px. Initially, I wanted to export it as a PNG to take advantage of the transparency in case I decide to change the background color where the image is going to be displayed. This means that If I changed the background on the website, I wouldn't have to update the banner image to match. But this made the total image size 167KB. This image alone would be almost as heavy as the homepage without it, as you can see in the previous post the homepage is only 228KB right now and I'd love to keep it under 1MB ?.

Using JPEG

The easiest answer to reducing the size of this image was to use the JPEG export option instead of PNG. JPEG has better compression and the size difference is a significant gain. Compromising on making the background a solid color, white in this case isn't a big deal, so I tested that out. Using JPEG reduced the image by over 50% to a size of 89 KB. Huge difference!

But then if I'm going to use JPEG I also should also reduce the quality during export. I remember reading years ago somewhere that people can't tell the difference between an image exported at 100% quality vs one exported at 85% to 87% quality so I turned the quality down to 85%. This brought down the size by another 36KB for a total size of 52KB; that's a little bit less than one third from the original PNG size. Can't complain about that!

But what about WebP

Ideally, I should use WebP if I want the smallest size, but for the sake of expediency, I'll leave that for a round of fine-tuning that I can do after launch. Doing this right now could add more work, more time, more plugins, or all of the above. And I'm already late in launching this. Besides, I did a quick test by converting the full-size PNG that I mentioned to WebP and it turned out to be 47KB, not a huge difference between that and the JPEG.

TL;DR

If that was too geeky for you, or too long for you, when you create images you need to keep quality high but also mind the size of the images so your visitors can have the best and fastest experience you're able to offer. In this example, I reduced an image from about 167KB to 52KB, a size savings of about 70%. If you're using Photoshop, use the export to JPEG feature, not the save as feature, and reduce your original image quality to 85%. If you're not using Photoshop, maybe you're using something like Canva, you can find a ton of image optimizer sites out there.

The post When Almost Every KB Counts appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I'm super excited about the speed of the website. That's the main reason I'm doing this update, so check out the screenshot at the end. And stay tuned, since I will detail everything I'm doing to build this site.

There were a couple of things I didn't really think about until a few days ago. Refunds and returns.

I didn't think much about returns and refunds because I'm just excited about starting this. However, as an internet marketer and affiliate marketer, I'm very familiar with refunds and chargebacks. One of the rules of thumb you must follow in my business is not to count your money until the time period for chargebacks has expired.

This is easy with affiliate marketing because most of the time, your commissions don't get paid out until said time period has expired. For example, you don't get paid until 30 - 90 days after a sale has been made.

Since this ecommerce store involves physical products, I just didn't think about how I would handle returns and refunds. This is the first time I sell a physical product directly as the seller, so by nature I am on the hook for providing a return system or mechanism for my customers.

I would like to offer a no questions asked 30-day return policy, so part of setting up this new business requires I set up a mailing address for customers to return products when needed. I believe I need to upgrade my PO Box from a regular personal PO Box to a business PO Box so I can receive mail under the website name instead of my personal name.

I don't believe I can afford to offer to cover shipping costs for returns, we'll see how that goes. As far as refunds go, the payment processor (Stripe) should make it easy for me to issue refunds.

Now, about that speed.

I think this is pretty amazing. Load time is under one second, I'm pretty happy about this. I know that I have to add a few more things to the home page and possibly add one or two more plugins that will inevitably add to the page size and the load time, but I'm pretty happy starting at this point.

What is running on the new ecommerce site?

First, hosting.

Hosting is provided by GreenGeeks, they haven't really let me down and obviously they can deliver a solid experience. The website is built with Kadence and although I haven't done my own testing, Adam from WP Crafter says it's one of the fastest and leanest themes out there right now.

There are 20 active plugins at the moment. But the one that really made the load time and speed results you see above is WP Fastest Cache. Prior to installing and configuring this caching plugin, the site was loading at about 2.7 to 3.5 seconds. I was extremely surprised at the difference it made to setup WP Fastest Cache.

Plugins running

On my previous post I said I was doing this for almost $0.0. I think that's a bit inaccurate since some of the stuff I'm using costs quite a bit of money. But when I wrote that I was just thinking about not spending any money out of pocket.

In a recent post on Tiktok, I said I'm going to show you how to do this for about $100.00 to start. So I'm going to try to do that.

With that said, the actual list of plugins is this:

• Elementor by Elementor.com (free).
• Elementor Pro by Elementor.com.
  • Get Elementor here.
• Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights by MonsterInsights (free).
• Jetpack by WordPress.com by Automattic (free).
• Kadence Blocks - PRO Extension by Kadence WP.
• Kadence Blocks – Gutenberg Blocks for Page Builder Features by Kadence WP.
• Kadence Pro - Premium addon for the Kadence Theme by Kadence WP.
• Kadence WooCommerce Elementor by Kadence WP.
• Kadence Woocommerce Elementor Pro by Kadence WP.
• Kadence WooCommerce Extras by Kadence WP.
  • Check out all the Kadence WP products here, Kadence has a great free suite.
• Printful Integration for WooCommerce by Printful (free).
• Printify Shipping Method by Printify (free).
• Rank Math SEO by Rank Math (free).
• Really Simple SSL by Really Simple Plugins (free).
• WooCommerce by Automattic (free).
• WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Gateway by WooCommerce (free).
• WooCommerce Shipping & Tax by Automattic (free).
• WooCommerce Stripe Gateway by WooCommerce (free).
• WP Fastest Cache by Emre Vona (free).

I know I will be adding Optinmonster and possibly WP Forms soon, but since I don't want to annoy visitors by implementing the wrong pop-up, and I don't have a clear vision of how I would use WP Forms yet I'm going to hold off on those two for now. They're also not free.

Why aren't you using Inmotion Hosting?

As you know Inmotion hosting is my host. I've been with them for about 7 or 8 years and they are great. But my hosting account with them is based on a VPS and I wanted to keep this new project separate from my other projects.

I also want to demonstrate that it can be set up on any hosting, from basic shared hosting like the entry-level plans at Greengeeks (they also have VPS and dedicated servers), all the way to fancy setups like a VPS, dedicated or WordPress managed hosting like WP Engine.

One last word about "Free"

Like many Internet users, I often fall into the trap of expecting things to be free. But as a business owner, I can tell you that free isn't necessarily the best way to go about it. In many cases I've tried doing things for free, or with free options, free software, etc and then I come to find out, that for a nominal fee all the issues I've been going through are simply washed away.

Please keep this in mind when you're trying to start a blog, or an ecommerce site like I am. Sometimes plugins are totally free, and amazing, like Woocommerce, Rankmath or even the free Kadence WP version. But sometimes plugins, or extensions cost $50 or $100 and they save you dozens, if not hundreds of hours in the long term so consider paying if the solution is right for you.

The post eCommerce with WordPress Update. Questions. Speed! appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've also given the advice freely to hundreds of people, many who suck the time and effort it takes to provide said advice and move along without even a mere thank-you and never apply said advice.

Their response is usually, "oh that's nice, but that's too hard." Or they have some other excuse about how they just can't do what I suggest. No time, no money, no understanding of how it would all work.

So Monday night I decided to take my own advice and build my own e-commerce store. I really can't be mad at the people that make excuses if I'm not following my own advice, right?

So I built it 80% of the way, took about 3 hours. Yesterday I spent another couple of hours learning a few things about the tools I'm using. Today and tomorrow I will put the finishing touches and soft launch. Wish me luck.

In case you want to do something like this, these are some of the tools and services I used to put it together.

• WordPress, self-hosted by Greengeeks.
• eCommerce by Woocommerce (free).
• Kadence theme (free, but I have the paid version).
• SEO with Rankmath (free)
• Graphics, made by me with Photoshop and Canva.
• Printify & Printful to print and fulfill merchandise.
• Paypal & Stripe for payment processing (both free).

As you can see, most of this is free or inexpensive. I believe you could start this with almost zero up-front costs.

Stay tuned, and let me know if you'd like to know something more specific about launching your own e-commerce store.

The post eCommerce, here I go. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Twitter was innovative, it was cool, you could talk to people and it was interesting.

Unfortunately, all the things that made Twitter cool aren't part of the smallest of the tech giants. Where once they were bastions for freedom of speech promoting revolutions and allowing those without a voice to have a platform. They are now censors of expression and arbiters of "truth" more like the ministry of truth from 1984.

For a year or two, I've been trying to delete all my tweets. For purposes of branding and business, I can't just delete my Twitter account. I want to retain the name, so I didn't want to just delete the twitter account. I simply wanted to stop using it and delete everything I've posted on it.

I tried free services, but these couldn't really delete all tweets. I also tried this tutorial from Quincy Larson, but the problem with that article is that a crucial step required to implement it can't be done anymore. Twitter used to give you a "tweets.csv" file that contained all your tweets. Now they give you all your tweets in a javascript file, but the script in Quincy's tutorial doesn't work with that.

How to Delete All Your Tweets for $7.50

I finally decided to pay up and get it done. This is how I did deleted all my tweets. I tried deleting all my tweets for free, but that resulted in a lot of tail-chasing and procrastination. If you really want to delete all your tweets, for whatever reason, this is the best way to do it.

The app I used is Tweetdeleter.com

Step 1 - Request Your Data

Request your data archive from Twitter. This is under your settings, account, Twitter data.

Twitter should produce your archive in two to 48 hours and will notify you via email, this is a zip file that contains all your twitter data.

Step 2 - Sign up with Tweetdeleter

Is to sign up with Tweetdeleter. I used the monthly option and paid $7.50 for one month since I was only going to use it one time to delete all tweets, then I would cancel the service. If you are interested in deleting tweets regularly, then paying for a year in advance might make sense.

You can set Tweetdeleter to delete tweets older than certain days, or just to keep the last few, you can also delete tweets that fit some criteria if you want.

Step 3 - Download your Twitter Data

Download your Twitter archive and upload it to your Tweetdeeleter account. Depending on the size of your archive, this might take a few minutes. My archive was a little bit over 350mb and it took about 10 minutes to upload.

Step 4 - Upload Your Archive to Tweetdeleter

Tweetdeleter will then process the file and give you some options to select what tweets you want to delete. If you're like me, and you are going to delete all tweets, then options are pretty much irrelevant.

Step 5 - Delete All Tweets

Pick the "Delete All Tweets" option at the top of the dashboard, Tweetdeleter will confirm and after you click "Delete" your tweets will begin deleting. Wait 30 seconds up to a few minutes.

The entire 37160 tweets I had posted since 2007 were deleted in about 2 minutes. I then visited my Twitter profile and I had 0 tweets.

Step 6 - Cancel Membership

Optionally, if you just wanted to do this one time and don't want to get billed again, make sure you cancel your recurring membership to Tweetdeleter. I paid with Paypal so I had to go into my Paypal account to cancel the service.

Conclusion

Deleting your tweet history isn't very straight forward. Twitter doesn't want you to delete your tweets and doesn't really let you do it easily. You can delete 3200 recent tweets relatively easily, but if you want to delete your entire collection, you need to find a paid service to do it for you.

It was time to close the chapter on Twitter for my Notagrouch account, and this was the best step I could take towards that, I kept my account open, but now there is only a tweet notifying followers and visitors that I've left and where they can find me.

If you want to follow me, follow me on Instagram, TikTok or even Youtube.

The post How to Delete all your Tweets in 5 Easy Steps. Adios Twitter. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've covered some ways to avoid and be on the lookout for online scams. A year or so ago I made a video on how to spot a Facebook profile scammer. More recently I did another video updating some information about how to spot a scammer on most social networks.

But I've been meaning to cover SMS or TXT scams as well and I just received one that I wanted to share with you.

Before I show you the screenshots and explain what to look for, keep in mind that anybody can be a target. You don't have to have money or need money. You can be married or single, you can live with your parents or on your own. Everybody can be a target so you should never let your guard down.

NEVER click on a link you didn't ask for or were not expecting until you are absolutely certain that the link is harmless. Better yet, just don't click on it.

When the Covid-19 lockdown started to take place throughout various cities and states, people started receiving a text saying that they had been in contact with someone that was infected and that they should take certain action. Some said to go to a website to confirm, others said to call a number, and I'm sure there were other "calls to action."

That's an opportunistic scam and it prays on your fear. It may seem legitimate, it can even come from what appears to be a legitimate number like the one I am showing you below.

What's the likelihood the SMS is legitimate?

First, I knew right away that it was an attempt to scam me in some way or another. I have never dealt with or have any connections to the Audubon Society. That was red flag number one.

Besides that, two other things stood out. There are multiple recipients in the text, and the URL looks suspsicious. Can you see what's suspicious about it?

Let's have a closer look.

Does the link check out?

Notice there are 3 phone numbers in the group; I blurred 2 of them because they could be other private citizens. 1 is the sender, and there are 2 other ones. I'm technically the fourth recipient.

I'll get back to the sender's phone number in a moment. But first let's take a closer look at the link included in the message. Did you spot the problem with the link?

It takes a little bit of practice to spot the problem. So if you haven't noticed, there are a few, problems with this message, here they are.

First, the URL does not use "https." Nowadays any serious website should be using SSL which means the URL would start with https. Then the link doesn't actually say "facebook," it says "facebok." But then you'll notice that the ".com" part comes after a strange name, NOT facebook. This is NOT facebook.com

The domain is actually "com82759321.com" And they just added "facebok" at the beginning as a sub-domain.

This is kind of clever and it would fool a lot of people; it could even trap someone that is distracted and just clicks on things before realizing that they just clicked on a bad link.

This is why you NEVER click on a link you didn't ask for or were not expecting until you are absolutely certain that the link is harmless. Better yet, just don't click on it.

Back to those multiple recipients

So I mentioned there were other recipients besides me.

Multiple recipients in a text is the other red flag in this scam. I don't know if this was deliberate or just a mistake on the scammers part.

But if you were receiving a legitimate sms alert it would only be sent to you and not other people. Banks, doctors, websites and apps don't send unsolicited group texts to notify you about profile or account issues, that is most likely a scam.

Banks, doctors, websites and apps don't send unsolicited group texts to notify you about profile or account issues, that is most likely a scam.

This was good. Close to perfect

The last part of this scam is the phone number from the sender. The scammer needs to make this be realisitc. 

One way is to just transpose one number that you might recognize in hopes that you won't notice the mistake. 

But in this particular case, the sender's number is actually legitimate. When I googled the number, it came up as being part of the the Orange County chapter of the National Audubon Society.

Maybe the scammer got a hold of this phone number because it's listed online, or just thougth it would make his attempt at scamming someone more difficult to spot because it's in the same area code as me.

So this was good, but fortunately I've seen similar scams hundreds of times so I could spot it easily. Do you feel like you could spot a scam if you get one?

avoiding sMS/txt scams Summary

Just like avoiding any other type of scam, the key to avoiding SMS scams is to remain vigilant, and keep your guard up when interacting with strangers. Especially if the interaction was initiated by someone else.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Was I expecting this notification? If not, then it's probably a scam.
• Do I recognize the number? If not, it could be a scam.
• If I don't recognize the number, is it a legitimate number? Even if it's a real number, it could be a scam.
• Are they asking me to click on a bogus link? DO NOT click on unsolicited links.
• Did they request personal information? DO NOT send personal information, even better, do not reply.

I hope this helps you spot fake SMS messages that are trying to take advantage of you. 

The post Avoid Falling for TXT and SMS Scams appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

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The post Protected: WHITE PRIVILEGE – Let’s TALK about it. Sam Dey & Oscar Gonzalez Discuss. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

TikTok has taken the world by storm, it started as the mobile app Musical.ly. Now it boasts billions of downloads and somewhere around 800 million monthly active users.

Recently TikTok seems to have added the ability to go beyond the mobile app and allow the users to upload videos directly from their computer or laptop. Using a normal browser, you can now upload videos to TikTok.

This is really useful if you're creating videos on a regular movie editor like Final Cut Pro, or Adobe Premiere, DaVinci or something else.

The only caveat is that you don't have access to all the same tools when you upload to TikTok through your desktop or laptop. Here's a short video on how to upload to TikTok from your computer.

Video: How To Upload To TikTok From Your Laptop or Desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw773GbfMv8

The post How to Upload to TikTok From Your Computer appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've heard something similar a dozen times, sometimes even a WordPress expert will say this. "WordPress is just a choice, like any other website platform." 

That is wrong and inaccurate. And in this video I tell you why. I have worked with WordPress since 2004. I have also worked with dozens of other website and content platforms. Sharepoint, Joomla, Mambo, Netsuite, Concrete5, Blogger, Medium, Wix, Squarespace, Drupal, Shopify.

The Main Reason WordPress is Better

Video Timecodes

0:00 Why talk about this
0:40 Inaccurate comparisons
1:25 Analogy to car buying
2:20 WordPress in a class of its own
2:57 WordPress' DNA is world-changing
4:30 Free and Open Source
6:40 Turn it into a profitable site
7:30 WordPress resources are available
8:45 A matter of function
9:12 Principle, functionality, freedom.

Video Transcript

Video transcript and closed captioning for the video provided by Otter.ai

Hey guys, what's up Oscar here for Notagrouch, Notagrouch dot com go visit, go check it out, click like, subscribe, all that good stuff. And Whoa! They're making big changes here. I just drove by a Trader Joe's they're remodeling.

So in any case, I want to talk to you a little bit about WordPress yet again, what a surprise, right? So the reason I want to talk to you about it is because some people say, Well, isn't, isn't this better? And isn't this better how come these people use this. And that's really just... it's a normal question I get all the time. The analogy someone said... I was in a conversation and one person said, "Well, why can I just use this" or "why can I just use that?"

I mentioned names a minute but the other person said something that is completely inaccurate. And I want to make sure that if you hear this you know that that person is doesn't know what they're talking about at all. The person said, "Oh, you know, it's just a matter of preference. It's like, when you go buy a car, some people like to buy a Toyota Camry and other people like to buy a Honda Accord."

And that's absolutely not the case. using WordPress versus other systems is not just a matter of choice. There are so many different layers of why WordPress is better, that it doesn't really compare in that way.

For example, some you know, if you go get a Honda, or Toyota or, you know, if you're looking between, say a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry, the two most popular cars for each of those brands, you are going to get more or less the same thing, just different brands, slightly different features. The buttons are going to look different, where the shifting gear is maybe different. Maybe one has a little bit of technology that the other one doesn't have and things like that.

At the end of the day, it's a vehicle that sits five people that takes you from A to B, with really good gas mileage, really good reliability, outstanding warranty support all that stuff. Price may be a little bit different, but they're in the same class.

WordPress is in a class of its own, because it is both free, but also profitable. If you run a website with WordPress, you can make a profit. And it's not WordPress that does it is what you do with it. If you run a website with, say, Blogger, your profits are going to be very, very hard to find. It's just very hard to get a Blogger website to last a long time and also be profitable. They're great for some things, but not as flexible as WordPress. There's also the principle of how WordPress is built that makes us so important. WordPress has changed the world. Some of the other things like Shopify...

take Shopify, for example, Shopify is a good example of a very specific purpose. Shopify does e commerce. And you can do e commerce in a matter of minutes. You can be up and running, and you're ready to go.

But if you want to deviate from that just a little bit you can't. Is difficult. If you want to add custom code, you're going to find it's very expensive to find a good developer that will do not only what you need, but that will do it right. It's also it also costs money up front you have to have, you have to be paid for it right away on a monthly basis, ongoing, whether you're selling your stuff or not. I've seen so many people have a great idea to sell a product. "So I just start a Shopify store" and they start a Shopify store and three months later, they quit because they haven't made money and they paying into their monthly fee.

And they give up. There's nothing wrong with Shopify, there's nothing wrong with Blogger. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Well, I mean, there are some things wrong with some platforms. But for the most part, all of them have their strengths and their weaknesses. WordPress included. But the reason why you use WordPress, for me, from my perspective is because it's free, free beer like free beer, you download it, and now it's yours. You can use it, do whatever you want with it. It's also free and open source, which is critical. Open Source is one of the most important things that people don't know or understand.

Open Source is the idea that you can look at the code of the software that you're using for review or modification. And you can make modifications with that restriction that is crucial to humanity as a whole. Other big open source projects that you may know about and not realize they're Open Source, are Firefox, the underlying operating system for Mac, you know, OS X is built around open source. Windows is now doing a lot of open source stuff.

And the reason why that's so important is because it prevents people from doing malicious stuff with your code from taking over and doing a tech monopoly, like, you see Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all those people have a hold on their audience. And you don't really know what's going on. You don't know how the algorithm works. You don't know how the code works. You don't know if the code is tracking you. How far is tracking you what the extent of it is tracking you and all those things.

That's because it's a closed source. Open Source means you can review the code, you can change it you can say, Oh, you know what, I don't want this piece of code here. You can remove it. Of course, you have to have the ability to do that. But any PHP developer can do that. PHP is a language in which most of WordPress is written. Now they're introducing a lot of other stuff. But it's still open source. You can go and read the code, understand what it does modify it, you can build a new edition for it and say I want WordPress to do this this way.

And you do it without asking anybody for permission, you simply just do it. And that is what is so beautiful about WordPress. That is why I recommend WordPress, more than any other piece of software out there in the part that is profitable. That is really up to you just like it is up to you to make Shopify profitable. It is up to you to make WordPress profitable, you can install a plugin named WooCommerce. And you can start running a web shop just like Shopify, maybe even better and it didn't really cost you anything.

You can start putting content out there and put some links to affiliate products and start selling that you could start a website where you collect payments for whatever type of service you offer, the list goes on about all the things that you can do with WordPress. But if you go into Shopify or say Squarespace, now you you're stuck with them, you can't really change a lot of the stuff in there, you don't know how the code works. So you don't know what kind of things you can do to improve that code or to modify it to suit your own needs.

And that is what really gives you a lot of freedom with WordPress that I think is the best thing that you could have. WordPress takes a little bit of learning. But there are so many there are so many resources out there that help you get started, how to post, how to do basically everything. And all you have to do is watch some YouTube videos. When you say "Oh, how do I make a link?" You go to YouTube and say how do I make a link on WordPress? You will find a three minute video on how to do that.

Say "how do I post a picture on WordPress" you go to YouTube and look for that somebody has a video teaching you how to post a picture on YouTube on WordPress, whatever example I can come up with. There is somebody out there that shows your own WordPress. For some of the most advanced things that you can do with WordPress, or maybe I should say sophisticated, like how do I build an affiliate marketing website that may require you to watch a few videos, or even buy a training course that tells you how to do that.

So it all depends what you want to do, but the knowledge is out there for you to just use it. With Shopify, they may or may not have a knowledge base, or they want you to do things certain way, not necessarily the best way for you. So the analogies are not the same. It's more like saying, oh, the difference between WordPress and all this other platforms. It's not just a matter of preference, it's a matter of function.

It would be more like saying It's like buying a Honda versus buying an 18-wheeler. Yeah, they both take you around and they both take fuel have wheels to move, but they're not the same. So don't let people tell you that is just a matter of choice. No, it's a matter of principle. It's a matter of functionality. It's a matter of freedom. It's matter of a lot more than just a choice. So, consider WordPress next time you use this and as I mentioned before, use wordpress.org not wordpress.com.

Talk to you guys later. Bye.

The post WordPress is Better Than Other Platforms appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I did a live training session recently for a client, but I decided to do it as a live video on Facebook. It really was just me showing you how to craft the perfect blog post.

The main topics I covered were:

• Using Elementor to build a blog post.
• Content layout and making content visitor friendly.
• Image placement, single images, and gallery.
• Video embedding with Elementor.
• Featured image.

Video Notes

The video starts around the 5:00 minute mark. Prior to that is just me getting ready for the broadcast.

The tool I'm using is Elementor. Highly recommend you check it out, it's free but I'm showcasing the paid version. Check out Elementor here (that's my affiliate link).

The transcription for the video is being processed. I'll post it here as soon as it's ready.

The post Video: Crafting the Perfect Blogpost with WordPress + Elementor appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.