So the other day, a friend of mine, we has a record studio, was promoting a new album by one of the young women that supported there, and they put out this wonderful youtube article that had a kind of a blah who sticks at capture where she was Thinking of playing piano is playing violin, they did a great job of that and it allows for him to cross-promote and do some advanced promotion as well as to get the word out about her album.
But when we’re talking about social media, we really have a chance. Kick things up a notch, but definitely the idea of putting pieces out there and something like YouTube that people can readily reshare absolutely a part of that strategy. But where are other opportunities for doing that hook? We’re hitting construction and reduced speed. So there are some opportunities and I wanted to talk about those, namely around imagery and audio article clips, first of all imagery.
So if you have a website – and you should, if you are doing anything for products, services, etc, on that website, you have the opportunity to provide a landing spot for providing imagery for people who might be power users of your products or services who might be fans Of it – and we can do that by creating a simple tab like share and then providing imagery that beauty of that is that you are able to create imagery that really targets and portrays the messaging exactly as you want it, you can put it out there.
You can download that they can share that on venues like Twitter, on Instagram, Facebook and others even snapchat, and it’s going to again have that imagery in a way that may convey some textual content. You can also underneath the imagery provide copy and paste material, so the people will have stuff with you know, pointing to lengths, etc. That you ask them to. It provides a great venue for that, but you can even take it a step beyond just simple on simple imagery: think of audio right or article in this case.
So my friend had posted on YouTube, which is great because you can then take that and share it out to twitter share it out to Facebook. But it’s limited: what’s one of the biggest venues now for people looking for visual imagery right, whether it be article or still picture Instagram, so on Instagram, if you want to do article for a person, must upload the article content themselves and their limited to one minute Or less so think about something like where he has this article beautifully done.
I mean it was awesome, but instead also providing on a share area, a condensed version where you bring that down to a you know less than a minute where you can have an intro. Maybe, with some textual content, it’s a music fades in and then, as it fades out, some other attacks and maybe a pointer to length, etc and again, as you post, that in your share area, making it available for people to download and reuse your now providing another Way for them to do some social media around things that get them excited in, at the same time, you’re providing a high quality piece of content that really target the branding and outreach that you’re trying to accomplish.
So you can do that with article finally textual content. You know doing that in a news and shared area where you may have content, where you say. Look if you want to talk to here’s our latest effort hears this and that create some content that they can write. You know readily copy and paste within an intro and access to their own blog post or something else, facebook, post and again possible subsequent supporting imagery article you’ve provided another great way to do that.
The point is you want to make it easy in all these cases? For people to readily share your content to cross-promote, it’s that domino effect right. One Domino knocks down another knocks down another, so provide content. That’s readily accessed by your users, by your fans by people who you know helping you with promotions by possibly news outlet create that content. You know a lot of companies have been doing a very formalized area for years.
They’ve had repressed the leaves for this. For that, but it’s taking it one step further with an eye toward social media. You should be really looking at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, snapchat and beauty with snapchat. Now it keeps going to upload images and articles so think about that as you’re doing a campaign as you want to cross, promote products, services, events and other things that are out there create readily reusable collateral that people can use you’re going to see the benefits of It and also promote it yourself with that.
This is Michael on to go Mikey G 360 edition preparing to hit the truck, stop a little job, a little coffee and a little gas, but you have a great day take care, as always ciao
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Again, we are going over the very basics of what you need. I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible. There are so much information, so many directions that you can go, that it can get overwhelming and a lot of people end up quitting, and I don’t want that to happen to you so today. What we’re going to talk about is, who are we going to self to and what are we going to sell now, you’re, probably sitting there saying? Well, I have no idea what I’m going to sell cuz, I don’t know what’s out there and that’s what I’m going to show you today, you’re going to have to take some time to research and find out what people are looking for and we’re going to stick With the health and fitness industry right now at first and then even do a little bit of The Wealth industry just to give you an idea of the choices that you have when you’re looking for a product to sell Clickbank.
This is the I brought it up here on the screen. It’s called WWE, Clickbank comm. You can see the URL right there. They have affiliate products that people can come in pick a product. They want to sell sign up with the person who is the vendor, and then you get a commission for selling their product. Now. Products and Clickbank are typically, I would say, around 10 to 30 % of commission, typically you’re, going to make 30 to 50 %.
When you sell digital products, which basically are training products, and that’s why you see a lot of people, selling training online they’ve created their own course and they’re selling it for like a thousand dollars, and then they might offer it for people like you and me who Are affiliates to sell it for them and a lot of times they offer you 50 % now you’re, probably thinking well, that’s what I want to do.
Those are good to do. I think when you’re first starting, it might be good to start with Clickbank, because you’re getting a feel for what you’re doing and typically in the beginning, you’ll have success. Think about it! The higher the item is priced, the less items you’re going to sell the lower its price, the more you’re going to sell, and I think in the beginning. You really need that feeling of.
Oh, I sold stuff and it’s exciting. You don’t even care if it’s a dollar in the beginning, because you’re just so excited to see that the system work and then you can build up from there. It’s up to you, but that’s what I have found when people start with something really high. They tend to have to wait longer to sell it and it can again be discouraging. It definitely is not a get-rich-quick system.
You have to learn the skills, learn the system, and then you just keep getting better at it. Just like anything else. So, let’s look at Clickbank, that’s a place that you go to get products and that’s what it looks like when you get in there. Another one we’re going to go over today is called JV zoo and they are a digital affiliate market place where they sell training that other people might have or digital products.
Okay, so we’re going to look at those two things I have my tabs opened up. So we don’t have to wait, but I went ahead and logged in to Clickbank. And this is what it looks like when you get in there and I’m going to look over on the side. See here where it’s in red and where it says health and fitness and let’s see what they’re selling, what the vendors are – selling ok, health and fitness – and these are great – the prices $ 38.
It’s a health and fitness. It’s called the flat belly fix. Now you want to go in there and find out exactly what that is you when you hit all the links to this and we’re not going to do it today, but you can just showing you a place to go for you to do your research, but you Can go in and hit these links. This is an affiliate page they’re, going to give you all of the banners and different ads and things that you can use to promote their product, or you can create your own a lot of times.
They give you things to use which is really nice, especially when you’re starting out they said. The average percent of the sale is 75 % and people that come back the average is 1 %. I don’t know what this is now. I’m going to tell you this, though I have another site that when you’re in Clickbank, I want you to write this down, I’m going to go to it. Real quick, save right here word has a gravity score.
Two hundred and forty eight point: seventy three, the higher the gravity score, the better the product is as far as the market for the product that people are buying it I’m going to go to this other site. It’s called a CB engine, Clickbank engine komm go ahead and write that down, but you can also go in here and there’s flat belly fix and they have the gravity score at 242. But it’s letting you know if that product is definitely selling and what that gravity score is now look at it compared to other products.
It’s doing really really. Well again, I’ve not used it. I don’t know, but it looks like it would be, a good one to look at now. The dumped his score is just telling you it’s kind of like reading the stock market or the sales going up or down. I have looked at flat belly fixed before when I was doing it. I was doing a article on for my blog showing people these two sites and that felt lat belly fixed, was on there before and that negative point.
95 is no big deal. The gravity score has actually gone up. It was sitting around 206 last time. I saw it again. I don’t sell the product, but I like to look at it and you said as an example, if you’re in the health and wellness industry here is an example. Remember at last week or the last training, I told you that you want to find your niche and your niche, basically is health, wellness or health wealth were relationships.
Well, this and then from there you want to get you want to narrow it down. That’s what we talked about. Well, let’s say you want to be in health, but look here, diabetes remedies so maybe within health you’re. Not maybe you don’t want to go into weight loss. Maybe you don’t want to go into fitness, but maybe you could start looking at. Maybe diabetes so see how the industry of health can be so broad or you can narrow it down, and that’s what I mean when you start looking for a product, it’s going to help you to start figuring out.
Hmm, what’s my niche, how can I tighten that up? How can I make it narrow? How can I make it smaller? Because, honestly, if you try to sell to everybody, you’ll end up selling to nobody – and you know yourself, like many of us – need to lose weight but we’re all. We all feel connected with different programs or different people. When we go to buy a program to lose weight doesn’t mean one programs better than another.
I could name ten different programs where people have been successful but for some reason they connect it with that program and that’s why they were successful because it depends on them as well, but even think of yourself when you go to buy a car or if you Had to go buy furniture have you ever walked away from a place because you didn’t like the salesperson. I’ve done that my husband. I’ve walked out of McDonald’s because the the salesperson, or maybe the manager they weren’t on their game.
That day, and maybe we felt like you know what we’ll go someplace else, so that’s what sales is about. It’s well. People will connect with you and that’s why you want to find that audience or that target audience. That’s going to connect with you again a diabetes. You might say that you want to go into the niche to help people with diabetes and maybe children. Maybe you want to help children with diabetes or women between a certain age.
So that’s what we mean it. You’d want to just narrow down who you’re targeting who you want to sell to, and it may not be clear at first again, I’m telling you these things, but a lot of this. If you write it down and know that these are things that I need to. Eventually, really be concise about, but in the beginning you may not be, and that’s okay, don’t feel like you’re a failure, because you can’t come up with your.
Why or you can’t be, come up with your target, but start thinking about it and exploring some other things in the health and fitness here’s another product product. It’s called it’s green juice, it’s called organ and if II it’s a juice system, I guess $ 75. So you might have people that, like to juice to lose weight down here. This is more unlock your hip flexors. So it looks like it’s a little exercise program, which definitely is something to look at.
These are really good actually as I’m looking at them, but you want to dig in and figure out which one you want to sell now something I would look at and I’m going to talk to you about this in a minute but notice these prices are all Different some are lower. Some are higher. Okay, so keep that in mind, because we’re going to talk about that in a moment all right, let’s go to jvzoo – and this is where digital products are.
Digital products are usually things like software or some type of a course, or some kind of a training. Now over here to the left. I have the featured products, they had a little tab and it said these are some of the featured products, so these may be new products or products that may be doing well. It looks like they were. They just came out a new cuz. It said it was featured on May 28th, okay and right here.
If you were in the wealth industry, here’s a training program, start growing your following 24/7 and send traffic to your site for free. So somebody that’s new okay, you you’re a new affiliate, so this may even be something you might buy, because you want to learn how to send traffic, how to get people to come to your site. We’re going to talk about that in a minute, but there’s a training on it. So you may find that you’re going to go out and start looking at different areas of this business specifically and start looking at training to help you to dig in deeper because, like I said what I’m giving, you is a broad overview to help you get started.
But eventually you’re going to want to dig in deeper. There was another one down here. I thought okay call-to-action bots-bots-botswana, where, when the person replies, they can go to write to mini chat, which is a facebook messenger bot and you can set that up and it answers questions for you. It’s crazy that the different things that there are out there, but then again that might be a training that you want to offer to people who are trying to set up their affiliate program.
I mean I could promote that myself right because we’re talking about affiliates again, I don’t have that. I tend to find my courses in training based on courses and training that I have accomplished myself and then I have found that I really like, or I like the trainer and I’ll say wow. I really want to be an affiliate for them, because their training is valuable. It has lots of value and that’s kind of how I have become affiliates for different courses they’re based on courses that I’ve taken.
You don’t have to do it that way, but I just naturally did that here’s products you can hit this and it says marketplace actually already had that open and here’s one. I went ahead and typed in health and fitness, but this is a health and fitness training. If you want to learn how to get into the industry, so let’s look at another one for marketing. Let’s see what comes up there should be a lot of different ones in here and yeah.
You’ve got several pages social media, a passive profits workshop. So you know for $ 37, and this is really nice, because the prices are good. Prices to start with people are more apt to chance. Take a chance on something: that’s lower in price. Now, once a person when they create their own courses, then they can start selling them higher higher because they have kind of created themselves as a sense of authority on the subject.
If that makes sense, so once you’ve done sales and you’re a little bit more popular and people trust you, you can start selling more expensive things and we’re going to talk about that right now, all right, let’s so that is the what you have to decide. What area you want to sell in and then what products and start looking at them now you’re, probably I’m going to go over this a little bit with you, and I want you again to take notes.
This is the who, like who are you going to sell to you’re going to find your people to sell to buy, like I told you you’re going to pick like a male or female or maybe by certain age or things like that. But how are you going? Let’s talk about how as well not just to what let’s talk about, how how are you going to sell and again this is a brief right now. What I’m doing now is not I’m going to go into more detail in the next trainings, but I want to give you a brief overview of what’s coming up.
So let’s say: you’ve picked your product and one of the things that you do when you go to sell your product. Is you find a source and that’s what these are traffic sources, you’re going to pick a platform, a social media platform that you want to build up and start selling your product? On that platform? You need to decide and again you’re going to have to look for detailed training in all these areas on how people sell on these platforms.
That would be like six different trainings right there, but take the platform that you’re comfortable with okay. You might want to start with Facebook or Instagram instagrams been very popular lately Pinterest. All of these are good. To be honest, they all work, but you need to pick the platform that you want to build up and sell from, and I use the word self from, but that’s exactly what you’re doing so.
Let’s say we picked YouTube. Let’s go with Facebook because you probably saying YouTube: what do you mean YouTube? I don’t even know what to do alright. So, let’s pick Facebook, what you’re going to do is drive traffic from your Facebook posts onto a landing page and in our v training day. I’m going to talk about the landing page and where you can build it and how to build it, but what you’re doing is driving people to a landing page where you collect their email address and their name, that’s all the landing pages and to get them there.
You offer them something for free, like a lead, magnet and we’ll talk about that in another training as well. But my point is: when you offer that free item to somebody they’re going to say: yes, I want that and then they come in and they’ll give you their email address and their name and you will send them that free item and again I’ll show you how. But then you send them an email says. Thank you now, you’re thinking.
Well, why do I want their email address because actually notice? I didn’t offer to sell anything here directly from Facebook. I didn’t offer to sell anything. I just offered to give them something for free and in exchange they gave me their email address, the selling the actual selling happens in emails, believe it or not, it doesn’t happen instantly like that. A lot of people get excited and they think oh I’m going to promote this product and people are going to love it, because I this wonderful Facebook post and they need it.
People don’t buy because they need things they buy it because they want things, and most of us are leery in the beginning. Think of yourself, but if somebody offers you something for free and it’s something of value, then you’re more than happy to give them your email address. So that’s what we’re doing in the affiliate marketing part of your job is to collect as many emails as you can. Now I’m going to explain another reason why let’s say you build up an audience: Facebook you’re really good at this, and you have like 4,000 people on your Facebook page and you even have a business page and you have like 10,000 people, our Facebook groups.
I mean you really start building and you’ve got this great audience and then all of a sudden Facebook shuts down you just lost your entire business. However, if you collected, email addresses and you’ve collected 5,000 Facebook shuts down, but you still have those 5,000 names. That’s where your business is, it has nothing to do with what you’re selling it has to do with your traffic. So the most important thing you can do to build your business and affiliate marketing is to build that email list, and you know what.
If they get on your email list and within 2 days, they buy something great. But if they don’t that’s because you’re going to keep on, let me show you what happens next you’re going to create this email list and you’re going to send them emails and provide value to them. I have a book that I highly highly highly recommend you get for free, it’s called dot-com secrets and in that book there’s a whole chapter about how to set up an email sequence and write that down.
You need to have an autoresponder which I’ll give you a link to a web or com. It’s it’s one of them ones that are out there, there’s lots of different ones, but that one’s pretty reasonable. It’s good for somebody starting out the autoresponder is a platform that will collect your emails for you. So let’s say that you set up Aweber you’ve collected some emails and then what you do in the autoresponder you have pre-written emails that you’ve written out.
It’s called a sequence, and here I have seven, I think, on one of my sequences. I have like 17 to start out and then after a person goes through those once a week or twice a week, I send out what I call a broadcast. These are my current emails where I’ll share things like. If I’m doing a article on my blog, that has to do with a really neat organizer that I found, I might write to my email list or my customers and tell them about it and say: hey, go check out my article and check out this new organizer.
That I found and I just keep giving them value, but every once in a while, I might say, hey. I found this a new product that you might be interested in. You know we’re talking about health and fitness, and you know you can tell them all about it. Maybe how you tried it or some references of other people that have tried it and then you put a call to action in there and that’s where you sell now. Do you sell every single email? Absolutely not I’m that wicked old and people will unsubscribe but you’re providing value warming them up, getting to know them and they’re getting to trust you and that’s where the selling happens.
So, like I said, I’m going to provide you a link below daaamn secrets is free. You just pay the shipping and I believe the shipping is like $ 7, so I highly recommend now after you read that chapter on how to do the email sequence, what I did at first, I was like. Oh my gosh, I’m not a writer. I can’t think of anything what I did is I followed the instructions in that book and then I wrote my email sequence out on a word doc like I just did one letter after the other and he tells you how to make them flow and that, for Me was so much easier than opening up all these links in a weber and trying to type on their template.
I typed in a word document and I felt like I was kind of writing in a journal. So that’s just a tip for me to add to that book. I’ll also put the link for Aweber below or you can go out and look for other autoresponders, but think of them as the mailman. The person the place where you’re putting your emails and storing your email lists, so you have to have a platform to put them on and they will go to that platform all right.
One more thing. I want to show you now to make this all connect. Remember I was telling you that you want to come up with different products. This is called a value ladder to get people to come into your email list. You give away something for free as you’re warming them up. You might offer them a product that is about around $ 37. Something like that. Remember I told you to go to clickbank and look for something on a lower level of price and then up we were in clickbank.
I saw things that ran about is $ 78. Then, after a person buys that product for 37 down the road, you might start warming them up to buy the product for 78. So what I want you to be thinking about the reason I’m showing you this is not to make you go crazy and be all over the place, but as you’re putting your thoughts together, you’re thinking about who your shot your selling to what you’re selling that to Them as you’re looking for products in health and fitness or in wealth, I want you to think about what can I give them for free right and what leads up to the next product? So let’s do the flat belly fix, you’re, talking about their weight loss and then maybe in those products you found something that continued to talk about weight loss, and maybe it was a you know another product at $ 78.
Again, you have to go in and research it. My point is showing you this is. I want you to connect the items. You cannot go down here and say: I’m going to give a free item on how to cut out sugar and then I’m going to go up here and give them something about how to lift weights. Do you see how they’re not connected? Yes, it’s all health, but they’re not connected just because I want to eat right doesn’t mean I want to exercise now later.
Maybe you can start bringing all that together, but in the beginning here you want to really keep these items connected, so they make sense and you’re just bringing that person up to the next product that you have. I hope this was helpful. That’s the end of our day to training and there will be a day 3 coming out next again, if you need to go through this again or stop your training and take some time to research I’ll, do a on day 3 we’re going to start talking about How to set up the affiliate link and where find it, and things like that, so we’ll dig in a little deeper and I’ll show you what to do with that link.
Okay, alright enjoy do some research and have fun, don’t get overwhelmed, there’s a lot out there, but just find the things that kind of sparks your passion a little bit and again when you’re in Clickbank. Yes, you want to be excited about it, but you also want to find things that pee people are looking for and what they’re buying, because you could get excited about something like how to feed hummingbirds, but maybe there’s not a huge market out there for it.
So you want to make money and you want to help people there’s there’s a balance there so find the product that people want. Alright, see you on the next training.
The main way that they do this is through links, they crawl from one link to another and find websites and then establish or determine what that website is relevant to so.
The process of link building for marketing purposes is to cast a wider, stronger net for search engines to frequently find your website and determine its authority. The main two processes for link building are internal link, building which occurs within a site and external link, building which occurs from out outside or external web sites, pointing to your web site of interest and the main factors.
I would say to take into account when you are doing link building is the link or the text that the link passes through the area on the page where the link is coming from and the overall web site where the link is coming from as well.
Watchers. Hmm talk. Oh yes, look at how small I was. I was so skinny way more hair. You I had here. Do you see that hair right there? That’s proof, people, that’s proof baby. Nobody remembers. Nobody remembers. Can you believe it’s been two years since we started our YouTube blog? Yes and one year since we started full time travel and ever since we started the one thing that we’re constantly asked is so you’re an influencer right? Are you an influencer you’re, an influencer and we don’t have anything against the influencers, but we just don’t like to be identified by that, so instead we prefer to be called creators creators.
I like that term. I feel it in my in my blood. Yes, but once we say that the follow-up question is what’s the deeper well, I’m glad you asked: what do you think when you hear the term influencer for me, I think, of a promoter? Well, there is a product or a service. Is someone gearing you towards making a purchase both influencers and creators, work really hard and they both get paid, but what makes them different is the motivation behind it? If I could compare it, I would say: influencer is more of a salesperson that works on Commission and a creator is closer to ourselves advisor whose motivation is to advise and give an experience with.
That said, for both influencer and creator, it is a business both have a lot of similarities when it comes to business, but what I believe to differentiate an influencer from a creator is the story. An influencer, a story comes from an outside source, telling someone else’s story and every product or service they advertise wears. A creative story comes from within, through all the emotions and feelings of an experience, there’s just a passion that comes from the heart that we try to capture in our lives.
You follow your dreams, the way we follow our that’s right, so you know to do remember to live the life. You want love the life we live in travel,
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This is the second article in our article workflow workflow series, and so just to remind you of how we’re naming footage here. Here’s here’s an example of I’ve named this article project that I just this is actually the save out of ScreenFlow and it’s a 2013 06 01 and then the next 01 is the number of the article. That’s another important thing: if you shoot 18 articles one after another, you better darn well number them, so you know which is which so the first step.
This is the first article in this series and the name of it is creating edible, put a table. Edible editable footage so now we’ve got that one done and if we go over here and look in our PR reach assets, we will see yes. Indeed, we have our mp4 file here so now the next step. Well, if if this was a article, that a piece of footage that I was going to put on put on the web really quickly I’ll just walk you through how I would do it I for myself and then we’ll figure out how to do this for Rob Here I’ve got these article templates here.
I’ve got some old Camtasia ones I haven’t used in years, but here’s the primary one I use, which is this template for ScreenFlow for the inside track party. So I’m going to right click and say duplicate and take that and drop it into this project and, let’s see so too so all I did was change this ScreenFlow project to eben, pagan, accelerate press release all right now, let’s open this file up and you can See what’s in it, this is really important, because if you do this, it’ll save you loads of time when you’re doing article edits.
So you see inside this project, it’s very simple for – and I do all my article editing in ScreenFlow. So all i’ve done here is the first thing to get a project ready. Is you click the resize here and you change the background of white, the defaults black and I much prefer the white letter boarding to black and then you just say apply, and that gives you a white background to work with. I used to take a white ping image and stretch across the whole thing and inside this there are a couple of pieces here.
One is this front piece that I’ve just got inside track party, and then you know some bullets and then I’ve got. My next thing here is another part of the front plate. Template is your the right place if you love having the inside track on living world? In which love join your tribe today get the inside track. So these are common elements that occur in most of my articles, so we’ll go back over here, oh and also there’s a bumper, this little audio track so that audio track.
I just put together in about 15 minutes inside of GarageBand years ago, and if you ask me how I did it, I I would just have to get back into GarageBand and play around with it. I just I was one of the first thing, as I ever did in GarageBand. I just fooled around with it and and messed around with it, adding instruments to an existing track and or what was it now. I took a bunch of beats and remixed them to come out with an original sounding stinger.
So let’s go over here to our front plate and then we’re going to change this. To, let’s see, I guess you know well i’ll, show you how I would do it. I would change this to David favor and announces and you know maybe I’d change this domain to mine, and I do you know reformat this different ways I could go. I could cut this and put it up here and help if I spilled, announces right and then was this eben pagan, accelerate and then there’s a bunch of blank spaces here which ought to be getting rid of goop oops.
So I clicked outside of the box and then inside the box wants to get the handles and just squinch in this up together. It looks like there’s two block lines in there, so I got rid of one very mount seen and I’d probably change this to heaven. Peg and accelerate alright, so here’s our and I’m just dragging this to get a centered bang and I hit the command save to save it. So now I’ve got my front plate done and then I’m just going to go over here to where is my asset folder and I’m going to take my mp4 file and drop it here in the media bin and now we’re done with this? We don’t need this piece, because this is.
We just got one piece of footage. So now I’m just going to take this one track bring down here. Take my audio bumper and my text. Bumper save the the project which is command s again, see how it looks. Welcome to another PR reach com, article news release in today’s news: eben pagan, accelerate bonus, total more than three thousand dollars reveals black box social media and online marketing company that utilizes the latest digital marketing strategies to assist small businesses with getting found online.
As a noun surprise, I noticed that her voice is a little bit out of sync. I I mean I won’t do it on this article, but I would probably go back and try to add back in my a sink one option to the re, rapper and then I’d probably also go back and maybe try a few things to maybe transcode it into An MOV container instead of an mp4 container and see if I could sink her voice up a little farther, but this is good enough for government work right now.
Now I’m going to hit the resize canvas and we’re going to change this to a normal 1920. 1080 P whoops to provide type 1080 correctly. Now, let’s make sure that we’ve got this all lined up alright, so everything looks good here and just going back as I did this really fast. If you click this resize canvas, I just change this to the normal 1080p format, which is 1920 x, 1080 p and then i’ll right click on this and i’ll say add starting and ending transitions, which is, if you, if you now read what happens, is this sort Of fades in slowly and then that’s it for me that this is.
This is the final, the final project for me and then I would go up and say export, and this is really important to we’re going to export it. A hundred percent and i’m going to hit customize and always export at say current for the frame rate and then for dsl’s or sales letters. Things like that always do a thousand bits kilobits per second, and always do what ever the lowest frame rate like eight, because you don’t need a 30 or 15 or 60 frame per second article.
If it’s just a article sales letter, because the the amount of changes between frames is so low that the love that the low frame white you’ll never even notice it with em – and I now for article footage with moving people like this girl, I’d, say export at The current and I cap this at 5000 kilobits per second, and that’s it the fastest fastest in code, use always single pass instead of multi pass, because the multipath doesn’t really buy you much anymore, and then here I’ve got quality is set at best whoops, just like It’s disappeared off the screen here, a little bit, so the quality is said best in this is set a mono recording or mono output.
So that’s! Ok! That’s! Ok! Let’s just see how long this! This is a two point, two three two and a half three minute article. So let’s see how long it would take if I was actually going to export this. So let’s go in here and again we’re going to export this as our the same name here. So I’m going to choose that as the name up here and instead of going to the desktop, i’m going to say other and i’m going to export it directly into the pr reach a set place.
And let’s see how long this would take. Ok so see, it says that it’s only going to take three minutes to export a three minute article. Now here’s an important consideration if you’re doing this on a machine like see how can I explain this? Actually, let’s, let’s go back to our terminal window. All this is exporting. I can explain this well here, i’m going to say i’m going to run the program top and I’m going to say, sort the output by a cpu time.
Now, if you look at the CPU indicator here, it’s running at tell us this net. Telestream is the export function of ScreenFlow and you’ll notice. There’s this line and this line and both of those are running near three hundred percent. So that means that this export function is taking six hundred percent of the CPU. Now, what that means is that I’ve got a I’ve, got a quad core, hyper threaded processor in this machine, which means they’re eight cores.
So that means that you could realistically export at eight hundred percent of the CPU, because that’s eight cores so eight times 100 is 800. This is so efficient that it’s using you know something like seventy five. Eighty percent of the entire machines throughput right now is now dedicated towards Telestream. Most programs are very, very bad about using the full power of the machine to export. The ScreenFlow program is really good at making use of all the available processors.
So it’s sucking up all the processor time, which is what we are after so we’ll go ahead and put this in background will cancel this because we don’t really require to do that now. So that’s at three minutes! So if you, if you do the math really quickly, if you were doing that same export on a machine with only a single core, it would probably be between something like 18 to 36 minutes for the 3-minute footage output.
So that’s another consideration is when you’re doing exporting, like if you’re setting up, for example, a mobile platform to do article encoding, which is what i’m talking to rob about, then what you do is get you a one of the latest macbook pros that has a quad-core Hyperthreaded processor in it, so you get eight cores. In fact, the current macbook pros have a processor that is more powerful than the imac that i’m using here to do this article on.
So I would guess that if you were using one of the new macbook pros that export time for a three minute, article would probably be around two minutes, which is just insanely. So now. What I’m going to do is close down this article and then we’re going to go through and I’m going to try to drop in a green screen behind this and then after I’ve got the green screen image behind it. Then I’m going to go and drop in rob’s PR reach bumper and trailer assets.
So we’re going to save this we’re going to stop this. You
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Then this is going to be the perfect strategy for you now. One thing I will say before we jump into the article is that it doesn’t matter how good your strategy is, how good your products are. How could your ad creatives are, if you haven’t, got a good professional store that comes across as trustworthy, then you’re not going to see the results that you hope for so as there’s quite a lot to get through, then I’m going to split this article up into Two parts part one is going to be taking you through the actual written strategy and how it works and why it works.
This has been exported into a PDF as well that you can get your hands on one hundred percent. Free won’t cost you any money, I’m just check out the first link in the article description below the second part is going to be the actual. Creating of the strategy within my ad manager account in real terms, so you can see exactly how to set it up. If you’re not interested in part one at some point in a second I’ll put up the time stand that will take you straight through to the practical part.
With that being said, then, let’s jump into the strategy itself, and one thing I do want to say as well is that I do read every single comment. So if there is a question on anything whatsoever posted down below, I will read it, and I will answer you if you do enjoy the article and you want more articles on Facebook. Heads for example. Please do make sure you let me know and hit that like button and finally, then, if you’re new around here, I do upload for article we four articles per week.
So please do make sure you subscribe as well. So one of the biggest questions in our get asked on people is: are these good results I’ll? Send me a picture or screenshot of that ad manager account, and they want me to tell them whether they’re good results or not, because they’ve never run Facebook ads before they don’t know what a good CPM is, what a good cost per lean click is, etc. So they’re confused and they might just test one product and if they don’t see the sales, if it’s not profitable, they might just completely write-off Facebook ads all together or even dropship in and say it doesn’t work.
So this is how I’ve designed the strategy around that problem and it completely eliminates it. So essentially, the premise that it’s based on is that you test three plus products against each other, and then you can see the results against each other. Compare them and then you’ll know exactly which product is the best by the data that comes through and then you’ll know exactly which one to put more money into and actually scale.
So, let’s go through. It then bit by bit. First of all, you’re going to start with a combo in campaign I’ll get into that a little bit later on in the article. The run time for this testing campaign, then, is going to be at least three days now. That is as a minimum. The reason being, then, is when it comes to conversion campaigns that Facebook themselves talk and mention the words optimization and efficiency, letting the conversion campaign run for longer gives it a better chance of doing that.
Within this campaign, then we’re going to have three different ad sets and each ad set. Then it’s going to be unique to a specific product. As you can see, I’ve Illustrated here so I’d set. One is going to be this Apple. Charging jock ad set 2 is going to be this hand, warmer cross phone charger and AD set 3 is going to be. This show Laurens night light moving into the actual setup of the ad sets themselves.
Now the conversion event is going to be a few content. The reason being, then, is because in the beginning, if you haven’t had any purchases chances are you haven’t, then view content are going to happen a lot more. Therefore, your ads are going to optimize a lot more you’re going to get cheaper, CPM a further reach and therefore we can have more data and data is king. When it comes to testing because the more data you can test against each other, the more accurate of a result you’re going to have agent gender-wise, then I want you to go abroad in the beginning since we’re testing, unless you know and can guarantee 100 %, who Your ideal age ranges and who your ideal gender is.
Then we need to go abroad because at the end of the day, it might shock you as to who is actually going to buy your product in terms of the detailed tags and then times one narrow minimum. Now what I mean by that is that you have one interest at your target. Then you hit that narrow audience button and you enter another interest in that box there and do that at least once again I’ll be showing you in practical terms how to set this up later on in the article in terms of your audience size.
I want you to stick around the kind of 1 million mark plus or minus 250 thousand people, so essentially anywhere from 750 thousand people, all the way up to 1.25 million people. Now you want to keep this the same across the board. The reason being is because the budget is going to be the same for each of these ad sets, so it wouldn’t be fair to have one ad set on, say: 10 million people and one set one ad set on 1 million people, because when you divide the Budget into the audience size, then it’s going to be a different percentage.
It’s going to be a different ratio and therefore it won’t be a fair test in terms of the place once then we’re going to stick to the Instagram and Facebook news feeds only the reason being for this, then, is because it’s the biggest space on somebody’s mobile Phone, it’s the biggest space on somebody’s newsfeed when they’re on desktop. Therefore, we’ve got the best and the fairest kind of accuracy in terms of making sure somebody has actually seen our ad acknowledged it and then decided on how to act on it, whether it’s to click on it or simply just scroll past daily budget per ad set.
So this isn’t a CBO campaign. The reason being is we want to make sure that facebook spends the same amount of money per ad set again to make sure it’s a fair test, so the daily budget, it’s going to be five pounds per ad set now. This is as a minimum, it should say minimum there purely because the more you spend the more data you get and, like I said earlier, the more data you have to compare against each other than the better.
The test in terms of the conversion window will go for one day, click or view. Now, usually, I would stick to seven-day click, but that’s pretty much only recommended if you’re going for purchases, because purchases don’t happen as frequently, whereas since we tagged in a conversion event of food content, then going for a one-day click of view is absolutely fine. Now you might have realized, then that every single ad set is exactly the same.
Apart from the detail, targeting and obviously the actual products that we’re testing and the reason being for this, and as it says here is we want to create the fairest test possible because essentially, what we’re doing is we’re testing different products against each other to see which One comes out on top and then we’re going to choose that one to shovel the majority of our budget into and try and scale, and so that makes making some serious sales and actually turn a profit.
The next steps, obviously, then, is after you’ve, run it for three days minimum now. The reason it says minimum is because it’s completely up to you, if you’ve set aside, say a hundred pound or a hundred dollars to test different products. Then perhaps you want to run it for four or five days and perhaps test four or five or six different products. It’s completely up to you. These are just minimums.
So after three days, minimum switch off all ad sets unless they’re profitable if one’s a if one’s profitable we might as well let it run and milk it for as long as you can and just try and make back as much money as possible. Compare the results of each ad set and then choose the best performer to actually go on and scale, and then, as it says there, if you want apart to one scaling for the next step of this or once you’ve ran your testing stage, how does the scaling Stage work make sure you, let me know in the comment section down below and just comment part two or something like that.
So I would that being said, then, essentially in terms of the written strategy. That is exactly how it works. Now, how do you actually go about setting this up with your that ad manager account? So the first thing want to do then start from the beginning in to create a new campaign. I’m going to start over just make sure we start fresh, we’re going for conversion campaign and we’re just going to name this kind of like we’re testing three different products.
So it could be a three product test, we’re not going for CBO. So we’re going to leave this checked off and then we’re going to go ahead and click continue. Now this is loaded up. Then I’m going to take you through each step staff on the top in terms of the ad set name. I always leave that blank until the end and then I’ll go back and rename it according to the criteria that I’ve used. I’m just going to go ahead and select the correct pixel and as accordingly to the strategy, then we’re going to choose a few content.
Moving down then ignore these. For now these are more advanced two kind of options. You can use no custom audiences, but I’m going to stick to the UK. Typically, then, what I adopt being from the UK is, I will test a product in the UK. I will try to scale it in the UK and if I can successfully, I will then reinvest those profits and start scaling it out into other countries, 18 to 65 all genders and then detailed targeting.
So, let’s stick with the first product, which is the Apple charging dock, so typically, what I’ll do then is I’ll go to pretty broad in the beginning and I’ll call this kind of like my base interest. So if we just go for Apple in general, we want to make sure we untaek the expand your detail target. In that way, we get a true representation of actually how big our audience is, and then this is the next stage which I spoke about earlier, which is the narrow audience button, and now we’re going to put in let’s go for Apple, read, seeing as most people Who buy this? Will own Apple read, let’s see if we can tag it as an interest which we can which takes us to 280,000 people, so that’s not within 750 in 1.
2, so we need to add some more interests to this to bring the audience size up. So let’s go for suggestions and actually see what Facebook recommends to us. So now, if we highlight engage shoppers, we can see that the description is people who have clicked on the call to action button shop now in the past week, which would be perfect because it shows they have an interest in Apple and they have an interest in Actually buying Apple products.
So if we add this to our audience and see what it does, it takes us to 910 thousand people, which is awfully spot-on, almost smack bang in the middle of that 750 K to 1.25 range, so I’m going to leave it as that. Moving down then into the next steps of the strategy. Like I mentioned, we need to edit the placements. We don’t want audience network audience network. I’ve found in the past works really well for retargeting ads, but because this is the initial testing stage, we want to make sure that people actually have eyes on our ads.
So we’re going to get rid of messenger and then we’re just going to untick these until we have just the newsfeed only so now that I’ve done that, then I just went ahead and skipped it. So you didn’t have to read when you undertake every single box. You can see that nothing is selected, then, apart from the Facebook and Instagram news feeds, so that is spot on then perfect. According to the strategy moving down, then the final thing we have to do then, is change the budget and schedule and to stay consistent with the strategy.
We want to set this to a minimum of 5 pounds per day. So that being said, then that is the ad set created. The next steps are to click, continue, go into the actual ad creation. Add your creative and then publish the ad. The next steps from there on are pretty much just to duplicate it twice and change the detailed targeting and obviously change the ad creative with that being said, then that pretty much just wraps up absolutely everything.
So I’m going to wrap the article up there by saying. Thank you very much for reading. I really do appreciate all the support, as I mentioned at the beginning of the article. Any questions comment them down below. If you enjoyed the article, please make sure you hit that like button and for for articles every single week, then throughout 2020 make sure you subscribe. I’ve got some free ebooks too. All you have to do is give me your email address.
There’s five different ones so make sure you check those out. There is a link for each individual one in the article description below head over to instagram. Follow me on there for more content off of youtube. And finally, then, if you want a step-by-step ecommerce program, that comes with my full support and has proven results from real students make sure you check out my econ academy again, there is a link for that in the description below without finally being said, then thanks very Much for reading and I’ll see you guys in the next one
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I have not a film to plan with me in a really long time, because I’ve been noticing that when I get home from work I need to just like decompress and I’ve really been just planning after I get home and kind of doing it throughout the weeks. I don’t really forget anything so yeah, I just haven’t done anything on camera, but I wanted to show you guys some of my weeks for the last about month or so before I get started if you’re new, to my blog.
This is what I use. This is an Erin Condren and a life planner in the luxe cover. I know that I just filmed a article sharing the regular life planner. Where is it it’s over here hold on? Let me show you so this is the new coiled life planner. I will throw that article up in a cart for y’all, and then I also because I can’t make up my mind got a neutral binder as well, and I will also throw that up in a card for you guys if you’re interested, but that’s what’s currently on The website, I’m not sure if they have Lux covers this year.
I really haven’t looked too hard at the website, but anyway, this is what I have been using for 2019. So it’s my on-the-go life planner and I use the hourly layout. I’ve been a fan of the hourly layout ever since it came out, and I don’t know I don’t know if I’ll ever go to a different layout – maybe maybe not I don’t know, but anyway, I just wanted to kind of share with you some of my layouts. This is probably going to be like a really short article.
I don’t know so anyway. This is April 1st through April 7th, and you know just have basic week – didn’t really do much after work clearly, and then I think I put some of these on my Instagram. I’m not sure my Instagram is down below if you guys want to check it out and then we’ve got April 8th it’s through April 14th and yeah. I did a lot of like stuff for my brother week. I remember that or that weekend I should say yeah and then on April what was the April first yeah these two days April, 1st in April 2nd.
We had like a really bad snowstorm, so yay good thing. I can like work from home if possible, all right and then moving along. We have Monday April 15 through a Sunday April, 21st and yeah. I didn’t really do much. I had some training to deal with and I had a co-worker’s birthday on that Friday. So I stayed late to decorate and then you know who went off and did things wasn’t feeling so hot on the 20th, and so I slept so that’s great and then I planned on the 21st and then this I did nothing.
This is how some of the week’s look you guys like, I feel like it’s important for people to know that are like on Instagram or YouTube, or just any social media platform that, like your weeks, sometimes you just don’t do them you just don’t do it because You just don’t have time all right. You know I I’m trying to get away from saying you just don’t have time to you’re, just not making time for it and that’s like more truthful for me in my life than it is for anything else, and then the next one I’m going to show you Is a little aggressive, so here we go um.
This is my go wild week and there’s a ton of different stickers. I did work Monday and Tuesday. My mom came in from Florida. She was here to read the little Doyle dog while I was out plus she has her own home here and wanted to get that ready for her season so anyways. I have a lot of different things on here. There wasn’t this many things to begin with, because there was a few things I had to put in.
Like I don’t know other other stuff, I didn’t really know about. Plus you get so much swag at go wild and I will leave my go wild playlist up in a card for you guys, if you’re interested in reading some of that, but for all the things that are like kind of go wild related. I like to put those stickers on my go wild week, so this is my only like super, like kind of no white space planning a little bit, I mean it is here cuz I worked but but yeah.
So I don’t know it’s just cute and fun and why not – and I still don’t know the next year’s location – I’ve had so many questions about that. Don’t know they didn’t announce it this year. So I’m like chomping at the bit to know when it’s going to be and where it’s going to be. So where is usually the question that gets answered first and then when comes later, but maybe they’ll announce it all at once.
I mean who the heck knows. All right and then so we have May 6 through the 12th and this week sucked. So so I got back from go wild on this Sunday and then this Monday. I took off because I just knew that I wanted to spend some time with my mom and I had the day off and just to kind of like unpack and laundry and just get kind of my life back together. And then I went to work on Tuesday, which was awesome because it was our Taco Tuesday, so we did like a big potluck which is really really fun and then Wednesday morning I woke up and I was like death.
I was so incredibly sick turns out. I had the flu and that just really sucked and then Thursday morning, at 4:00 a.M. I had to take my mom to the airport, which was so much fun when I’m still sick and thankfully she was in the car with me to tell me where the heck to go, because I was just like so not. I don’t know alive so anyway. After that, I did stop in to work because it from the airport back to my home.
Work was on the way, so I just did a couple of things like super early in the morning. I think it was there like 5:15 or something I just worked for like an hour. I had to just get some paperwork filled out and do all that good stuff, and then I went back home and I went to bed. Oh, I actually went to the grocery store cuz. I needed more cold medicine and they’re open 24 hours in my area, so that was that was good and then Friday I was still super super sick yeah it just it just sucked so anyway, and then I mean I did a little planning.
I did some laundry. I organized my swag and then I love this little quote. It says it back the up, sprinkle tips today. It’s not that today, that’s kind of how I felt like the entire week and then I slept basically all day on Sunday Mother’s Day. I did call my mom and talk to her a little bit but yeah just not great, and then this is actually this week. So this is Monday May 13 through Sunday May 9.
I’m right here and yes, I did go to work on Monday and I think I pushed it a little too hard. So I did work a little bit on Tuesday and then I was working from home actually and then I just emailed my boss and one of my co-workers on my team and I’m like. I need to go home well or not. Go home but like go to sleep because I was already home, so I worked from home a little bit and yeah basically slept all day, and then I got my EC order that day, which was great, but I didn’t really do anything with it.
Anyways so, and then Wednesday was another sick day. Unfortunately, I got a simply gilded delivery, which was awesome, and I did a little bit of organizing in my closet, which was good, but you know it’s like it was the like all this sick time. It’s like takes so long to do like the most mundane things like taking a shower. You know normally takes like 5-10 minutes, not even and it’s like you’re in there for like 25 minutes, because it’s just like you’re moving like a sloth like I’m moving so slow.
But, yes, everything takes a lot longer anyway Thursday. I went to work. It wasn’t great, but I went anyway and it was fine and then on Friday went to work and that was good. I went to Trader Joe’s and KUB. I did a little face mask which was awesome and then yesterday was definitely a lazy day, and I love this and says if it requires the pants. It’s not happening. Basically, that’s like my entire weekend.
This weekend I got the laundry done. I updated some stuff in PayPal and I love this just go the to sleep because I had to take a nap and then I planned a little bit last night. I’m filming I need to edit a little bit and then I’m going to do some meal prep for the next week and then I do have a little bit on this week. So far, so I made this, I didn’t make this sticker. I should be more clear, but it was in one of those Erin Condren books and then I put the little the time is now on there.
I thought that was really cute. My co-workers still on vacation for these two days and then y’all Sunday May 26 is the favorite Mama’s birthday. So she is turning 70 and I won’t see her. Unfortunately, but then I will see her the following week, because her and my dad are going to be driving from Florida to Minnesota next, the the next week after this so yeah I’ll, give her a call. I know she’s got a couple of things going on that day, but yeah the favorite Mama’s going to be the big 700, but anyway, that is my week I or my weeks.
I wanted to just kind of share this with you guys. I know I haven’t been really good about, like taking pictures and stuff like that, which I totally should be, but I’m not, I think I need to just I don’t know, share some photos of this stuff. I don’t think I have so. I think I think it’s time to share some pics of this on the internet and tag who I can remember um. I will leave a link or not like not a link, but several links down below as to some of the sticker and washi shops that I have been using and loving in the previous spreads that I just showed you.
So I hope you guys go and check out some of those links. Also, there is a link down below actually there’s two links down below for the Erin Condren website. If you have never purchased from Erin Condren before there is a link down below for you. That says, first-timers get $ 10 off. You can use that link to sign up to create your own profile. Then Erin Condren. What com will end up? Sending you a couple of different emails.
One of the emails will actually be for $ 10 off of your first purchase and you don’t have to purchase a plan or you can purchase anything from there. But the awesome thing is you get $ 10 off and then, when your item ships I get $ 10 credit. So I can bring giveaways and hauls and things like that for you guys on my blog. So that really helps me out there’s also another Erin Condren link down below too, which is an affiliate link.
It does not increase your price at all. What it does is it just tells Erin Condren comm that I sent you there and my specific, like tracking number. Somehow magically through the interwebs is counted, and I receive a small commission so that really helps up my blog, if you guys use that so anyways. Thank you guys so much for reading, if you like this article, make sure to give it a big old thumbs up.
If you have any questions or comments, or anything like that, put them down in the comment section below make sure to subscribe. If you haven’t already – and I will see y’all in the next article bye guys well, folks is time to kick it old school
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Lord and you’ve once again saved Kingdom onea from a powerful threat today on web DM, we’re talking about cliches and in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, so we’re going to adventure in a dungeon and fight a dragon yeah and not be cliche about it.
Yes, we’re talking about those things and dungeons and dragons that have crept in over the years, those yeah meeting in taverns and the orc invasion, and all those things that veteran players will roll their eyes at snooze boring done this a million times yeah. What we can do to freshen those things up and maybe identify some of those cliches for the newer people who are, you know, coming into role-playing, games and Dungeons and Dragons the other first year they want.
They want to. You know, avoid some pitfalls or something. So I like a good cliche, because it’s classic you know well, I mean cliches early cliches because there’s something that people like they get told so many times that you just already know the story before it you’re like. Oh, it’s that one huh right, but we’ve been doing that with stories for thousands of years right. There’s a couple things going on number one: they’re cliches, because they’re done poorly and and if they take the easiest route to portray something or present a challenge or scenario or something it’s either done poorly.
It’s done haphazardly and this can be forgiven right, yeah, very few. Dungeon Master’s are professional, storytellers, mythmakers linguists. You know all these kinds of things: actors, improv actors, like all of these things – are kind of the job of the DM yeah, but we’ve got day jobs. We’ve got other things going on dungeons dragons is not our life as much as it really is kind of our lives. We can forgive the dungeon masters of the world in the 40 plus years that Dungeons & Dragons has been around for developing cliches.
That get used a whole lot because they’re convenient and that’s probably, why you want to use them. They are classic. They became cliches for a reason they were popular or they evoke some kind of emotional response from people they liked them, because you know everybody pretty much makes the the orphan. You know parents were killed right. I just blah blah blah right. I can’t tell you how many of my characters do that, but sometimes you know why not start the adventure with full family and that’s you got to support them and you know you’re a family man, let’s run through a couple of a couple of cliches and go Through different ways to subvert them, here’s the one I’m thinking of and maybe you’re thinking of something similar yeah starting in a tavern in a tavern beginning, your campaign in at average just having drinks having drinks sitting around yucking it up, mmm you’re gambling, maybe there’s some Carousing going on just fight and then somebody bursts in somebody bursts in the twit call.
The quest giver shows up right, it’s played out in display, and it’s a it’s a joke – that your character you’re, that they were in a tavern that they would meet and start in a tavern all right, let’s kind of think about it forum in taverns or places Where people gather yeah it’s perfectly natural and and and very relatable, a kind of beginning, it’s convenient yeah. I look at myself how many times have myself in a tavern at least three times a week at least right quiz, a quiz twice, and I played Indiana terrible.
So literally me, as a person goes to a tavern three days, seven days a week. Huh so am I living a cliche life, or am I just living? My life depends on how many mysterious Wizards come in and give you a quest that changes your life. Well, it’s happened a few times. It starts you out on the hero’s journey, cliche, here’s what you can do to liven it up. First off you can change the environment dub. The purpose of the tavern is that it’s a central location, that’s familiar to everyone.
It’s a touchstone, so maybe you don’t meet up in a tavern. You meet up at a fair or a festival or a town square, or something like that. The tammer is just a convenient excuse to have the characters together in one spot, relaxed they’re not expecting combat and, at the same time, there’s a lot of stuff that they can do as they’re working out who their characters are waiting for. The plot hooks and and everything to sort of draw switch that up.
Maybe it’s a tournament that they’re meeting at and the player characters, are either participants in the tournament or spectators or something like that. Yeah, someone or you can go back and you can say well what is it about meeting at the tavern that appeals to me? It’s rustic its familiar, it’s it’s, it’s close. It suggests characters who are low level who have concerns like eating and drinking and living in a place, the tavern kind of blogs, all that and and and you can have it – you know, be something that that leans into the cliche yeah.
That’s that’s perfectly fun. You guys are meeting in a tavern, that’s probably what you guys do three days a week or I could just be an alcoholic, that’s true, but you don’t have to you, don’t have to be in a tavern, though that is true. Thank you. Yes right. Another cliche, of course, there’s a tower and in that tower, is a princess, yeah and and around there, probably some kind of beast or drag some kind of beast or dragon or a wicked witch or stepmother, or somebody that’s keeping her locked in the the princess.
In a tower is one of those where I, you know a big surprise, surprise, a game like The Witcher or a setting like the witch or The Witcher stories which have just started to read sort of tries to subvert those things and says like all right. These are the fairy tales, but what if they were real and what, if they were real monsters and what? If there was a monster hunter out there to take care of them yeah, you know the princess in a tower.
It could easily be a prince or some other kind of redeployment or something the point of it is, is that it’s a it’s a person in a tower or imprisoned some way in which they can’t get out themselves, and maybe they’ve been unjustly imprisoned or maybe they’ve Been just the prison’s. What? If what? If the princess in the tower is there because she’s, not a particularly good person and keeping her locked up, is sort of keeping everyone else safe yeah, but her agents out in the wild have spread the rumor that the innocent princess has been wrongly imprisoned by her Wicked stepmother and she really needs to be set free, yeah cuz.
What, if she’s a little bit more in lines with? What’s name Elizabeth Bathory, Bathory, yeah yeah, I mean the bloody Duchess or whatever is correct. You know they can’t kill her because she’s somewhat royalty yasur’s. They can’t they have got to keep her the away from rebel right because she’s going to just keep bathing in the blood of milkmaids, and maybe the the characters catch wind of this rumors and as they get closer and closer to what they see is like well.
If we rescue the princess, then we’ll win her hand in marriage and become princes of the realm and blah blah blah blah blah things like that. But as you get closer, they sort of uncover the mystery and realize. Well, maybe this person that’s being imprisoned, isn’t quite so yea good or maybe maybe it is maybe the fact that they’ve been imprisoned. It suggests a problem in the kingdom or the realm changing something about it, changing either, who was imprisoned, why they were imprisoned or the conditions around that imprisonment or what about this? What if, yes, there’s a princess, there’s a tower and there’s a dragon, but the princess is an evil sorceress and she has imprisoned a silver dragon and keeps this story going out.
So adventurers show up just so. She has something to feed her dragon, that’s imprisoned, they get up they’re like oh we’re going to defeat this dragon to get there like. Why are you chained up and then she hits them right? Oh, thank you. I don’t have to go and find food to know. I have to go out and buy them food today, a lot of times you just hint at a cliche or something how players will run with it, expecting something going off of assumptions that they bring themselves.
This is meta gaming on the DMS part, oh yeah. It’s fine, it’s how you build interesting stories and met it, there’s nothing wrong with metagaming, and so the players start expecting something they bring their own assumptions. They vocalize those things while they’re discussing it, the DMS listening to what they’re having to say, adapting his campaign or her campaign to what the players are doing and now all the sudden the players are expecting.
One thing you flip it on them: they realize that they’ve been making the wrong assumptions about stuff that that the way that they’ve been approaching, this has been in error, the entire time and now they’ve gotten themselves in a sticky situation that it’s harder to extract themselves. From and that’s kind of how you is honestly how you deceive and lie to the players and make them make them their own worst enemies, sort of practicing diem judo against ya, you have you have to use their own expectations and assumptions against them, because if they Only have one clue yeah and they try to extrapolate to the end yeah.
Well, you might need to get on one or two more clues. You can triangulate that, yes, you need to feed them enough breadcrumbs that they keep going and feel like. They have information, but not so much that they have a full and clear picture about. What’s going on right, the gaps that they’re filling in or where they start to stumble and make wrong assumptions about things and then as they get to the climax of the particular adventure or campaign or whatever they realize that they’ve been making some wrong assumptions now? It’s that’s difficult to pull off.
You can easily get in a situation where the players like I have no idea. What’s going on and the DM z — being stingy with information, there’s a delicate act, yeah feeding the characters, misinformation and build and letting their own wild expectations get the better of them, but it can be done so sometimes the DM can do a bamboozle. So an another cliche, especially in this day and age of television, film uh-huh, the zombie horde good grief, everybody’s – got a zombie horde right, but he’s got his zombie whore and the fathometer slow, slow.
They puke, they run, they jump. They’ve got spikes they’re noxious. You know. I you know obviously they’re the one, interestingly enough, zombie horde that I’m less concerned about and actually kind of excited of seeing is the one that’s that appears in the later seasons of Game of Thrones. I’m I’m, I think, that’s a well done one just because the villains are interesting. The dilemma is interesting.
The world that it inhabits presents. This challenge is an interesting one. A zombie horde like that in Dungeons and Dragons is like well. We’ve got like 20 dragons on our side and a bunch of wizards that’ll come around and that kind of zombie horde and a typical Dungeons & Dragons setting is like a challenge for an afternoon. You know, let’s say an existential threat to all civilization itself and more the kind of a nuisance if they’re just regular as zombies like Walking Dead, and then you just drop some wizards and whatever in there like they’re, going to start mopping that up pretty quick they’re Going to start mopping it up, so how you? How do you do a zombie horde in Dungeons & Dragons? That makes it interesting or makes it you know a genuine threat and I have used them in the past in conjunction with something else.
So I’ve used a zombie horde in the past after the realm has been weakened by years of famine and drought, which has led to widespread death, which means there are a lot of unburied bodies and abandoned villages that there’s no one there to put up a defense Against this thing and every victory for the zombie horde feeds its army and the zombie horde is being led by vampires and Lich’s and ghosts and things like that.
It’s a whole necromantic threat, not just a horde of the shambling dead. You can do it sort of in the wake of a war or something you know, there’s a massive war. That’s come through. Untended, battlegrounds and dungeons and dragons would be terrible things right. A battlefield is already kind of a bad thing: medieval angels, disease, pickers that come by after the battle looters and Pickers that come by afterwards in Dungeons and Dragons.
It attracts carrion, eaters and other eaters of the dead ghouls, and things like that when what? If, in the wake of a massive war with all these unburied bodies or mass graves, or something like that, all of the death and concentrated you know dying and negative energy cause undead to spontaneously rise, and now the players have to deal with spontaneous pockets of undead. Rising up and it could quickly get out of control because, instead of one massive army of the Dead reading south, it’s a lot of little fires, yeah undead that keeps spreading you’re completely surrounded by that you’re, completely surrounded by and and if the army.
And if the realm has already been weakened by pervasive war and death, and things like that which usually comes with disease and famine and all those other fun things, that’s how you do it. So I find zombie horde is a good complication, not necessarily the centerpiece of a campaign, but something that rises as a consequence of some other kind of calamity. I remember you did that in in our fourth one of our fourth edition campaigns.
Yes yeah. This is a big problem with the undead, but they weren’t the problem, the people drumming and controlling them for the whole problem right, you know, so it became a thing about avoiding the zombies altogether cuz. There were just too many yeah like I mean they were literally everywhere right and it’s you know, a bunch of for three or third or fourth level characters aren’t going to take on an entire horde, but that one got drumming over there yeah, the one guy who Looks like he’s controlling them.
Yeah now becomes an exercise in getting to him right and around every other yeah. It was a lot of fun yeah, another one where we got the Dark. Lord, the Dark, Lord. Yes, the Dark, Lord, the evil, big bad evil, guy yeah rules from The Dark Tower and yeah. So why does this work in middle-earth? It works in middle-earth because Sauron is a part of the mythology and the creation or everything omnipresent across thousands of years and is the enemy right very often in Dungeons and Dragons.
That’s less the case and the Dark. Lord type characters, often they’re just for the campaign. They’re not embedded into the world and meshed in it yeah they’re more trying to become a Dark Lord trying to become a Dark. Lord, you know you can avoid that. I think, by by having the Dark Lord, be either a myth or a rumor or something that a cabal of equally nefarious, but maybe less mystical adversaries have concocted sort of a story that they’ve made to present and everybody’s afraid of this Dark.
Lord. But it’s really just a figment to fiction perpetuated by something else. You could lean into it and say yeah. This is a Dark, Lord and the kingdom that this this Dark. Lord rules, this realm, that it governs, is a nasty horrific place and the people there are oppressed and – and it’s not a pleasant place to be, but you need to take that seriously. How do they deal with the neighbors that they live with yeah? What did they do for trade for food? It still has to be a functioning society in some way, otherwise there that there would be no power base that this Dark.
Lord could draw no one there to feed its armies. No one there to you know to pay the taxes. You know it’s extracting from the from the populace. Also, the Dark Lord at some point needs to have experienced a defeat in the past and they’re just lying in wait lying in wait same with Sauron uh-uh, Voldemort Voldemort, another great Potter series. You know he was this thing he got defeated, oh he said.
Oh, don’t worry, he’s gone yeah, you know, or even the Emperor and Darth Vader from an oratorio. They have weaknesses. You know, maybe it’s weaknesses like Darth Vader has weaknesses which is like you know they. It’s. The weakness is the emotional attachment to to the people who stand against him: the there’s a magical weakness or something like the Horcrux that that the party needs to exploit and find in order to overcome the the Dark Lord.
But I think like having that one massive brooding kind of dark, evil figure, that’s irredeemably evil or wicked, or something like maybe they’re, not maybe in the best villains, don’t see themselves as villains and see what they do as a type of good. Yes, and so maybe it’s entirely possible – that the rumors coming out of the Dark Kingdom are of a horribly oppressive place where everything is terrible and horrible.
But when you visit it’s not set not that bad yeah and – and there is a reason for several of the things that are happening. Maybe there is a greater threat that that Kingdom is fighting often so that has to be a little harsher. It has to be a little bit more brutal or maybe they look at it and say like no well guess what I don’t see myself as a wicked person. I see myself as the lawful ruler of this land.
These are things they’re mine by right, and I have an obligation to the to the subjects of my land and I take care of them and in return you know they they give back the fruits of their labor kind of thing and making the villain more three-dimensional And its motivations, a bit more murky yeah, can can can really subvert that cliche. Well, yeah, I mean I mean hell, you can wrap them all up together and the party gets over there to take on a Dark Lord, but you find out that he’s just trying to protect his kingdom from an invading zombie army controlled by the dragon that stole His wife and his whore wage in a tower.
You learn all of that, while starting the tavern and you learn all that. One attack from my fairies, wizard from a mysterious, mysterious, wizard and the mysterious wizard is a great, is another great cliche. It’s the idea of the wizard who has all-powerful, but it’s just like, like whatever that kamek kamek is of the wizard like hand me that book, but the book is right. There give me the book just give me the book cuz that’s kind of what it’s like right right, but they have better to do.
They have better to do so. Why is that wizard running around all mysterious, like seeking aid from first level, characters to go? Do stuff well, there’s variety of reasons: maybe it’s busy, maybe it’s not the real wizard and it’s like a projected image or something like that and the real wizard is dealing with yeah elsewhere. Maybe the wizard is just powerful by reputation and not necessarily by actual deed.
Yeah there’s a lot of different ways that you can subvert it. This is one of those cliches that I don’t really can. I don’t like to use that much just because that kind of quest, giver, here’s the character, here’s the plot hook, I’m going to shove it off on the PCs, is not something I usually like to do. I usually like to include powerful NPCs that have some significant weakness that only the party can help shore up when you find yourself either as a DM or a player.
Saying like you know, one of the character I’ve got or the idea. I’ve got for a scenario or an adventure or something that’s kind of cliched. I find that it’s best to go back to the source. What is the origin of the cliche that that you’re, using or that you may have accidentally fallen into and examine that? Because I find very often when you go back to the source where these cliches originate, you find something fresh and new and interesting, something that’s multifaceted and with depth that, as it’s been copied over and over and over and over again ad nauseam that it’s lost.
That so in example, I’m thinking of his Conan Yeah right, like Conan for a lot of people less so maybe than in the past, is a dumb barbarian who has a great sword and a fur loincloth and grunts and punches camel, punches camels and hates magic. And it’s just kind of a big dumb bully you know, but reading the original Conan stories he’s much different and his savage upbringing born on a battlefield raised in the hills of of Samaria and and and that that upbringing that he has imbued him with a savagery That civilized men lack and yet he travels through the civilized lands getting into scraps and adventures and thefts and heists, and he’s a pirate captain one story and he’s a mercenary company.
The next and now he’s off here, fighting pics and other sort of other barbarians, and then the next minute he’s fighting Stygian, cultists and those stories are evocative and feral. And that primal and you see Conan in a variety of different ways. And if, if the Conan you’re thinking of is lumbering towards you muscles bulging with a giant sword, then the real Conan is lurking in the shadows behind you and you don’t see the knife that he’s got that you’re about to be gutted with right.
So Lord of the Rings is another great one: yeah it’s been copied so often and and the the amount of fantasy literature that has grown out of the middle-earth stories. It’s worthwhile to go read the stories. Don’t read the movies they’re great, I like them they’re fun, but they also have a style to them. That’s a little played out their action movies kind of write, fantasy action, movies, yeah, like going back in like rereading Fellowship, is it’s a fun movie, but at the same time it’s aged and yet going back and rereading fellowship is a different thing entirely and you spend Time with the characters – and you see the world-building going on yeah – don’t skip the songs read through those are the kinds of moments where, if you’re wanting to freshen up a cliche, going back to the source yeah using that original source as inspiration and forgetting all the Derivative stuff that’s come after can be a good way of livening up a cliche or giving you a fresh perspective on it, so that you can then subvert it in a different way than maybe it’s.
I don’t know. I don’t know if we might have to edit this later huh but kind of the the main hook of two of annihilation, that that’s what it is. I mean everybody kind of knows that there’s a magical disease and you can’t be brazed back right who were previously raised or being affected and they’re sick, yo. Guess what you get employed by a wizard who’s sick. I literally can’t go adventure can’t go.
Do that yeah! Normally, in any other day, they just go, do something about it, but no they’re, literally sick and losing hip hip points every day and they need someone to go. Do this thing go, do this thing and that’s a good way to to let the players expectations? Sort of propel the action of the story, because then it’s like the player should be thinking themselves. If this wizards so powerful, why does they? Why do they need us yeah, which must mean that they may be either are not as powerful or there’s something else going on, and so those are the kinds of questions that players should be then asking themselves yep.
Why in the world, is the this NPC? Acting this way and the DM, if they’re thoughtful, if they’ve, given their NPC’s, proper motivations and and flesh them out, they will be able to answer that question, and it’s in asking that question. Why is this powerful NPC approaching me for aid that they can start? The players can start to piece together clues about the threat that they face? Why in the world in the great city of Oracle, apollon teen what a lot? What a powerful wizard ask? A bunch of lowly six level people to help it kill a demon.
The answer to that question is obviously they cannot do it themselves, yeah. They could and revealing that information reveals a key weakness for them and that there’s something that the party or the players need to do need to help with and and it’s vital and maybe they you know the NPC’s, don’t want to reveal that information and reveal their Vulnerabilities but the players can piece together the clues and go okay, yeah uh, okay, and then they can start in piecing.
Those clues can learn more about the threat that they face, learn more about their allies and and sort of develop an appreciation for the campaign that the DM is trying to run for. Well there. You know
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