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"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

submitted by Tharnite to GlobalOffensive [link] [comments]

Google Play Fake Reviews: Why is Google allowing this?

I've stopped purchasing on the Playstore and I stay away from it now because
  1. Google Play allows app developers to pay people to leave positive reviews (developers use Micro Jobs to do this. Despite it being against their policy.
How do I know this? Because I used to do Micro Jobs 6 odd years ago when I was bored at home..there are a LOT of micro jobs for leaving fake reviews. How it works? Theres a big list of jobs you can choose to do, IE proof read this article, download this app and come back and tell me in 120 words what you think, leave comments on selected YouTube videos, upvote YouTube videos, download an app from the Playstore and leave a 5 star reviews that says "X=Y", go to this website and click this link...ect.
  1. Google Play is allowing tons and tons off apps that are potentially dangerous to the user or are known to be dangerous to the user multimine
check out the reviews, again inundated with fake 5 star reviews and not a single real review about the app actually paying out, so what is the app collecting and sending from your phone? The developmers have the same tactic which you can see in the reviews. They pretend that you're mining ETH/BTC and not a single real person has gotten paid and the BTC that people do mine, it disappears all the time so people cannot get enough to withdraw, it's all wirtten in black and white in the reviews.
Pi Network
this has been proven time and time again to be a scam , just have a look through reddit
World News: Breaking News, All in One Feed Reader
This app developer is extremely dodgy and rude ( I've got an email trail with him). His app has gambling links in it and when you open the app a full screen ads pops up advertising his gambling website, without being able to get rid of it till its done. It is a paid app that has no ads. But it does ;) he specifically makes sure there isn't ads in this version because it's the paid version. The free has ads...but* now he's changed his Playstore app page to 'contains ads'. It doesn't contain ads from his AdSense account..he uses his own in app ads (code) to advertise his gambling website to everyone from kids up. The website is also a legitimate scam. ( I've written to Google extensively about this guy and forwarded our emails to Google as well as all the proof, Google said they'd look into it and months later they struck his app down, but only the paid one..then a few days later, he's got his app back up. He just needed to change a few backend code to comply with Google....thing is, he hasn't changed anything! His full screen ad to his scam gambling website are still all there. And who knows what his apps even sniffing out*
PHT cloud earning
This one is a scam that's collecting your data and promising kids a rich future in their fake crypto currency
Fair Go Pokies online
This is an actual gambling app that's rated for 3 year olds. I have reported it many times for months, other people have aswel, yet Google seem think Gambling apps are fine for 3+ year olds, Google have been informed about this but Google WILL NOT enforce their own policies on its developmers which is harming kids and our privacy
This is just a few off the top of my head. All these apps have extremely concerning reviews. Also all the positive reviews are all extremely fake.
How do I know they're fake? Well like I said earlier, I used to do Micro Jobs and it's full of jobs asking to leave positive reviews on their Google Play store app. If you have a look at the positive reviews in every single one of the apps I posted, you will see that all the positive reviews are exactly the same (minus a few purposefully placed grammatical and spelling errors), all say the exact same thing pretty much and look how people post the same emojis along with very similar, almost word for word reviews.
I've reported the reviews many times on these apps. And none of the obvious fake reviews have ever been removed. I believe Google to have given up on the Playstore all together. There is like 80/20 of apps that are very suspicious or are definitely fake and scans 80% Then there's 20% of real apps.
I have checked a lot of the developers out over the course of my research into this and found that most 90+% of these apps come from Asia, specifically India. Nothing against India the country, but the people are absolutely appallingly when it comes to scams. We all know that Indians are the biggest scammers, so why isn't Google doing anything about these apps? And why isn't Google doing anything about the massive amount of Indian scammers on their Playstore, let alone all the other people who are posting useless apps that aren't tested. Google is more interested in bringing in the developer fees rather than the community who buys the apps.
Most of the kids games are literal gambling apps by definition. All these free games that are not games, but money printing machines for the Devs. Put out a free app and then make it near impossible to continue after level 10 unless you pay massive prices for coins and such. Today's kids are having their gaming experience ruined by greed and their childhoods taken away from them unless they pay to progress. Do I think kids should just play games all day? No, I believe they should play outside and explore the dirt. But as a gamer myself, I believe kids should be allowed to spend hours playing video games too. When I was a kid, I'd play donkey Kong country for hrs and no paywalls to continu
I used to run my own online business a few years ago now and I used to market through Google ads, this opened me up to a magnitude of scams from Indians. Every single day I could guarantee I would have one cold call me, claiming to work for Google, wanting me to sign up through their marketing platform. Which kind you again, they claim they're working with Google.
1 of those calls was an actual person working for Google... Well actually he didn't work for Google, although his email signature says he does, he says he does and his company says they do. However, they are working contracted to Google. What they really are is just a call centre in India, that Google has outsourced their Adsense to. I confirmed he was a 'google partner' by checking out his partner id against Google's partner id check.( this is just way of saying they're a telemarketer that's contracted by Google to bring in sales to their Adsense.)
This guy wouldn't leave me alone, called me 3 times a day to try get me to put more money into my marketing, then he wanted to take over my account so he could manage it...this guy was full on trying to rob me of every cent I had. (He didn't get anything)
Every day/week the Playstore top 10 is the exact same apps. Intact they really haven't changed in a couple years. Google's Editors favourite apps, is always only ever the same apps that have paid to be Google's Editors favourite.
I left apple 8 years ago for Android...loved it! But today I feel like my expensive phone is an expensive spam farm because Google have drop the ball. I feel I miss apples clean look and lack of rubbish. Their app store is dynamically changing. I don't want to go back to apple cause their phones suck..but I'd rather an iPhone right now than be inundated with rubbish apps and nothing but fake review after fake review.
Google doesnt care about the Playstore and that's evident by my evidence in this post.
Google has allowed for almost a year now, for this one specific Gambling app aimed at kids, to exist on their store. The store is full of apps that are completely useless and apps that are so bad, they shouldn't have even been able to make it on to the playstore.
Just look at this what sort of app store is this when it allows crap like this.
Why am I writing this?
Because I'm done working for free for Google, doing a job they should be doing. But nothing I do changes anything, no matter how much you report, Google doesn't do anything. So I'm hoping maybe someone will see this and sort this shit out. Why not even have an algorithm that flags an app as a potential risk automatically when it's received X amount of 3 and blow star reviews ÷ the amount of downloads. When an all flags, you can check it out, this would solve the mass amounts of reports because you won't be having to sift through them, you'll just need to check the app out that's got flagged.
I know this is super long, it's so long that I cbf writing a TLDR because I believe it needs to be read as a whole.
And fix the top apps..how is there two QR readers in the top 8? How TF is Australia Post app in the top 20?
And Service NSW #1? 🤣
how TF is this even in the top 50 when it's rating is 1.8 stars
Why arent apps like these ones in the top ever? fuel meter
Motion Ninja
My Budget Book
Soul Browser
Pulse Messenger
Simpan
Easy Join
aCalander
submitted by biglezmaate to googleplay [link] [comments]

South Africa part 3: Cecil Rhodes

South Africa part 3: Cecil Rhodes
To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far. -- Cecil Rhodes, Last Will and Testament
This is the 3rd post in a series on South Africa and Apartheid and so far in the first two neither Apartheid nor South Africa even exists. But we are to the mid climax. In first part we discussed how our groups of players: Afrikaners, British, Xhosa, Zulu, minor tribes, other ethnicities got to what would become South Africa. In the second part we discussed how the Zulus and Xhosa knocked themselves out of the game leaving the British and Afrikaners as the main players standing for who got rule what would become South Africa. We also discussed how the British policy was non-viable. This part is going to discuss how the British changed course and consequently won control. We are also going to get to the genesis of the Western Left's hatred of the Afrikaners and the genesis of Apartheid, We'll end on the creation of the Union of South Africa which while not the Republic of South Africa will allow me to stop talking about "Southern Africa", "territory that will become South Africa".... But unfortunately you will have to sit through this one more post where South Africa doesn't exist yet.
Cecil Rhodes was born in 1853 the sickly asthmatic 5th son of a not particularly notable clergyman. He'd remain sickly his entire life dying in 1902 at the age of 48 from the sorts of deterioration of the heart and lung one wouldn't expect to see until a man was at least well into their 90s. In that short span he would: become one of the richest men in the world; found several countries; change the entire economic structure of the territories that would become: South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe; found 2 major corporations: the British South Africa Company and De Beers; rethink British imperialism inventing what would become the British Commonwealth; becoming one of the defining figures and great visionaries of the Victorian Age; trigger the 2nd Boer War; demonstrate the strategy changing nature of the machine gun decades before World War 1; be the only genuinely important Prime Minister of the Cape Colony; invent the concept of corporate armies; play a large role in saving the South African wine industry and most importantly be the only individual getting his own post in this series. :) Rhodes was sent to South Africa at the age of 17 so that the British weather didn't kill him. Rather than doing the normal thing and spending the money (amounting to a decade or less of a comfortable middle class salary, but no great fortune) on living with some gambling and girls thrown in he decided to head to the newly discovered diamond mines in Kimberly and started buying up small diamond mining operations leveraging each mine's output and outside financing to buy the next. Later he partnered with leading financing and trading firms so by 1888 had what amounted to monopoly control of diamond industry turning De Beers into the diamond powerhouse it remains to this day though the last pieces wouldn't fall into place until 1890. He by the 1880s De Beers was throwing off enough excess profits that he could pay investors and continue expending De Beers while being able to found the predecessor to the British South Africa Company operating much further into the interior opening up Bechuanaland and Rhodesia as colonies using his own profits to fund the administrative expenses much as the East India Company had done a century earlier.
Rhodes believed that British policy wasn't viable because it was petty. A vibrant healthy economy throws off an enormous amount of tax revenue. Petty colonialism, like the kind the British were engaging in would never generate much profit because of its very short term nature. Britain should make money by investing in the local economy, spend some on upkeep, reinvesting most of the profits and just skim a little of a forever growing payout. What Britain had tried to do with the American colonies encouraging economic development was the right approach. The problem was London had been shortsighted and selfish turning the local administrators against them. The independence of the USA wasn't a strategic failure it was the result of poor tactical implementation. The problem the British were facing in Southern Africa was similar and since the policies had been similar the results would be as well. The Afrikaners had no reason to be loyal to a Britain which had spent almost a century making very clear that it had no interest in their welfare or society beyond some ports which were frankly not nearly so important since Suez had opened. Rhodes changed policy to have Britain stop acting like a colonizing power and start acting like the domestic government of South Africa as much as possible .Outlining his changes to colonial governing policy:
  • Colonial financing -- utilize profits from business ventures fund army. Rhodes' companies were good examples of this the British charter and the backing of British troops allowed him to make excess profits which allowed him to incur expenses which the previous skinflint administration could never have tolerated. For example British colonial bonds generated an average return of 4.7%. Investments in independent American bonds generated an average return of only 2.9%. The difference was not being taken into account when the Colonial Office calculated their return on investment which to Rhodes' mind was simply lousy accounting.
  • Long term investment -- In general rewire the metrics used at the London Colonial Office to focus on long term investment not short term profits.
  • Demographics -- The British were the world's first people. Physically populate as much of the world as possible. Assimilate other people's into the British way of life. In South Africa in particular he intended to win the hearts and minds of the Boer.
  • Stability -- The previous administration had focused on stability because instability created upheavals that increased administrative costs. For too long British colonial policy was to tolerate and coexist with local culture. To create a profitable economy agricultural efficiencies are going to need to be introduced. That means 90% of the natives are going to freed up to work in a manufacturing and processing workforce. It also means the agricultural tribal traditional culture is going to be completely destroyed. Instability not stability should be policy. Seek to replace local culture with British culture to enhance the potential for economic growth.
  • Glory to British not England -- English colonies exist for glory of England. British colonies self exist. England's glory is that is the Birthplace of the 1st people not how much of the world remains completely non-British while in some vague unimportant sense recognizing Victoria as their Queen.
  • Representation -- As long as colonial governments respond to a English democracy they will be unrepresentative of their people. Create a democratic institution which provides representation for all British people in a British Parliament. There should be an English parliament for England. Invite the United States to join this new institution. "Inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity" (NB: this is essentially the British Commonwealth, though of course the USA was not invited)
  • Devastating defeat of enemies -- Colonial policy was designed to solve conflict cheaply. Small military victories do not undermine the hostile's economy nor their society and thus don't accomplish much. They simply delay and prolonging the problem created by the enemy allowing the enemy to choose points in time to achieve advantage. Avoid costly wars certainly but when war is needed seek to inflict devastating defeat so the subject people realize their inferiority. This realization facilities undermining their institutions and thus during the peace their way of life easily becomes more British. Further a willingness to war like this makes challenging Britain very costly and risky for potential enemies and thus wars will be far less frequent. The financial people are correct that the aggregate cost of inflicting devastating defeats infrequently is higher than more frequent small wars but the benefits are far greater. War carried out towards devastating defeat becomes a form of investment not a pure non-productive expense.
  • Scope -- The British were far to unambitious in their aims. The goal of British colonialism should be "all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise". The scope was, "the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire"
​
map of Cecil Rhodes' proposed British Empire
You'll notice that all of Africa was in the map. Rhodes was of the opinion that Africa was incredibly rich in minerals and peoples. But it wasn't exploitable for profit because of a lack of transportation infrastructure. Rhodes was pushing to start fixing this by creating a full African north-south railway connecting "Cairo to the Cape". Rhodes' BSAC conquests were designed to drive north while he used his political influence to push the Egyptian conquest further south into Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and then a business similar to BSAC run by Sir William Mackinnon to push into Uganda.
For the northward push (primarily in what today is Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana) Rhodes was directly implementing his policy using a private army funded from the British South Africa Company. The Ndebele and Shona (Zulu tribes) were handled easily by the devastating defeat principle. Rhodes' forces demonstrated how effectively Maxims (a primitive form of machine gun) and barbed wire worked against simple rifles, spears and long shields achieving kill ratios never before seen in the history of warfare. As an aside these battles against the Zulus would also be used by those military theorists and historians who correctly anticipated in the later 1890s through 1910s how devastating a war between the great powers would be using these weapons against each other. Rhodes through BSAC had managed to push north of Lake Mweru and to the Northern tip of Lake Nyasa. Which almost connected with Sudan were it not for German East Africa (Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania) in the middle. In theory an alternative route through the Belgian Congo would also work but the gold mines in Tanzania kept Rhodes focused on taking German East Africa. Further Rhodes met his match in ruthlessness when it came to the Belgians. When Rhodes' negotiating agent sought a development contract for mineral-rich Katanga (in Congo) the native ruler Msiri refused. King Leopold II of Belgium obtained the same concession by having his agent signing it to Belgium himself over Msiri's dead body in the name of the "Congo Free State".
At the same time Rhodes worked with the Colonial office and in 1890 British issued the "1890 British Ultimatum" to Portugal. This ultimatum by the British government forced the retreat of Portuguese military forces from areas which had been claimed by Portugal on the basis of historical discovery and recent exploration, but which the United Kingdom claimed on the basis of effective occupation. Portugal had attempted to claim a large area of land between its colonies of Mozambique and Angola including most of present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia and a large part of Malawi, which had been included in Portugal's "Rose-coloured Map". This ultimatum violated the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 which to that point had been the longest standing peace treaty in history.
​
Who owned what by the early 1900s
Take a look at the map above and imagine the British controlling the north-south line connecting to a British/Portuguese line running east-west in the south and a joint French/British/Italian line running east-west in the north. From there local government and companies could construct smaller feeder lines creating a modern rail system. Hopefully and you start to see how Rhodes intended to start developing the transpiration infrastructure needed to create a strong African economy.
All this was going to be for naught though if Southern Africa ended up as a Boer state hostile to British interests on the model ZAR (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, Transvaal Republic). So Rhodes decided to run for Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and solve the problems of British strategy explicated in part 2. The primary problem the Boer had with British government is their divide and conquer approach. The British tilted to whomever was losing (a standard British policy they would also follow in Palestine) which for decades meant treating the Boer and native Africans as both being subject peoples while favoring the native Africans against the Boer. In Rhodes mind you could not expect to get loyalty from people you were obvious disfavoring. The British were the ones turning the Boer into enemies.
So in 1892 Rhodes instituted the Franchise and Ballot Act. This was seen as a compromise between factions in the Colonial Office and the traditions in the Cape Colony for a broad democracy (anyone with £25 in property could vote) and Orange and ZAR's (Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, Transvaal Republic) more exclusive democracy. Rhodes raised the amount of property to £75, an amount specifically chosen to disempower many of the native Africans while allowing many Boers to vote. With a Boer and British based democracy locked in the Cape Colony's democratic powers could be strengthened, creating more self rule and making the involvement of the London Colonial Office less obvious. This concept of using a not explicitly racial criteria while instituting laws with racist intent is very modern.
Various Liberals in the London Colonial Office especially missionaries disagreed strongly with Rhode's policies. They had been the ones advocating for the enlightened colonialism that was British policy. Missionaries in particular saw their role as: combating godlessness, superstition and backwardness. In particular encourage better use of land; encourage paycheck work; become trusted advisor to tribal leaders. The slogan "Bring the 3Cs into Africa" referred to Commerce, Christianity and Civilization. To their mind Rhodes' vision of British Imperialism was straight up military tyranny. If followed he would make England no different than a modern day Genghis Khan, creating a empire loathed by a vast expanse of subject peoples who would unite against it from all directions. Instead interfering minimally and being seen as an ally while slowly educated the elite in British custom and religion would cause a gradual consensual change that would build British alliances that would last centuries. Plus such an approach would fulfill the Lord's Great Commission (term for Jesus' command to convert the entire world to Christianity) in a way that honored God rather than shamed him. One need only look at how the Spanish, Portuguese and Balkans had thrown off Islam after centuries to see how ineffective military tyranny was at long term conversions that didn't require force. So in their mind: No the London Office should stand by its traditional values of: monopoly companies and plantations run in (unequal) partnership with indigenous elite. free trade, free (and indeed forced) migration, infrastructural investment, balanced budgets, sound money, the rule of law and incorrupt administration. As far as their Boer, in their mind the Boer were the primary impediment to enlighten British rule in South Africa, being Christians they were obligated to agree with the missionaries on the vision of the White Man's Burden and Enlightened Empire. Rather than making concession to the Boer they needed to be crushed to demonstrate the moral difference between the Boer and the British. With Rhodes' change in policy tilting towards rather than away from the Boer the Western Left came to truly hate the Boer in 1890s. Since the point of this series is the analogy I'll add that I wrote two posts about more or less the same groups of Liberal Christians turning against Israel again having to do with Israeli/Jews discrediting Liberal Western values and thus interfering with the Great Commission: WCC churches and Quakers.
Rhodes in debates before and at the time considered this Liberal Empire stuff to be simply aspirational. Without economic interference there wasn't enough money to fund anything like what the Liberals proposed. He'd point to facts like that after a century of such rules in India they had increased the secondary schooling 7x to a whopping 2% while England with not nearly as many well funded missionary organizations was over 16%.
Rhodes hoped to unify all of Southern Africa around this compromise approach to the franchise. ZAR however rejected this compromise. By the mid 1990s approximately 1/3rd of their white population were British (Anglicans). ZAR had every intent of maintaining religious based voting criteria (i.e. citizenship in ZAR was only open to people who were members of several Dutch Reformed Churches, see part 2). Obviously for Rhodes a situation where British people were the disempowered minority was intolerable. Additionally the ZAR were maintaining an anti-Cape Colony / anti-British / anti-Rhodes trade policy. It was becoming increasingly clear there would need to be regime change. So in 1895 Rhodes organized an attempted coup d'état now called the "Jameson Raid" (yes the same Jameson who went on to be Prime Minister 1904-8 of the Cape Colony after the 2nd Boer War). The Afrikaners were more astute than natives had been caught wind of the early organization and waited until the forces were committed trapping hundreds of Rhode's people creating a great embarrassment.
Its at this point that the Boer made by far the greatest mistake of their history as a people. The 4 years between 1895-9 were when they made the choices that led to their ruin. The British were really embarrassed. A colonial governor who had a crown chartered corporation had been caught red handed engaging in a serious act of war against another sovereign state with no approval from Parliament. The Colonial Office admitted as much and forced Rhodes out of office in 1896. The Afrikaners had real negotiating leverage to work out a deal. It obviously would be extremely important that the next leader of the Cape be friendly. But they didn't decide to negotiate. Instead they started flirting with the Germans, while not actually signing a formal alliance with Germany that at least had the potential to provide them real protection. The flirtation however, turned a nasty incident into a serious threat to all British interests in Southern Africa forcing a British response. In Britain an alliance of Jingoists (populist military hawks) angry about the humiliation of 1st Boer War, Conservative Imperialists who wanted to end Boer independence especially in the ZAR (the 3 core values for Conservatives at the time were: Union with Ireland, the Empire and the superiority of the British race), Liberal Imperialists who supported Rhodes' vision and Missionaries who hated the Boer formed pushing for a war. Seeing this alliance form against them the Afrikaners did nothing to avert the danger. Rather they made a mistake many 2nd tier powers do when it comes to 1st tier powers. The Afrikaners confused the light force and weak will the 1st tier power is willing to spend on them with the amount of force the 1st tier power is capable of employing if it so chooses. Having beaten the British handily in the 1st Boer War when they were fighting the C-team (as I called in part 2) the Afrikaners grossly underestimated what they would face against a British army that had a political mandate for victory, what Britain's A-team would look like. Preparing for something slightly worse than the 1st Boer War the Boer began a serious arms buying program in 1897. ZAR also got more belligerent in their rhetoric which led to a formal alliance with the Orange State and Boer guerilla groups that could support the war effort in the Cape. The Boer had about 63k troops including some foreign troops. .
The British were determined not to lose the 2nd Boer War. This was going to be the British-A team. By the second phase of the war between British soldiers, soldiers from other colonies and local Africans providing auxiliary Boer were facing a 500-600k man army. Nor was the command third or even second rate as it had been in the 1st Boer War. For example, the top military command would be Herbert Kitchener who was fresh from the victorious Anglo-Egyptian invasion of Sudan. Kitchener after the 2nd Boer War would go on to be the Commander-in-Chief for the armies in India and a decade after that the UK's Secretary of State for War during World War 1. He's this guy:
​
Kitchener famous 1914 recruiting poster
The cost to maintain that army would be £60m / year far more than Britain could ever pull out of Southern Africa (GDP and inflation adjusted the Boer War would cost the UK about $250b). The first phase of the war was a Boer offensive while the British were still deploying troops in October–December 1899. Once the British were done they conquered all pockets of resistance in the Cape and Orange as well as essentially the entire ZAR territory January to September 1900. The Afrikaners decided to fight when surrender was the better option. Leading to a guerrilla war between September 1900 and May 1902.
The British simply could not afford to keep an army of that size in the field for years dealing with guerilla tactics until the Boer admitted they were beat. Facing time pressure the British felt they had no choice but to come down hard. The British cut the guerilla war short by instituting a scorched earth policy against areas giving support to guerillas in the ZAR (most of the ZAR). ZAR men were mostly in the militias. Scorched earth destroyed the food supply in the ZAR so the British threw the women and children in concentration camps. The army hadn't prepped for needing to support massive numbers of civilians so malnutrition and disease were rampant in the concentration camps. This disease and malnutrition resulting in a camp death rate of approximately 30% annually. A policy amounting to genocide. Pro Boer forces in the UK generated widespread opposition to the camps so the military response was to not confine woman and children and instead leave civilians on the now barren earth to die of starvation and exposure. Actual POWs were deported to Bermuda and India preventing the Boer from standing any chance of liberating them. African tribes that had lost territory to the Boer began moving in. While both sides had agreed not to arm natives or recruit tribes. But the British weren't going to fight for the Boer if tribes decided to take advantage of their defeat. The Boer were quickly losing everything they were fighting for: freedom, their lands, their family, the self dependence and surrendered rather than have their population geocoded to oblivion, being left with no economy and whatever lands they managed to hold being assaulted on all sides by natives who would take it from them.
The Boer society that emerged from the surrender did not have separatist attitude. Destitute Boers now willing to work in the minds and alongside black Africans swelled the ranks of the unskilled urban poor competing with the "uitlanders" in the mines. The new economy was unambiguously focused on gold causing mine production to swell enriching the British interests. The Afrikaners were both physically and psychologically crushed, and wouldn't be causing any more problems for decades.
In the UK the war came to be seen as excessive especially as the financial cost of the war sunk in. The Conservatives' suffered a spectacular defeat in 1906 driving the Conservative Prime Minister at the time (12 July 1902 – 4 December 1905) Arthur Balfour from office. He comes up rather regularly on this sub in his later role as Foreign Minister. As the Boer are no longer resisting the British Empire the shift towards more pro-Boer policies from England continues. In 1909 the British Parliament dissolves the British colonies of: Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal and combines them into a Federal Union of South Africa. This makes South Africa into a Dominion (essentially Australia's status at the time). Jan Smuts (an Afrikaner) resurrects Rhodes' idea of a Common Wealth and the British embrace it.
And so we conclude part 3 our story of how the British eventually won and South Africa came to exist. How the Western Left started to hate the Boer, a hatred they would resurrect later. And how the first steps towards apartheid were taken. Whew that was longer than I intended!
​
submitted by JeffB1517 to IsraelPalestine [link] [comments]

Card payment denial and ways to circumvent it

I would like to use this post to start a discussion on a problem that's been affecting certain countries with regards to payment methods that used to work but are now being consistently denied by Genshin Impact.If any other region is experiencing problems feel free to join, I think it's important to keep this up on the subreddit since, using Argentina as an example, the only other place with advice on the issue is a single poll on ualá's website
ºCountries with problems that require further details: Singapore (1 comment here), Australia (Mastercard gets denied here)
I will be editing this post with any suggestions and useful information from the comments
If it's allowed on the subreddit, I can translate to other languages (Spanish and Portuguese)
submitted by CearenseCuartetero to Genshin_Impact [link] [comments]

$MP == Must Play --> MP Materials DD

Here’s what’s up. For the next energy/tech economy to manifest we’re going to need a lot of “Rare Earth Elements” (REEs; meme potential endless 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 ). REEs are used in most high-end consumer electronics, advanced renewable energy tech, and energy storage tech these days. REEs Neodymium and Praseodymium are critical to the manufacture of strong magnets 🧲 for turbines (wind, hydro, gas, etc), and EVs, due to their high efficiency and high energy density. REEs such as Dysprosium are used to increase the operating temperature of the magnets for high-temp applications. Other REEs are used in the production of smart phones, hard disk drives, military defense systems, and even medical equipment. OK, you get it, they’re useful, and used A LOT. So, what’s the big deal?
The majority of REE production is concentrated in just two countries: China (85%) and Australia (~10%), with the rest scattered around the world (Russia, Brazil, India, etc). “In 2010 China significantly restricted their rare earth exports. That was done to ensure a supply of rare earths for domestic manufacturing and for environmental reasons. This shift by China triggered panic buying, and some rare earth prices shot up exponentially.” – Geology.com. As the demand for the above tech increases, so will the demand for REEs. 🚀🚀🚀
How rare are REEs? Honestly, it depends on the element in question. The main factor that puts them into this category isn’t necessarily their abundance, it’s the economics of extraction. They’re difficult to find in concentrations that are worth mining and processing. This decreases supply and drives up the price, causing them to be effectively “rare.” Why mention this, you ask?
Because the money is to be found in new raw ore processing/recycling technologies. So we need better ways to extract REEs from raw ore, and we need better ways to recycle the REEs that are tied up in waste-tech. We’re at a point with our tech consumption that we’ve all probably had at least 1 old smart phone; chances are you’ve had 3-4 at this point. Currently, companies cannibalize the phones for useful parts, refurb, or throw them away. But this is a HUGE waste of REEs. Additionally, currently, there are no commercial capabilities to separate and process HREEs outside of China.
Enter MP Materials ($MP)– the only owner of an active REE mine in the US. They recently went public and have been on a steady climb since (up 100% in ~6wks), but I see more room to run. They also recently announced plans to have operational separation capabilities by the end of 2020 (no news as of 12/30). Having an operational REE mine is a HUGE deal, since the development of additional mines in the US has been stymied. China can (and will) manipulate the prices to make further mine development uneconomical, but they can’t price MP out of production entirely (esp with the US gov’t backing them). They hold investment contracts with the DoD related to these separation technologies as it’s seen as pertaining to national security. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
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Did a quick search for other DDs on MP; I believe these are complimentary to mine and not redundant.
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/kmmg97/mp_mp_materials_dd/
https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/k03k86/mp_has_arrived/
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Additional companies to keep an eye on:
Lynas Corporation $LYSCY (market cap ~$2.7B) – Australian REE mining company (close global ally of US). Has MOUs with smaller US companies aiming to develop HREE separation and processing capacity in Texas.
AMG Critical Materials Company (market cap ~$840M) – Lithium and silicon production, sub of much larger company with innovative manufacturing/R&D etc.
Texas Mineral Resources (market cap $124M) – also opening a pilot plant in the US for separating REEs, ore sourced from US.
Rare Earth Element Ltd (market cap ~$115M) - developing mine in Wyoming for HREEs. Rare Element Resources is developing separation and processing capabilities with proprietary technology. Pilot demonstration of separations tech in Canada and Germany.
Ucore Rare Metals (market cap $33M)- developing mine in AK for HREEs (come online in 3-4 years). Building pilot plant in US for separating LREEs and HREEs
Private, non-traded companies:
Momentum Technologies – has capabilities to produce Rare Earth Oxides (not previously mentioned) from a variety of feedstocks (raw and recycled).
Electron Energy Company – manufactures samarium cobalt magnets, actively stockpiles rare earth metals to prevent supply disruption – carrying between six to twelve months supply.
https://geology.com/articles/rare-earth-elements/#:~:text=rare%20earth%20metals.-,Uses%20of%20Rare%20Earth%20Elements,fluorescent%20lighting%20and%20much%20more.
https://www.jjsmanufacturing.com/blog/rare-earth-elements-electronics-manufacturing
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2020/04/f73/Critical%20Materials%20Supply%20Chain%20White%20Paper%20April%202020.pdf
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Positions: Shares MP (I’m too poor to gamble with too many options)
TLDR; Domestic production/recycling/separation/processing of Rare Earth Elements is $$$$$$ REEEEEEEEEEE to the moon.
submitted by SpaceWasteCadet to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]

Favorite pastime in Singapore for an international student..

I am an Indonesian international student studying in a university in SG. I am fairly familiar with Singapore, since I've been coming here fairly often when I was little for a family member's cancer treatment. So when it was decided that I was going to uni in SG, I was not surprised. It was close to home, safe, and in some aspects affordable in terms of living costs. My friends studying in the US, UK, or Australia all freak out when I tell them my favorite meal is 3.5 sgd pork rice from just behind my apartment building, when the minimum amount for them to eat out would be around 10-20$.
I've stayed in SG for about 3.5 years now, and made friends with a lot of locals. They love showing me all the local spots, and I've gotta say, locals my age group LOVE to drink. They fucking love it. I had a good time with all of them, before most of them went off to do NS and I had to make friends with the older guys in class. They are also fun, and they try their best to get me to go to the gym lol.
But both local and international student friends of mine, some not all, tend to have a common complaint. They think Singapore is boring. The buildings all look the same, the food while delicious is the same in most hawker spots, and there's not much here in terms of recreational activities. I don't exactly agree with this, but honestly sometimes I do get bored here. I tried hiking and honing my photography skills here, but that got old fast. But the one thing I never get tired of, is solo taxi rides when I need to go somewhere or just go home. I love striking a conversation with the drivers. Be it young guys in online cabs, or uncles in the trans cabs. They come from all walks of life and all have interesting stories. It's amazing that they are mostly willing to share deep, personal stories about their backgrounds and experiences. I guess they sort of see me as blogging to a reddit throwaway account, where they don't have to worry about their loved ones finding out about all their deepest darkest secrets.
I could be taking a trip from balestier and the kind driver would tell me stories about how Jalan Dusun was once a movie theater and how he used to go there all the time in his youth. I once had a driver with a large spiderman toy attached to his van explain to me that his son loves spiderman and so he puts the toy there to remind him of his son during work. I hailed a cab in Marina Bay Sands and the uncle explained that I was wasting money playing there and should go to Malaysia if I was really serious about my gambling lol. Then he offered to sell me tickets to a seminar from a guru to boost my gambling fortunes. I booked an online cab from the peace mansion building and the driver actually saved me from a nearby drunk guy trying to fight me because I couldn't speak Chinese. We later laughed about it and he explained to me that he used to be an alcoholic in his youth, until he decided to change one day. He then gave me tips on how to stop drinking and just talked about life. It's like an endless storybook, and the one aspect of my adventure in Singapore that never gets boring; its people.
But now, I can't go back due to the virus and I have to do the last semester of my uni life online. Not the goodbye that I imagined, so its kinda sad. I wrote this because I am feeling nostalgic due to the possibility of not returning to SG for a very long time still. I will miss the bus rides (especially bus 75 driver who hands out lollipops, you da man), the humid, humid walk going between buildings, I miss late night salted egg chicken deliveries and the duck rice in Toa Payoh, and I'm gonna miss the people of Singapore especially. Thank you for reading, and cheers!
submitted by friedchickenshit to singapore [link] [comments]

My Opinion on Technical Analysis, AMA!

TL-DR:
I'm a former retail Day Trader with 15 years experience. I've also worked as a Professional Stockbroker. I believe that technical analysis is a scam promoted by brokers in order to generate trading revenue from retail traders who are unable to afford access to the real news and data that moves stocks. I'll be online for the next 8 hours - AMA.
Edit 24 hours later:
I've literally been inundated with messages asking for my website and I just don't see why I shouldn't provide it. I've made the whole thing free - there are no paywalls. It's at news.broker
Post:
This opinion is unpopular amongst those who are somehow convinced that technical analysis does work. These individuals either rely on the scam in order to generate their income off the fees generated by retail traders OR have invested so much time and effort into learning technical analysis and the ability to quickly identify chart patterns that they unable to admit they might be wrong. I present this opinion after more than 15 years of trading experience both as a self-employed Day Trader and as a Professional Stockbroker. I am now a Financial Journalist and offer this insight in the hope that it convinces some people to wake up and see technical analysis for the fraud it is.
Now before I go on I want to first state that charts, by their definition, offer a visual depiction of historical stock price movement and are therefore very useful when it comes to analysing and researching stocks. Determining an entry and exit point using a stock chart and a few lines here and there is an excellent way of assessing previous levels of support and resistance when done properly and according to the timeframe upon which you wish to hold the stock.
Technical analysis is a good tool when used properly to determine the entry and exit price points of a stock that has already been selected to invest or trade using other forms of analysis.
In my first 2 or 3 years of being a Day Trader, I was convinced technical analysis was some kind of secret mystery that if mastered would lead to generating consistent profits. I figured that the short term trading of stocks was different to longer term investing and that a different approach was required to be successful. This false and incorrect belief was supported in the official literature provided by my broker in the guise of educational resources and I found plenty of guru's online and in person with very compelling arguments as to why I should pay them money to buy their books, courses, home study kits or overseas seminars.
I viewed technical analysis as being a new way of trading stocks. A secret that only a few people 'in the know' knew about and definitely something that could be learned and mastered on its own in order to become a successful trader. Who wouldn't want what I have just written? It sucks people in like a cult - people who just want to learn how to trade which I believe wholeheartedly is a noble and smart endeavour that strikes at the heart of entrepreneurship.
I attended seminars, purchased books, downloaded charting software and even stood up in front of a University presentation being conducted by a well known fund manager in an attempt to argue that his proven value investing philosophy was second to technical analysis. I thought it was the most purest form of generating insight into a stock price because it took it 'already took in all of the factors' - whatever the hell that means.
I would spend hours each night going through the stock chart of every single listed equity trading in the ASX/S&P 200 index (I live in Australia) and would apply various studies in order to determine what to trade the next day. I'd search for elusive breakouts, stocks that were about to hit previous support or resistance levels. The fundamentals didn't bother me because as far as I was concerned, technical analysis already included that and by the time a retail trader gets word of the news about a stock, it has already moved (there is unfortunately an element of truth in that - read on). I didn't really consider the fact that for a chart pattern to develop, the price must have also already moved somewhat.
My false belief as I touched on earlier was supported by my broker and again at the seminars my broker sent me to. In my opinion this was solid information/education because the people telling me were market professionals and much more experienced and educated than I was. I didn't consider that my broker only generates money when I generate fees from executing trades - it never entered my mind that this information could be a load of BS.
Thankfully, I had (and still have) a genuine and almost obsessive passion for business and the financial markets. I love reading company annual reports and conducting research and so in between looking at chart patterns and colouring in lines I would also look at the fundamentals of the business out of pure curiosity. As part of this process, I would pick up on certain things that would get me bullish or bearish about a stock - a product launch, a law suit or an industry forecast for example. As I gained experience trading I would slowly place more and more emphasis on the fundamentals until one day I saw the light.
A stock moves either up, down or sideways. Generally up or down - therefore, any type of analysis is going to be correct roughly 50% of the time. I would view all my profitable trades as solid examples of correctly applying technical analysis and I would view all loosing trades as being mistakes. For me, tefhncial analysis was perfect and when it didn't work it was because I hadn't properly applied it.
After about 2 or 3 years of trading using technical analysis exclusively, I began incorporating more and more fundamental analysis and kind of broke even most of the time. I worked as a Security Guard part-time to fund my life, but my full-time job and career was trading. I say this because for the first few years I really didn't make any serious profits, though I didn't lose much either so I kept persisting.
In my 4th or 5th year of trading I did well as I incorporated more fundamental analysis and less technical analysis but during the GFC in 2008 lost a fair bit of money. I returned to doing security work but still kept trading. Then I came into quite a bit of cash, quit my job and became a 'full-time trader' where I subsequently lost around $80,000 in one year.
I was devastated and about to quit everything and go back to being a security guard when I received a telephone call from Bloomberg one day offering me a free trial of their Professional terminal. I had no idea the cost and didn't ask. The operator figured I was loaded since I had spent $80k on the market in a short period of time and had set-up a Pty Ltd / LLC company for taxation reasons.
Within a few hours a courier arrived at the door with a colourful keyboard and a fingerprint authentication device that looked like something out of a 007 movie. I downloaded Bloomberg and switched on the terminal. My life pretty much changed that moment.
I now had access to the exact same financial news, economic data and research enjoyed by Wall Street brokers. As I said before I didnt quite understand what I had, but as I was about to quit everything anyway I genuinely didn't care. I still remember receiving a breaking news alert on the terminal within the first few moments regarding the very first Takarta airbag recall. I decided to short the stock as a test trade and within the next few months that position alone paid for the next 2 years of terminal access.
I couldn't believe the power I now had and I lived it up big time. I travelled to China, Hong Kong and stayed at luxury hotels. I flew business class and everyone who told me to get a real job and stop gambling on the market now looked at me differently. I had made it as a Day Trader and was now in the class of a 'sophisticated investor ' permitting me to various benefits and investment opportunities.
Truth be told, Day Trading even when successful gets a little lonely and boring. I saw a job advertisement for a boutique Stockbroking firm in Sydney and applied using a few years of broker statements and sent my email via Bloomberg's IM directly to the CEO. I had 3x gruelling interviews and got the job. I didnt do too well at being a broker and actually got put in charge of creating a morning news briefing and research reports for clients. It was at this point I realised my real passion in life was writing about financial news and the stockmarket. To cut a long story short I quit my job as Broker and started my own financial news website- which I have never disclosed on Reddit and will never do so in the future - there is no underlying motive for posting this. I just want to say my point if view.
As a Professional Broker, we did not use technical analysis unless the client requested it OR when determining support and resistance. It just doesn't work for anything else and the level of research, news, analytics and data made available to institutions is considerably better than what is made available to retail traders.
So why is technical analysis promoted so heavily? For a few reasons.
Firstly, your broker only makes profit when you trade. It is therefore in their best interest to get you trading and generating fees as much as possible. In order to get you to do this, they must provide you with some kind of motivation or explanation as to why to buy or sell a stock. The financial news industry is quite different to other news and whilst insider trading is illegal- it is far more common than you would think and comes in various shapes and forms.
I consider insider trading to be acting on information not made available to the general public right now. For me, that includes a news story that has only been published to a select few people who can afford a subscription that costs the same as the price or a new car. The law has a different definition that favours the elite.
I believe that retail traders should have access to the very same information, at the same time, as institutional traders. Organisations such as Bloomberg or Reuters should NOT be allowed to withhold their news stories to subscribers for a period of time like they do. $24k per year for a subscription is ridiculous for most people and places this valuable information well out of reach. This is the kind of information that moves the financial markets - NOT chart patterns resembling a human torso (head & shoulders) or the stars in the night sky (gann).
To put it simply: Fundamental Analysis such as news, financial statements, broker recommendations, industry forecasts, product releases, trademark/copyright registrations, dividend announcements, research reports, law suits, fiscal policy, management changes, new regulations, COVID-19, opinion polls, regulatory action, fines and penalties, patent grants, consumer sentiment, predictions for interest rate changes and other economic calendar events - the list is endless. It is these that moves the financial markets - NOT chart patterns!
Anybody who has worked in a professional level finance job knows what I'm saying is 100% true and correct. It is only uneducated, uninformed, inexperienced retail traders who buy into the technical analysis BS. Unfortunately, many of these traders either get a few wins and genuinely believe their own hype OR are just excellent liars and choose to promote their BS strategy using very professional looking and convincing arguments. I'm certain many will respond to this post calling me an idiot.
I've quit trading and I'm not a broker. I'm an independent financial journalist and have ZERO investment holdings in any listed or non-listed company. I invest my money in AUD because it is my local currency and I own Gold - that's it. I'm 100% independent and I charge $1.00 for 12 months of access to my website which as I said is NOT given out on this reddit account. I've written this very lengthy post to provide some insight into the scam that is technical analysis.
I'll be on for the next 8 hours or so, go ahead and AMA if you have questions. Thanks.
submitted by oz2usa to stocks [link] [comments]

Wrestling Observer Rewind ★ Mar. 18, 2002

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUSLY:
1-7-2002 1-14-2002 1-21-2002 1-28-2002
2-4-2002 2-11-2002 2-18-2002 2-25-2002
3-4-2002 3-11-2002
  • Going into Wrestlemania 18, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the WWF. While the return of the NWO managed to spike a big buyrate for No Way Out and Rock/Hogan is probably gonna be huge for WM buyrates, it hasn't really affected TV ratings in any meaningful way. And this is the big part of the year. That doesn't bode well for the usual decline in business that always comes after Wrestlemania. From here, Dave just spends paragraphs talking about how bad booking over the last year has tanked the company from the peak they were at the previous year and what they should be doing different. And he's not wrong. In retrospect, with 18 years hindsight, pretty much all of this is right on the money. Way back as far as late '97, Dave was pointing out all the cracks starting to form in WCW and was trying to sound the alarm. Here in 2002, he's trying to do the same with WWF and sure enough, he ends up being right. The next two decades have been one continuous slow decline in popularity, for pretty much all the reasons Dave is warning about here. It's all really interesting, but it's not news. It's just business analysis.
  • Which brings us to next week's Wrestlemania. Dave says there's never in the past been a Wrestlemania where the world title match had so little buzz going into it. Jericho as the WWF champion has been rendered completely secondary to the Triple H/Stephanie feud. But as of now, that match is still expected to go on last, even though all the advertising and mainstream publicity for the show is built around the Rock/Hogan match. Even Steve Austin, the biggest PPV draw in company history for the last 4 years, isn't being heavily featured in the promotion of the show (and boy, was he salty about it as it turned out). The NWO angle has pretty much been seen internally as a flop and there's not much further for them to go as a group after the show. After Mania is the brand split, which in theory should freshen things up and lead to some developmental stars being called up. But Austin and Rock are supposed to anchor each show respectively and Rock is expected to take a few months off this summer to film another movie (The Rundown) so that's gonna hurt the star power on whatever show he ends up on.
  • More worrisome is that there have been pay cuts. Several wrestlers were approached this week and asked to take cuts to their downside guarantees. Dave talks about how Vince never wanted to pay anyone guarantees in the first place and only started doing so in 1996 when WCW forced his hand. So far, all the wrestlers asked were developmental stars or former WCW/ECW Alliance members who haven't been used on TV since the Invasion angle ended at Survivor Series. But it's expected more pay cuts are coming, especially for anyone who's contracts are coming due because obviously, no one has any negotiating leverage anymore. Chris Jericho is probably the biggest star who's deal is up for renewal soon and obviously, he's not exactly in a prime spot to play hardball. He's a much bigger star now than he was 3 years ago, so he'll probably still get a raise. But it won't be nearly would he could get if WCW still existed. (For this reason alone, I can't comprehend why anyone would want AEW to fail if you're a wrestling fan. And yet.)
  • The pay cuts seem to be about $25K-per-year each. So for instance, the guys making $125K per year are being cut down to $100K. Then $100K guys down to $75K. Or in the case of the lowest paid guys, the $75K guys are being cut to $52K. WWF tried to soften the blow by saying that if/when these guys start working on TV and working regular house shows, then they start getting merch money and house show cuts and so they'll probably make more than their downside anyway. But anyone who's ever gotten a pay cut knows that's some corporate doublespeak bullshit. With nowhere else to make a living in wrestling, most of these guys are pretty much forced to smile and take it, but needless to say, they aren't happy. These people aren't rich and a $25K-per-year pay cut makes quite a bit a difference. And it's not like WWF needs to do this. They're still very profitable and they just offered the NWO guys monstrously huge contracts. This is just what happens when you have a monopoly on the industry and you don't have to pay your employees fairly. You could. But fuck them, right? (Man, this sure feels prescient in a world where a company light years more profitable now than at any time in its history just fired a bunch of people when they didn't have to.)
  • Oh yeah, back to Wrestlemania preview. Dave runs down all the matches and what we know. Rock, Hogan, and Pat Patterson spent all day together at a gym in Florida last week choreographing their match. Apparently during his comeback house show match with Rikishi in Tampa last week, Hogan broke a rib and tried to keep it secret from everyone, but they found out. He's still expected to work Wrestlemania (he wouldn't miss it under any circumstances) but they're concerned about how much he'll be able to do. Also, because this is Toronto and he's so beloved there, WWF is expecting Hogan to get a huge reaction from the crowd (yeah, that's putting it mildly). Jericho/Triple H on paper should be a great match (they've had some classics together in the past) but the build-up has killed Jericho and the result is a foregone conclusion. Austin/Hall should be fine. UndertakeFlair has had the best build and for storyline reasons, Flair should win. But Dave ain't holding his breath. So on and so forth.
  • Yup, this is definitely a slow news week. Now Dave writes a huge piece on the history of major shows in wrestling and how that led to the birth of Wrestlemania. How Vince gambled everything on the first WM and how closed circuit was such a vital part of the success. Talks about the history of closed circuit with wrestling, with the first national pro wrestling-ish event being broadcast nationally on CCTV was the Inoki/Muhammad Ali match, which featured other wrestling matches on the undercard. The inclusion of Mr. T and Cyndi Lauper were critical to the success of the first Wrestlemania and Roddy Piper's racist promos to Mr. T turned him into an mainstream celebrity along with Hogan. And then WM2 and WM3 and oh god, I'm just realizing as I type this that Dave has written multiple paragraphs about each Wrestlemania. This is fascinating stuff to read as a history buff and I seriously can't recommend it enough if you're subscribed to go read this. But I ain't recapping all that haha.
  • More news on Jerry Jarrett's planned promotion, with the idea of doing $9.95 weekly PPV shows. Jerry and his son Jeff are now both fully involved with this, with the idea that they would be co-owners. Despite rumors, Jerry has denied that Vince Russo is involved in the company, but others are saying he'll be writing for them secretly (as mentioned last week, Time Warner execs only agreed to represent him in his lawsuit with Hulk Hogan if he doesn't work for any other wrestling company, so he can't openly be working with the company). The idea seems to be to pay the wrestlers $1,000 to $2,500 per show and run about 26 shows per year. In the meantime, the wrestlers would be allowed to work any other indies but wouldn't be allowed to work PPV or TV for anyone else. The problem here is the WWA promotion is still trying to gain a foothold in America and they want to use a lot of the same talent and Jeff Jarrett has involvement in both companies. Jeff is reportedly trying to work out an agreement where they can all share stars and get along but Dave says that's problematic when you have two companies using the same guys and trying to book different storylines and run separate PPVs. Jarrett's new company is looking to sign a core group of names to build around and Dave says you damn well better have them signed, because WWF will pluck away anyone who starts to gain any success. Jarrett is said to be interested in signing Scott Steiner, Eddie Guerrero, and Rey Mysterio for the new company. Anyway, Dave crunches the numbers and being very conservative, this new company would need to make at least $125,000 per week on PPV just to break even. And that's being optimistic. Once you take out the PPV company's cut, Dave estimates they would need to pull 31,000 buys at least to even think of breaking even. And again, that's being extremely conservative and assuming this company runs an extremely low-cost production. To have something with good production values that can be taken seriously as competition, you'd probably have to do double that. And even with national television, WCW and ECW weren't doing that many PPV buys by the end. So Dave is skeptical that this Jarrett promotion is gonna manage it without any TV. Not to mention, where are they gonna tape? Multiple cities? Gotta promote them and draw crowds. Dave thinks you'd have to heavily paper the crowd. And it takes months for PPV money to come in, which means Jarrett is gonna have to eat all these costs at the start. Basically, this idea is gonna be difficult to pull off (yup. If Panda Energy hadn't bailed them out, they were gonna be dead within the first 6 months under this plan).
  • Big story about how the Vitor Belfort vs. Chuck Liddell fight has been cancelled. Why? Well, Belfort's lawyers sent a letter to UFC officials claiming that the fighter was sick with a malaria-like disease (ended up being dengue fever) and due to the medication he was on, he wasn't able to train properly. Sounds reasonable enough, yeah? Well....turns out Belfort isn't too sick to collect a paycheck in other ways. Belfort is the newest cast member of a Brazilian reality show called "Casa dor Artistas 2" which is basically exactly like Big Brother, in which a bunch of people are locked in this house with no contact to the outside world and are on camera 24/7 online, with daily edited versions airing on TV. So Belfort has now committed to being locked in this house for the next 90 days for a TV show, which means he couldn't make the fight with Liddell, scheduled for May. The winner of that fight was expected to face Tito Ortiz later this year, and Belfort vs. Ortiz is the big fight everyone has been clamoring for, and has already been postponed or canceled two other times (don't end up getting Belfort/Ortiz until 2005, and it ends up being a controversial split decision win for Ortiz).
  • Former Memphis area wrestler The Dream Machine passed away of a heart attack at age 47. Dave says he was possibly the greatest talker of the last 25 years who never made it big nationally. Dave recaps his career in the 70s and 80s, with lots of quotes from Jim Cornette and Jimmy Hart. I pulled up a promo just outta curiosity.
WATCH: Dream Machine cuts a promo on Dutch Mantel from 1981
  • All Japan Women held its first ever show on PPV this week, while facing an uncertain future. AJW is the 3rd longest-running promotion in the world (behind CMLL and WWF) but they've been struggling financially for years. And at the end of this month, they're losing their TV deal with Fuji Network, which has aired their show for 25 years. Anyway, the PPV was fine but something was missing. Manami Toyota, unquestionably the greatest female wrestler to ever live, stole the show in an excellent match, but otherwise, nothing memorable.
  • Kiyoshi Sagawa passed away at age 79 this week. You probably don't know Sagawa's name, but he was the largest shareholder of NJPW and was the founder of Sagawa Kyubin, which is basically Japan's version of FedEx. Sagawa was a billionaire and owned the largest percentage of NJPW stock. He alone owned 40% of the company. It's believed Sagawa's shares will be bequeathed to Antonio Inoki, who currently holds 15%. This would give him Inoki a 55% stake in the company. But Dave doesn't expect much to change because Sagawa always backed Inoki anyway, so it's not like day-to-day is going to be any different.
  • Eddie Guerrero debuted on the latest NJPW tour, teaming with Minoru Tanaka and Black Tiger. It's interesting because several years ago, Guerrero portrayed the role of Black Tiger. This time, it was played by Silver King. During the match, Guerrero and Black Tiger turned heel on their partner and joined their opponents in a 5-on-1 beatdown of Minoru Tanaka. Word is Guerrero looked really good on this tour so far (yeah, he was on fire during this time. Guerrero only works about 10 shows for NJPW on this tour and then WWF re-hires him and the rest is history).
  • Hayabusa is said to have regained feeling in much of his body and can move his left arm somewhat, after suffering the career-ending injury back in October that left him paralyzed.
  • Speaking of, Atsushi Onita and former FMW star Kodo Fuyuki are working an angle together over the dead FMW promotion. At an indie show, Onita came out and accused Fuyuki and FMW general manager Sakichi Nakamura of mismanaging FMW and using the company's money to make themselves rich while allowing the promotion to die. Onita also talked about how they stopped paying Hayabusa's hospital bills and used the money to enrich themselves. This is all leading up to Onita vs. Fuyuki soon, and of course Onita is using Hayabusa's injury as part of his angle. Because Onita is the carniest carny to ever carny.
  • A made-for-TV movie about the life of Nobuhiko Takada and his marriage to TV personality Aki Mukai aired in Japan this week and was a huge ratings hit. Takada of course is a former pro wrestler turned MMA fighter who, frankly, should have stuck to worked fights because his reputation as a shoot fighter has been destroyed time and again in real shoots. He married Mukai, who is the host of a popular morning TV show (she's basically Japan's Katie Couric, Dave says) and she has been battling cancer recently. The movie was a tearjerker story about their inability to have children due to her cancer. The couple is looking to adopt a kid in the U.S. because adoption is apparently extremely difficult in Japan.
  • Dan Severn regained the NWA title from Shinya Hashimoto at a Zero-One show in Japan this week. NWA president Jim Miller was there and a NWA Jersey (and American) referee officiated the match. The match ended with a screwjob finish, with the American ref fast-counting Hashimoto to give Severn the victory, which the fans haaaaaated and Dave thinks pretty well tarnishes whatever legacy the NWA title still has, in the one country where fans still sorta respect that belt. Dave says the idea here is Hashimoto is such a bigger star than Severn that he couldn't feasibly do a clean job to him in his own promotion. But Hashimoto doesn't want to go to America and defend the NWA title on a bunch of tiny indie shows for 100 people either, so he agreed to drop it back to Severn this way.
  • Remember that Matrats promotion Eric Bischoff was involved in that sorta disappeared off the radar? It's not dead! Yet. Bischoff, who hates dirt sheets, thinks they're all lies, and has never confided in Dave Meltzer, did an interview with the Wrestling Observer website this week and talked about the plans for the company. It has been renamed Next Generation Wrestling and Bischoff talked as if they still plan to go into production for a TV series later this summer, but he admitted everything isn't yet finalized. Bischoff said the matches won't have pinfalls or submissions but will instead of have ringside judges awarding points for creativity and execution. Dave doesn't seem to be super on board with this concept (yeah, it goes nowhere).
  • WWA promoter Andrew McManus claimed after the PPV disaster in Las Vegas that he would never again advertise anyone for a show that he doesn't have signed to a contract. So needless to say, the upcoming tour in Australia has names like Sid Vicious, Jeff Jarrett, Road Dogg, Buff Bagwell, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Scott Steiner, Sabu, Juventud Guerrera, and others being promoted. Needless to say, almost none of them have contracts with this company (most of them end up working the shows, but several do not). Speaking of WWA, after claiming they didn't get paid for their appearances at the Vegas show, both Terry Taylor and Larry Zbyszko have now been paid.
  • Sid Vicious is in a commercial for an Alabama chain of restaurants called Jack's Hamburgers. The commercial shows a guy golfing when Sid comes in and slams him. Then it says "some things don't mix, like golf and wrestling" but then it says some things like the new Jack's bacon and cheddar do mix. The commercial ends with the golfer choking Sid with his golf club. I can't find this commercial, so I'm counting on you Wreddit. FIND THIS VIDEO! I need this in my life.
  • Remember the story last week about the confrontation at the WWA show between Bischoff and Juventud Guerrera about a petition in WCW that Guerrera signed to have Bischoff fired? Well Dave has more details. The petition wasn't actually to get Bischoff fired, necessarily. After the incident at Bash at the Beach 2000 with Hogan, naturally, Bischoff took Hogan's side and it led to a big blow-up argument between he and Vince Russo. As a result, Bischoff pretty much walked out and said, "Here, let Russo run it and watch him hang himself." Which, of course, he inevitably did. But the point is, when Bischoff walked out, it looked as if there was going to be yet another power-change in WCW. Several of the wrestlers were fed up with their bosses changing on a monthly basis and never knowing who was in charge. So they put together a petition to give to Brad Siegel, basically asking him to give Russo a fair chance to succeed on his own and to let him remain in power in the wake of the Bischoff/Russo split. Bischoff wasn't even mentioned in the petition, it was mostly just a "don't fire Russo yet" petition. Of course, in siding with Russo to be the one in charge, that meant they were siding against Bischoff being in charge, even if that wasn't explicitly spelled out in the petition. Anyway, it apparently worked. Russo got to remain in power while Bischoff went home again. And then Russo spent the next few months booking himself to be WCW champion and screwing up everything else and within a few months, all those same guys were wishing Bischoff would come back. Anyway, a lot of people at the WWA show thought it was funny that Bischoff lashed out at Guerrera over it, because several other WCW wrestlers at the time, including Scott Steiner, also signed it.
  • XWF's planned house shows for later this month in Michigan and Ohio have been cancelled. Everyone has pretty much been told to sit tight for now until September and have been given hints that a TV deal is imminent. But people have been saying that since this promotion launched (yeah, this obviously never happens. Unbeknownst to anyone, XWF is already dead at this point, they never ran another show).
  • The plan for now (and it could always change again) is that the brand split will finally take place on the 3/25 Raw the week after Wrestlemania. It was originally supposed to be the very next night but they once again pushed it back a week, so that's where we stand for now. Promotional material for the Backlash PPV is already out and references Vince owning Raw and Flair owning Smackdown (and funny enough, it ends up going the other way) and split house shows are already scheduled for April. Dave still hates the draft idea because when guys (like Hurricane, for example) get drafted 28th, that immediately establishes them in the fans eyes as lower-card nobodies. The idea of a brand split is that it will force them to push new people and create new stars, but they've spent so long telling fans that only 3 or 4 guys matter and everyone else is minor talent. Doing a draft where guys get picked way down near the bottom just hurts them more and makes it harder to rebuild them as major players.
  • Notes from Smackdown: Flair had a brawl with Undertaker and during the fight, there was a "fan" played by indie wrestler Paul London who got punched. London also worked a dark match against Perry Saturn at the show. Rock returned, with not a scratch on him after being murderdeathkilled in an ambulance by the NWO a couple weeks ago. Rock challenged Hogan to face him right then and there, but of course that didn't happen because c'mon. Vince isn't crazy enough to take Hogan's first televised WWF match in 8 years and just give it away on free TV less than a week before Wrestlemania, right?
WATCH: Perry Saturn vs. Paul London - 2002
  • Notes from Raw: Dave calls it Raw Is Dog Shit. Oh, this should be fun. Turns out it was literally dog shit. The show was built around Triple H and Stephanie fighting for custody of their dog Lucy and at one point, it pooped on the floor. Stephanie ordered Jericho to walk the dog, because ya know, gotta build up the world champion for his Wrestlemania main event next week. The rest of the show was built around Vince and Flair in a boardroom arguing over ownership of the company with the board of directors. Jericho (while running another errand for Stephanie) accidentally runs over the dog. Riveting television here. They said the dog had a broken leg, which leads Dave to point out that Rock got practically murdered by the NWO a few weeks ago and we never got a medical update on his condition (he just sorta returned and was fine), but we found out about the dog's medical condition just minutes after it happened. As a result, Triple H came out and started attacking Stephanie, pretty much committing spousal abuse while the crowd cheered wildly, leading to Jericho attacking Triple H's quad with a sledgehammer, which would have been a fine angle if it hadn't been proceeded by weeks of making Jericho into Stephanie's whipping boy. And the main event was the 3-on-2 of the NWO vs. Austin & Rock. So yes, turns out Vince is crazy enough to book Hogan's comeback WWF match on a throwaway Raw 6 days before the biggest show of the year on PPV with no buildup whatsoever. It's the first time ever that Hogan and Austin have ever squared off against each other in a match (and it never happened again). Crowd was way into Hogan and Nash as well, since they were in his hometown.
  • There's a Divas special airing on UPN this week and if it does strong ratings, UPN is interested in doing a whole Divas series. Dave suspects that won't hold up long in the ratings. But for what it's worth, the original idea for Smackdown waaaaay back when it was originally conceived was for it to be an all-women's show based around Sable (who was drawing monster ratings for her segments at the time). They even held auditions for new women before scrapping the idea and making it a second show like Raw.
  • WWF's recent show in Japan was supposed to air on the TV-Tokyo network but it got canceled and then the network announced it was cancelling all WWF programming on the station. Turns out there was a big misunderstanding. The entire show was filmed by the network and they planned to broadcast it (with Keiji Muto doing commentary). WWF was under the impression that the show was being filmed only so they could air highlights of it as part of a sports recap show or highlight package (basically just a quick few minutes of clips on the news). WWF didn't approve for this show (a house show without all the bells and whistles) to be aired on TV in full, and when they found out, they contacted the network and said.....hey, uh, no. The network was pissed and in response, they canceled ALL WWF programming, effective immediately. This was the channel that aired Raw and Smackdown and this cancellation completely eliminates WWF's only television exposure in Japan.
  • Speaking of that show, before the event, Antonio Inoki told the media that he hated what WWF had become and expected the show to be a flop. He specifically talked about the Vince McMahon kiss-my-ass club angle, with Jim Ross and William Regal kissing Vince's ass and said that sort of product would never get over in Japan and thus the show would be a failure. As we learned last week, it was actually a HUGE success. In response, Inoki has admitted he was wrong and says that he has lessons he needs to learn from WWF and maybe he shouldn't have been so dismissive of their style. Dave is flabbergasted. He talks about when AAA came to the U.S. in 1993 and outdrew both WWF and WCW by a huge margin for several shows. Can you imagine if Vince McMahon had looked at that and admitted that maybe he could have learned something from it rather than ignoring it? ECW and WCW sure learned from it, and those Lucha Libre stars became a huge part of their success in later years, while WWF still hasn't learned anything from it 9 years later.
  • Nash and Hall are pushing hard for X-Pac to be included in the NWO and most people in the company figure it's inevitable that it will happen because Nash is pretty much undefeated in backstage political battles. He always gets what he wants somehow. Last Dave heard, X-Pac was expected to interfere at Wrestlemania in some fashion and then join the group the next night on Raw (didn't quite happen like that, but close). Lots of people in the locker room aren't happy about it because, for starters, it proves that Nash is still there to politic for his friends. And also, prior to his injury, X-Pac had fallen to a lower-card nobody status. So there's a lot of people not happy that he's expected to return and leap-frog the entire locker room and be put in the main event faction ahead of everyone else because of who his friends are.
  • Mick Foley signed a book deal to publish his first fiction novel, which will be titled "Tietam Brown." It's expected to be out in early 2003 and it's not about wrestling. That's all Dave seems to know so far. Foley is also now the full-time host of TNN's Robot Wars show. Foley was also involved in a TV project that was being shopped around in which he would play a former pro wrestler adjusting to real life now that he's retired. Barry Blaustein, who directed Beyond The Mat, was involved and ABC was interested, but they eventually passed and the idea seems to have died (this is basically what that new Big Show show is on Netflix. The Observer Rewind Curious Timing Effect™ strikes again.).
  • An idea that was pitched for Wrestlemania was for Stephanie to reveal she had been cheating on Triple H with Chris Jericho. Of course, that didn't happen. Dave talks about the Triple H/Kurt Angle storyline from a couple years ago where that almost happened but Triple H nixed it because it wouldn't be "believable" that Stephanie would cheat on him with Kurt Angle....a goddamn Olympic hero and the most legitimately bad ass athlete in the entire company. So of course, it wouldn't make sense for her to cheat on him with Jericho either. Sure, why not?
  • On OVW television, they hinted that Ric Flair will be coming in soon to team with his son David against Prototype and Sean O'Haire. Looks to be scheduled for next month (indeed, this does happen but for the life of me, I can't find video of it).
  • Another note from Eric Bischoff's interview with the Observer website, a dirt sheet website ran by a guy who he definitely never would talk to. Bischoff seems to be angling for a WWF job, saying contrary to popular belief, he wouldn't even ask for that much money to do it. He just wants to do something fun. He said they made him an offer last year, right when the Invasion angle was starting, but said he turned it down because he wasn't in good shape and didn't want to appear on TV. That's the story now. At the time, a year ago, Bischoff denied that he was ever given an offer and said he would never consider working for WWF. Dave says, in Eric's defense, the storyline they pitched last year was horrible and Bischoff was right to turn it down (they wanted him to come in and work a match with Vince at the Invasion PPV, get his ass beat, lose, and then that would be it). Adding Bischoff to the NWO angle now would be the obvious idea, but Dave says "invasion" angles never work in WWF because Vince McMahon doesn't commit to them, so adding Bischoff would likely just be another disappointment added to an already disappointing NWO return.
  • WWF confiscated a "Nash is horrible" sign at the TV tapings this week. Dave doesn't get it. In the past, WWF used to criticize WCW like crazy for "censoring" fans and violating their freedom of expression and all that shit. But then they started doing it too. At first, it was anti-Rock signs that were being taken away, which Dave can kinda understand because he's a top babyface. But Nash is a heel. Don't you want people bringing signs trashing them?
  • Scott Steiner's WWF physical showed several health issues that still need to be addressed before they sign him. The deal isn't dead yet and Steiner could still come in eventually, but that's the situation right now.
  • WWF has reached out to both Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio and talked to them about coming in for the new cruiserweight division. Eddie has been busting his ass on the indies in hopes of getting re-hired while Rey has been working in Puerto Rico as of late.
WEDNESDAY: Fallout from Wrestlemania 18, the Hogan/Rock match, Steve Austin walks out (the first time), Vince McMahon talks about failed plan to bring Bret Hart in for Wrestlemania, and more...
submitted by daprice82 to SquaredCircle [link] [comments]

Growing A Blog Network To >$25,000 A Month! - June 2020 - $4744/$25,000.

So this is my second monthly update post for Reddit and it is essentially a text-based version of my monthly update video that I post too. Income is down this month but I think that it is due to having so many returns for the Amazon Affiliate Program but thankfully, returns have normalized towards the middle/end of June so I am hoping that July won't have this issue. My theory is that people started using their stimulus cheques to purchase the professional level gear in one of the niches that I have an affiliate blog in and then ended up returning the items as they realized they only needed the amateur level gear or something.
My income screenshots for the month of June are below but the site level income screenshots later in the article are for Amazon.com only as it makes up around 75% of my income and going into the other Amazon storefronts to get screenshots for their trackers is a pain.
Previous Updates
May 2020
Just a few points to quickly cover from FAQs from last month's update. I don't give out any of the actual URLs for my affiliate blogs as it is too easy to use a tool like AHRefs to scan them and duplicate the more profitable keywords with your own articles on your own sites. I had a number of people reaching out last month as they wanted to see what my affiliate blogs look like but I go over examples of how I format my affiliate and display ad articles in this video and little to nothing has changed in the layout of my articles since publishing that.
I also had a few people reaching out and asking what my daily workflow looks like as an affiliate blogger and this a day in the life video pretty much covers it. I am still in the scaling phase for my blogs so doing a large amount of the work myself while outsourcing various tasks where possible too. I also had a bunch of people reaching out and asking how they could get started with affiliate blogging and I published this Quora answer to a similar question over the weekend that's almost 4000 words that may be helpful.
Generation One Domains
My generation one domains use a keyword research method that is not as efficient as it once was due to the 4th May 2020 Google update to their algorithm. Additionally, many of these first-generation domains were tests to transition from old school automated black hat SEO to a more Google-friendly method of off-page SEO.
Domain 1 - $164
- Analytics
- Income
- Wordcount
Nothing has changed for this domain since the May 2020 update due to it having been hit by the Google Media algorithm update as well as being in a niche where the April 2020 Amazon Affiliate commission cuts reduced its income by around 60%. I don't plan to work on this domain anymore due to this and I haven't added a new article to it since early 2018 if I remember correctly. I am happy with it ticking over bringing in $164 a month from now on as the domain has been profitable for a while now. It's just a shame that just as its traffic starts to pick up, Amazon decide to cut their commission rates for its niche else I think this domain would be >$500 per month now.
Domain 2 - $1179
- Analytics
- Income
- Wordcount
- Dedicated Site Report Video
Similar to domain 1 covered above, nothing has changed for this domain since the May 2020 update and I haven't published a new article to the domain since September 2019. It has also been hit negatively by two Google updates but thankfully the Google update in November 2019 recovered it from the negative updates and it's now doing better than ever. I put a video up on what to expect for your first six months of blogging featuring this domain as I feel that it is likley the best example that I have from my current portfolio for anyone wanting to get started with affiliate blogging.
Domain 3 - $1952
- Analytics
- Income
- Wordcount
- Dedicated Site Report Video
Although I have not actually published any new content on this domain in the month of June, I have been researching some new products that have been confirmed for the niche. The regular teaser videos are on YouTube with photos on the brands social media accounts but there is no real information on the specs, price, or release date for the items. Out of the three, I think two will be really good and popular within the niche so once I have more info I will be putting out more content for them but the third item seems to be a more expensive version of one of their current items so not sure how that one will do.
The community based around this particular niche has been putting out a bunch of speculation regarding price, specs, and release date but I can't find anything solid from the actual brand. As we are already a week into July I doubt they will be released this month now but time will tell. Even if the brand releasing these products would just confirm the specs and price I can start knocking out the bare bones of some articles with the correct information but until then I will just focus on growing my newer domains.
I have noticed a compeating domain in this niche that seems to have used a tool like AHRefs to scan my domain and pull the keywords that it is ranking in Google for. The new compeating domain is only publishing articles targeting keywords that my domain is already ranking in the top three of Google for but their on-page SEO is not as good as mine and from what I can tell, they are not doing any off-page SEO either.
Right now I am not taking this compeating domain as a threat but if they do start to build backlinks to their content and fix the on-page SEO issues they are having I may have to spend some cash on this domain to get it stronger backlinks so it can keep ranking for the terms it is pulling traffic for.
Domain 4 - $284
- Analytics
- Income
- Wordcount
This domain is the one I started in January 2020 and it surprisingly saw some really solid growth in both traffic and income considering the problems it is having. Essentially, there is an issue with the Google indexing system right now that they have confirmed they are aware of but seem to be struggling to fix. They tweeted out at the start of June that they had fixed the issue but the comments on the twitter post and my own experience contradict this with some people on twitter saying that the "fix" actually made it worse for their domain.
This is a screenshot of this domains coverage tab from my Google Search Console and as you can see from the verticle bars, there was a dip in the pages that were excluded from the Google Index when I used the force index option in Search Console but Google kicked the pages backout of their index a few days later again. It's a shame because I have a bunch of keywords ready to go for this domain but I don't want to put the time and effort into publishing them only for them to not get indexed in Google and not be able to pull traffic and make money so I will be waiting until Google fix the issue.
I have had a bunch of people reaching out about this issue and how to fix it but it does just seem to be a gamble right now. Force indexing in Google Search Console fixed this issue for this domain for around a week before Google kicked the articles out of their index, for Domain 5 I used the exact same force indexing system and it fixed the issue for the domain. I'm just hoping that Google can work out what's actually wrong and fix it asap.
Domain 5 - $1.87
- Analytics - Google Traffic
- Analytics - Pinterest Traffic
- Income
- Wordcount
This is the domain that I launched on 1st May 2020 only for Google to release their 4th May 2020 update and make the keywords that I was targeting on the domain much higher competition. For this niche the Google update seems to have given sites like YouTube, Reddit, Quora, and Amazon much more weight in the SERPs and pushed them really high on page one. Although Domain 3 was also hit by this update dropping by around 20% in traffic (starting to see some recovery now), that niche was not hit anywhere near as badly as this one and I can definitely see how some people were reporting >80% traffic drops back in May for their blogs after taking a more in-depth look of how the update affected this niche.
All of the keyword research for this domain that was done in April is pretty much useless now due to the update. That said though, I have spend some time using my post 4th May update keyword research method to try and find keywords to grow this domain in the future once I am done with Domain 6. Although I have been able to find around 50, it is much harder to do in this niche now due to the way the May 4th update hit it.
I keep flip-flopping between trying to find more keywords to get it up to 10,000 monthly sessions so I can get it on Ezoic or Monumetric for the higher display ad income or just scrapping it and letting it die and going with a new niche for my display ad project. I am kind of using keyword research for this project as a way to break up the monotony for churning out the articles for Domain 6 though. I basically smash out an article for Domain 6 and then take a little break doing keyword research for this domain so I will see how many actionable keywords I have by the time Domain 6 is finished and I need something new to focus on content-wise.
One of my friends who is more experienced with informational intent keywords for display ad sites has a theory that this may just be an extension to the Google Sandbox effect for some niches/keyword combos. He is having the same issue with his latest domain and has sunk much more cash into his project than I have for mine. I'm not sure if this will pan out but there's not really anything else to do with the keywords already published on the domain than wait and see if it does pick up at the >6 months of age mark or not.
Generation Two Domains
My second generation domains are build using a keyword research method that I am developing after the 4th May 2020 Google update that affected the way I did keyword research for my first-generation affiliate domains above. These domains are also based around being smaller niche sites rather than large multi-niche sites so if a competitor does scan my domains with a tool such as AHRefs, they only get a small portion of the keywords for my full money site network.
Domain 6
- Wordcount
This domain has been my main focus for July and it was launched around the 1st June with the Wordcount count above. I have freelance writers helping me with the content for this domain and they are focusing on the longer buyer guide type posts for higher search volume/higher competition keywords while I am focusing on trying to knock out 50 articles using the zero search volume strategy that I have been playing with over the years.
The keywords that my freelance writers are working on are essentially a proof of concept for a theory I have for keyword research after the Google 4th May update and if it works then I will move forward with that method for my affiliate sites. The articles that I am focusing on are based around the latest version of the zero search volume strategy on the theory that as keyword tools usually say the keyword gets zero searches, most people ignore it and they tend to be lower competition and much easier to rank for.
From the test batches of these keywords that I have been putting on my older domains, these keywords do tend to get traffic, usually, around >50 hits per month but they don't require backlinking to actually rank in Google. Although 50 hits per month is not much, the last round of this strategy that I tried on domain 3 are running at around $100 per 1000 hits to the domain so with the right item price point, 20 of these articles can potentially bring in $100 a month and they are usually 1000-1500 words rather than 2000-4000 words too. Although its slightly different, Phil who runs this case study has confirmed that he uses a similar keyword research method and has managed to have his second >$500 month on a domain that is only six months old.
If this test batch of the zero search volume keywords works then I am actually considering making domain 7 based around nothing but these keywords with zero backlinks to it too as it can be another way to scale. As the method can be used for both affiliate and display ad keywords, I might try to use the method to try find keywords for Domain 5 too but as its a display ad site, the RPM might be too low to make it worth it.
submitted by shaun-m to Blogging [link] [comments]

My Gambling addiction (21yrs old, must read)

I’m not usually one to get on reddit and post something but here goes nothing.
This is a recount of the past 3.5 years of my gambling addiction
FYI - grammer is shit
​
It was slowly coming up to my 18th birthday and I couldn‘t wait as I knew I could legally go to the casino. On my day of first going to the casino I was so excited as I saw all the flashing lights and jackpot noises. I only ever played blackjack, so I started there on the $10 or $20 table and won over $200 and I was quite happy. Ended up losing a few 100 that night. I went home around 2am after all my mates were out clubbing. There is countless times when I’ve lied about being in the casino to mates who were out clubbing, friends and family.
Ive got a very addicting personality aswell which does not help.
Over this 3.5year period I was on a rough pay check of $1600 clear into my account every fortnight on average. The first year between 18-19 i would play pokies and put money on greyhounds every week. I would spend my pay check sometimes within the first few days.
i never saved anything,
When I first lost $500 I was very mad with myself and couldn’t believe I could do that to myself. By the time I’m 19-20 im losing $2000 in one sitting regularly and I still can’t believe I keep going back. This would happen once or twice a month.
i would have deposits on sportsbet in total which would be over $20000K in the first two years of gambling. My Total loses at casinos in couple states of Australia would be over $35000, my total loses online casinos and other punting sites and pubs would be around $30000.
I’ve had some pretty crazy win/loss moments over the past 3.5yrs, which some I just couldn’t believe happened.
I got a personal loan out aswell which currently has around $12,000 owing but very happy with myself to say I’ve been gamble free for a month and never going to gamble again.
This will be one of the biggest lessons I’ll ever learn in life but I’ll always stay positive and keep looking forward
I’m currently 21 and have just started a full time position with a good salary and can say my life has changed
​
Thanks heaps for reading,
Please if you have any comments or any stories id love to hear them!
submitted by Lifehaschanged2020 to u/Lifehaschanged2020 [link] [comments]

Meet the Sharemarket's Corona Generation

https://www.afr.com/wealth/personal-finance/meet-the-sharemarket-s-corona-generation-20200610-p551dz
On Wednesday morning, moments before the market opened for trading, Will Bennett, a moderator of a popular Facebook stock trading group, made a "public service announcement".
The vast majority of the group's 23,700 members were just a few weeks into their trading careers and with SPI Futures pointing towards a 1.4 per cent fall, Bennett tried to prepare them for what he anticipated would be their first bloodbath session.
"Remember markets go up AND down," he said. "Don't make emotional decisions and DON'T PANIC SELL if selling is not part of your plan."
Not all the members of the group were worried. One trader's down day is another's top-up day and most were itching to buy more of their favourite stocks.
But as the session came to a close, the market had turned and rallied to end in the green.
"Today was meant to be the day that it came crashing down and it turned out to be just fine," the 25-year-old from South Melbourne told AFR Weekend with a mixture of surprise and guilt.
"I have no sensible stocks," admits Bennett, who had held blue-chip stocks for years until he sold out last September, only to re-enter the market with a bet on a penny stock which has crashed and burned.
Another trade in buy now, pay later (BNPL) player Zip Ltd has soared to cover his $4000 loss. Zip was more actively traded on Commsec this week.
"I should be getting punished. It should not be this easy," says Bennett.
Bennett has time on his hands and has been stuck at home. He doesn't drink or smoke – and the gyms are closed. So he watches the market all day.
He's also agreed to help as a moderator of the ASX Stock Tips Group that has grown from 15,000 to 23,700 members in 12 weeks to become Facebook's largest Australian share trading forum.
There they share ideas, memes and seek validation for the bets they're placing into a market that has gone up like a rocket, but which the experts have repeatedly warned is becoming detached from reality.
Market watchers say there's nothing particularly new or interesting about an influx of individuals being lured to the stock market in search of quick profits.
But the nature of the coronavirus outbreak – in crashing the market and confining entire populations to their homes – has unleashed forces of speculation the likes of which we have never seen before.
In the United States, millions of Americans have opened trading accounts with popular trading app Robinhood. But from the time the S&P500 bottomed on March 23, the number of active accounts has surged by 70 per cent to 37.1 million.

Zero-cost brokerage

Robinhood's model of zero-cost brokerage has made it cheap and easy for anyone to trade the market. Controversially, it makes its money by directing the orders to high-frequency trading firms that are in turn able to profit from the activity.
Meanwhile, Japanese investors are shedding their decades-long aversion to stocks while South Korean retail investors have also stormed back into the market.
Australia's market structure, in which one exchange dominates, makes it less conducive to the zero-cost brokerage model.
But that's done little to deter a new generation of young traders, nor has March's harrowing correction.
Since late March, Commsec, the largest retail broker, has grown its share of trading by an enormous 1.2 per cent to 4.8 per cent, according to the popular market newsletter, the Coppo Report.
The last time the market crashed badly, in 2008, middle men with margin loans swore off stocks for good after their Babcock & Brown shares blew up.
This time it has had the opposite effect. The coronavirus crash put the stock market on a once in a life-time introductory sale while the volatility added the potential to get rich quick.
So they may be holed up at home in their bedrooms, but newbie traders are having the time of their lives.
"Z1p your f**cking spacesuits up and give your wife's boyfriend one more kiss on the lips because we're going to the MOON today boys," wrote a poster on Reddit stock forum on Wednesday.
The newbies are enthusiastically gravitating to the BNPL darlings, like Zip and Afterpay that are up six times from their late March lows.
But they have also embraced the bargain-hunting tactics of value investors and have rushed to bet on a recovery in the beaten-up travel sector.
Broker activity shows a surge of trading from retail broker firms in stocks such as Flight Centre and Webjet.
Those businesses were forced to raise hundreds of millions of dollars of expensive emergency capital in the depths of the crisis.
But their share prices have since recovered to levels that seem to defy the reality of the situation.

Bloodbath arrives

That was until Thursday, when broker downgrades from the big end of town triggered a sell-off in the travel stocks,
And on Friday, the bloodbath arrived after Wall Street's worst session since March.
Flight Centre and Webjet were pulverised – falling by 12 per cent, while the big BNPL names were down 8 per cent before rallying to pare back half the losses.
"Suing whoever said stocks only go up," said one poster. "Good time to buy. but got no money. Deleting commsec for one month"
Bennett says the activity was chaotic, with many traders posting comments of denial and despair. Their anxiety wasn't helped by glitches on overloaded trading platforms.
"Many traders have only experienced the market rising, but they haven't followed the golden rule to diversify and now they're in for a nasty surprise."
Until this week, the little guy was well and truly sticking it to the big end of town.
An analysis by the Coppo Report showed retail stockbroking firms have been net buyers of $7.4 billion of stock since February 20, while institutional brokers were net sellers of $11.2 billion.
"To call them the 'dumb money' ... is just insulting" the report's author Richard Coppleson wrote.
The similarities to the US are uncanny.
While the world's greatest investor, Warren Buffett, dumped his airline stocks in March, retail investors have rushed in the sector, which has tripled from its lows.
The Oracle of Omaha, an inspiration for so many generations of investors, has degenerated into a meme, as day traders high on profits and low on humility openly mock him.
"The big sharks are dumb. The economy is in great shape, best it’s ever been," said one poster on the Facebook forum.
Robinhood traders also bid up shares of broke car rental company Hertz, which has gained an incredible 800 per cent since declaring bankruptcy in May and rendering the common stock all but worthless.
They also shifted their bets away from previously hot stocks like Elon Musk's Tesla in favour of the Ford Motor Company.
Australian novice traders are also finding their feet and learning that stocks can be bought and sold on the same day, but not in the evening.
These newbie traders want and need help but not from the experts, who haven't excelled themselves in calling the market.
The commentary that the stock market is overheated, they believe, is motivated by institutions that want to get back into the market at a lower price.
And Bennett agrees there are many on the sidelines that are "salty" they've missed the rally.
Some traders are not taking kindly to insinuations that they don't know what they're doing, or they need looking after.
An ABC segment carrying a warning from regulators about the risks facing inexperienced day traders was mostly met with ridicule on a Reddit site where it was posted.

'We know we're idiots'

"Tells people not to invest, then shows people making money," said one poster.
"I'm surprised they picked someone who is only up 35 per cent. There are a lot of people making way more than that. Hell, my zip is up 380 per cent and I didn't time it that well."
Another said the regulator and the government might be worried that ordinary Australians were going to work out how poorly their superannuation had been managed after discovering how easy it was to make money trading stocks.
"I know how much money I pay in each quarter and the shitty returns they’re making on my behalf."
As the market soared and more winners than losers have been created, a counter-culture of self-assured young day traders is forming.
One female who preferred to remain anonymous says she is concerned about the level of sexism among traders. There may be no physical trading room floor but she says she's put off by comments in the virtual trading community.
Another major concern, she says, is "young investors gambling $10,000 of their just released COVID support relief package out of their super".
"I’m not kidding, it is happening a lot at the moment," she says.
"There are people 'working from home' who are bored, have downtime, want to learn a new skill, are aware that the market is technically down, and I feel worried about the level they are gambling."
Lord of Ruin, who moderates the increasingly popular ASX_bets Reddit site, says he doesn't believe there's much difference between the traders of today and those that have made and lost their fortunes in the past.
With one exception, social media has brought more "introspection".
"Yes we're idiots, but we know we're idiots, now look at my meme about stodgy central bankers firing bank notes into a crowd of already rich people."
Lord of Ruin, who is in his mid-30s and still working in a technical field, says retail investors "are getting all the thanks" for the rising market.
He says the market remains a dangerous place for individual investors who are preyed on by pump and dumpers.
"Only they don't cold-call you from a boiler room anymore, they leave comments in your forums and subreddits while moderators play Whack-a-mole."
There are valid reasons why individuals have rushed into the market and why online forums like ASX Stock Tips, exuberance and all, have proved useful in guiding individuals into the stock market.
The last time the stock market crashed, Westpac was prepared to pay anxious savers 8 per cent to keep their money safe. This time the bank is paying you close to nothing. The opportunity cost of risking money in the market is lower than it has ever been.
"People have a heap of money. They have saved a heap in this lockdown and they don’t want to earn $2 a month at the bank," says Bennett.
"They are seeing other people making a lot of money and they feel they are missing out."
While he says he's not accessed his superannuation early, he admits it's been "tempting" and more bullish investors are tapping the banks for investment loans.
For many investors, the COVID crash gave them the confidence to put their savings to work as other investments such as a property remain out of reach for now.
Sian Gard from Bendigo, who is in her early 40s, has also embraced the share market and the exchange of ideas on the forum.
Gard works in media and after doing her finances late last year she was determined to find an alternative source of wealth creation so she would have enough funds to retire.
"I need to diversify my income stream and looked at the banking sector and what I was getting. It was quite depressing. This was not going to get me anywhere."
She admits being "petrified" making her first stock purchase, but a small position on Point Bet Holdings has worked spectacularly well – rising from $1.91 to $7.
"I didn't invest a huge amount but that's $3000 I haven't had to work for," she says.
Gard says she is "a risk-taker but it has to be calculated".
"I feel the same about the market and I try to make sensible decisions. I am trying to look after myself."
She says she's enjoying the intellectual challenge of working out which stocks to buy but in particular she's revelling in the "the financial empowerment".
"I am going to do this with my money, and if it bombs it's my fault."
submitted by HGCDLLM to AusFinance [link] [comments]

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