Are you an affiliate marketer that is sick of making Amazon profit and fighting against a plethora of other Amazon Affiliate marketers, we have the BEST alternative to Amazon affliates. We also know affiliate networks that pay higher commission than Amazon so you can earn more money.
What is the best Amazon Affiliate alternative?
The best alternative to Amazon and a site that pays more commission on sales is FlexOffers. We like to use FlexOffers because you get a variety of payment options, directly from the retail stores themselves. Flexoffers gives you a wider variety of products and services to use on your affiliate linked blog.
We prefer to use FlexOffers because they pay a higher commission than Amazon. It also varies from store to store on how much you get paid. Another major reason we prefer using FlexOffers to as opposed to other affiliate networks is they have affiliate deals with stores that sell high ticket items, which is something lacking on Amazon. With FlexOffers, you can make commission from high end luxury brands such as Dior or Gucci, but with Amazon…you are limited to what exists on their marketplace. Depending on your niche, you may find FlexOffers to be more flexible to your affiliate needs (no pun intended)
A lot of people have been ordering sneakers from Size? UK and are wondering if Size? Sells fake sneaker or real sneakers. Is Size? UK legit? We answer that question and provide some insight on this popular sneaker store.
Size? UK is a european fashion store that has a long history of offering exclusive sneakers and high end items. Size? UK also has a large selection of luxury clothing that tailor to the streetwear community. Size? UK has been in business for over twenty years, providing high end clothing to their customers and offering fantastic customer service
Much like other retailers, Size? has a perpetual sale section and they have deep discounts seasonally as well. If you are reading this article, Size? Is currently having a huge sale that be found here
The movie “The Social Network” was a smash hit and gave the general public a good understanding of how Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. If you haven’t seen the movie, take a look at the Facebook Wiki and educate yourself on it’s history. The story told in the movie is one we have been questioning lately as our research indicates that Facebook may have borrowed some ideas from an employee management system known as About Face, who owned the domain facebook.com at the time.
What we are proposing about Facebook and it’s history is just speculation from internet archive digging we have done, don’t take this too seriously.
Facebook didn’t start as the Facebook we know now, they went through some name changes as the versions of Facebook advanced. It was initially called Facemash in 2003 and this is when Zuckerberg first developed the app. At this stage of Facebooks life, it was comparible to the once famed website “Hot Or Not” which allowed you to rate girls and guys with a “hot” or “not” rating.
Let us fast forward our story to 2005 when thefacebook.com acquired Facebook.com for $200,000 USD. The company was known as About Face, a website for companies to have an online yearbook of sorts to help track pictures and details about co-workers. This was the logical choice for Facebook, shortening the domain made sense. However, is it possible they had been eyeing this website for a lot longer?
Our research shows that About Face may have been the inspiration for the shift in Facebook’s early development.
The About Face logo
“AboutFace Corporation wants to help your organization become more efficient and effective. Our software solutions make it easy for you to manage and publish your most important information. This increases communication so that people have the information they need to do their jobs more easily and effectively with a minimum of frustration and re-inventing of the wheel.” – About Face 2001 Mission Statement
About Face in 2003
About Face was created in 2001 and they were the primary owners of the Facebook.com domain. According to the facebook.com WHOIS record, About Face may have bought the domain as early as 1997 (WHOIS record) .
On a first hand look, About Face was a simple website that gave users the ability to create a profile, write a bio about themselves and upload a picture. It was primarily used for law offices, universities or large corporations. The software hosted on private servers and the various “About Face” networks did not interact with each other as they could only be hosted on a closed intranet.
About Face Features:
Network with coworkers on a closed network
Profile with picture
Profile includes details about career, expertise, schooling and phone number
Privacy settings to enable or disable access to certain users
Privacy settings to only allow certain computers into the network (IP filtering)
Advanced database searching to find results quickly
An example of an About Face profile in 2002
As early as 2001 About Face had a fully functional profile that displayed details about employees or users in database. This would be run on a local intranet, so it didn’t have the same networking value that Facebook would develop. However, Facebook did start as a service for just Harvard students on their internal network which would have been a suitable environment for About Face to run. Is it possible that Facebook found inspiration in what About Face was developing?
About face had a simple, but effective method for editing profiles. Done by an admin team, users would be entered into the directory and details such as University, Phone Number and job would included on their profile.
Easy to Administer Even though About Face is very powerful and flexible, it is extremely easy to use. Shown here is the data entry screen, used to enter new people into your directory and to modify existing entries. Just punch in the information and click the Save button. The system will automatically generate a username and password for the person, and then it will automatically generate an email to that person informing him or her of this information and explaining how to get into the directory. It doesn’t get any easier! – About Face Product Demo
About Face was ahead of it’s time with their ability to network coworkers together to efficiently. This would add huge benefits to the workflow of the office as you’d be able to search people by name, phone number or even their area of expertise. This is very similar to the direction Facebook wanted to take at Harvard.
About Face was progressive with their security settings and privacy as well. As shown in their product demo, only IP addresses within a certain range would have access to About Face as specified by the admin team. About Face also allowed users to set their own permission settings and could hide certain details of their profile easily.
About Face Profile Security Settings
Conclusion
It’s impossible to know if Facebook was inspired by About Face, or if it’s a simple coincidence that the domain they wanted to buy was hosting a similar service. About Face was a fully functional profile network with a simple user interface long before Facebook had developed what we know call a social network. What we do know is the similarities are extremely obvious and About Face had a functional product that could have been adapted outside of an internal network if they desired or had the means to do so.
If you’re not already familiar with Patreon, it is a platform where curators can add extra content and charge users a monthly fee. Patreon allows you to host videos, pictures or any other added benefit someone might provide for a monthly fee. A lot of YouTube stars and Instagram influencers use Patreon to generate some extra income on the side. However, Patreon is not offering an altruistic service out of the goodness of their hearts.
Patreon does of course take a monthly fee and a percentage of sales to provide this hosting service for it’s customers, which is of course quite hefty. So this made us wonder: What is the best alternative to Patreon? The answer we came up with is our good old friend, WordPress. With a domain, a monthly hosting plan and a PayPal account you too can create your own alternative to Patreon.
Why use an alternative to Patreon?
Patreon is going to eat into your profits, that is the most obvious downside. However, the biggest downside in our opinion is the fact that you don’t own the digital real estate your content is hosted on. Let’s say you spend years pointing traffic towards your Patreon and start building an audience. If you suddenly decide you want to shift your business model or change your niche entirely, you’re locked into a Patreon domain, instead of a website you own where you can pivot and not waste previous effort. This is the biggest gripe with platforms such as Patreon because you don’t really own the content or digital real estate at the end of the day.
Setup your own Patreon alternative
Now that you understand the importance of owning your digital real estate front to back, we will get into how you can setup your own Patreon alternative. All you need to do is the following steps (or email Metric Hunter to build you a beautiful website):
Acquire web hosting and a domain
Install WordPress
Install WooCommerce
Attach your PayPal
Make money ?
It’s that simple to host your own Patreon alternative. Still not convinced? Let us break it down for you. All Patreon is offering is a place to host your extra pictures or videos and a payment gateway to collect fees from your customers. This can all be achieved by building your own ecommerce store on WordPress. The monthly fee for a high quality server is going to be $50 a month or less, which is significantly leaner than the fees Patreon takes from it’s creators. By accepting PayPal as a payment method, you give yourself insurance that your payments will be secure and easy to deal with. With these things in mind, are there any benefits to using Patreon over your own website?
Is there a downside to Patreon alternatives?
If your alternative is hosting your own website, there is one glaring downside to it. If you are a Patreon user who uploads a lot of high quality video content, you are going to need a robust web server to host that content and serve it to your clients. However, Patreon uses Vimeo to host videos so you essentially mimick what Patreon is doing by opening your own Vimeo premium account and linking to those videos. So once again, we can conclude that Patreon is not superior to hosting your own alternative on a web server with WordPress.
Conclusion
As you can see, hosting your own ecommerce store with WordPress is a far better alternative than paying exorbitant fees to Patreon on a transaction basis. Patreon does of course have name recognition, but if you position your brand correctly you should no problem leading people to your freshly built Patreon Alternative.
PayPal has absolutely dominated the e-commerce payment provider space and continues to do so. Many people are looking for an alternative to PayPal due to their high fees and tenancy to allow shady customers to charge back their purchases and get refunds when they are not warranted. The best alternative to PayPal has been right in front of your eyes all along, cryptocurrency. Yes, crypto is a new technology and won’t feel as cozy as that familiar PayPal account you’ve known for so long, but the switch is well worth it.
Crypocurrency is booming, even though we are currently sitting in a bear market. The use cases and transaction rate has never been higher and it appears blockchain based currencies are here to stay in one form or another. However, many stores fail to implement a crypto payment processor into their checkout. This is a huge missed opportunity as some people have traded their fiat for crypto and only shop at stores that will accept their coins. Many people search for stores that accept bitcoin, which is a small and profitable niche to fall in. People are looking for places to spend their bitcoin, especially those who bought in early and haven’t converted their profits to fiat. A huge advantage that a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin has over a payment provider like PayPal is it’s decentralized entirely. The fees are low to send money and the transactions are guaranteed to be 100% genuine so the risk of fraud is low. This puts the power back in the sellers hands and secures your money in a way that PayPal cannot compete with. So why are we calling crypto the ultimate alternative to PayPal? It’s the ease of access and the next to non-existent fees you have to pay for using it as a payment gateway. Follow our guide to find out how you can get your store setup to accept Bitcoin or cryptos and embrace the greatest alternative to PayPal.
It’s extremely simple to turn your website into an online store that accepts Bitcoin. This article will help to explain how you can accept cryptocurrency on your WordPress site or at your brick and mortar store.
Using Bitcoin and crypto is extremely simple and the fees are lower than any fiat payment processor on the market. Cryptocurrency is the ultimate alternative for PayPal.
The first step to becoming a Bitcoin Friendly Business
The first steps to hanging that sign in your window that says “Bitcoin Accept Here” are the same first steps for any crypto : open a crypto wallet. There is a good guide on Get Ethereum Canada on how to setup your first wallet and make your first crypto purchase. This is focused on Ethereum, but the process is the same for any crypto currency.
Once you have chosen a wallet to store your Bitcoin, you are now ready to accept payment. Yes, it’s that simple – there is no verification time or process to opening a Bitcoin wallet, however buying and selling Bitcoin is a different story. It can take some time to get approved on a Bitcoin exchange, which is where you can sell your coins on the open market in exchange for USD or CAD. Depending on where you are located, your options will vary.
Which exchange should I sign up for?
For the purpose of simplicity, we like to recommend Coinbase. They are the biggest crypto currency exchange in the world and have a strong reputation. They also allow small purchases without having to authenticate your ID. However, if you want to sell amounts larger than $100 a week then you will need to verify your ID before you can begin selling.
Coinbase will allow you to sell your coins much like a traditional stock market, except you are the broker. Coinbase takes a small fee for being a middle man, but other than that you can easily buy and sell coins once verified. We recommend getting your account fully verified before accepting crypto payments because you will most likely want to convert your coins to fiat eventually and will be restricted without verification.
Becoming a crypto friendly retailer
Retail Store:
If you have a brick and mortar store, accepting Bitcoin or Crypto is extremely easy. Simply setup your wallet as explained above and provide your public wallet ID to the person looking to complete the transaction. They will send you the crypto and you will see it appear in your wallet only moments later. The customer cannot refund the coins or attempt a charge-back after leaving your store, so the money is secure. No fees, no overhead to worry about and most importantly – no PayPal sticking their hands in your pocket.
There is more advanced ways to setup a commerce terminal that accepts cryptocurrency, however this is the fastest track to getting started.
WooCommerce
WordPress Website
Setting up your website to accept payments on WordPress couldn’t be easier. Assuming you have followed the above steps and are familiar with how a crypto wallet works, we can get started.
WooCommerce:
Before you start to install the required plugins, you need to ensure your WordPress site has WooCommerce installed which is their free to use commerce platform. It’s simple to setup and should only take you a few moments.
Once you’ve installed WooCommerce, you’re now going to install GoUrl which is the Bitcoin payment gateway we will be using for this tutorial. You can find the download link for this plugin at this link here GoUrl WooCommerce. You do need to make a GoUrl account, but everything else is quite simple to set up and free. Follow their instructions on how to link your coins wallet and further installation instructions.
Conclusion
This article was short and sweet, just like the effort it will take to convert your store to crypto and move away from PayPal. It can be a little uncomfortable embracing new technologies, but crypto is the future and is more secure than what any payment gateway can currently offer you. Take the plunge into the best PayPal alternative, you won’t regret it.
GoDaddy is the most well known web hosting service for small businesses and people entering the world of e-commerce. That is where Godaddys claims end unfortunately because many who sign up for GoDaddy, regret that choice shortly down the road of entrepreneurship. Starting a business means you’re trying to keep initial costs as low as humanly possible, so finding an affordable web hosting service is very important. This article is going to show you the true cost of GoDaddy and provide higher quality less expensive options. Free domains are not exclusive to GoDaddy, don’t get fooled.
So, why is GoDaddy so popular and how does it entice people into starting their first websites? This article will help to explain why all entrepreneurs should avoid GoDaddy in 2019 and moving forward. By the end of reading this, you should feel extremely hesitant about giving your hard earned dollars to a company like GoDaddy. Don’t let GoDaddy wipe you out within 24 months.
GoDaddy’s prices
The most notable aspect of GoDaddy is their enticing marketing offers, which usually states you get a free domain with any hosting plan. Wow, free domains?! This is an offer that most won’t be able to refuse due to the wording. However, you will soon find the costs adding up if you accept this discounted domain. The offer is legitimate of course, they will give you an introductory discount but when the math is done over a one year period, you end up paying more.
As you can see in the above example when purchasing a domain you would pay the following: $3 in year one + $25 in year two for a total of $28 to register a domain for two years. At first this may appear to be priced fairly in comparison to other domains until you want to add anything of value to your domain. Let us proceed further through the GoDaddy checkout.
Here is where things start to get pricey when using GoDaddy. Privacy protection is important when purchasing a domain because without it, the info you provided during the domain registration is public. This may not be a concern for some people, but privacy is paramount for most.
Now let us assume you want your identity protected, this adds another $20 to your 2 year package bringing our GoDaddy cart to $48 CAD
There are companies that offer this for free when you purchase a domain, so this is $20 you don’t need to spend. We will list those companies later on in the article. However, we aren’t finished with GoDaddy yet so let us proceed further into the checkout.
The next step in our cart is adding a domain branded email to the account. So for example: sample@geek0.com would be considered a domain branded email because it uses the @geek0.com domain.
Is GoDaddy email Good?
Again, this is free with other web hosting providers that are mentioned later in this article, but GoDaddy charges a minimum of $6.50 per month. So no, we would say they are not good. Their minimum plan only includes 5GB of email storage which would mean you would constantly be having to delete emails in order to accept incoming ones. To keep things as cheap as possible for this blog post, we will choose the $6.49 / mo plan which costs us a grand total of $155.76 for our two year plan.
That brings the projects total to $203.76 CAD
(don’t forget we haven’t purchased a server to host this domain yet)
Picking hosting is where GoDaddy really starts to sink their hooks into your business. Any entrepreneur will vouch that any of these plans will not suffice for anything larger than your Grandmas blog about where to find cute cat sweaters in North Dakota. If you’re expecting to see any amount of traffic or plan to build an e-commerce store you will soon regret going the GoDaddy route.
(Note, they do include email for free in these plans but they do not specify if it’s a domain branded email or a @godaddy.com email)
Assuming you’re someone who is planning on earning a profit from their web project, you will need an SSL Certificate for your domain. If you’re unfamiliar on why this is important, check out this article. It is impossible to take credit card payments if your website is not SSL secured, so we are forced to purchase the Ultimate package at $16.00 / mo.
GoDaddy Total:$587.76 CAD
$587 is a lot of money for someone to spend on their new venture, especially if the idea is experimental. This cost could be enough to sink an idea someone has before it even blossoms into a business. GoDaddy uses their discounted domains to draw clients in and rake them over the coals as they start adding necessary service to their cart. It’s very clever marketing, but you’re much smarter than that after reading this article.
The GoDaddy Alternative
Hopefully if you’re at this part of the article, you are no longer considering GoDaddy as a viable option for your web hosting. This is where we would like to introduce a hosting company called Dreamhost. Dreamhost is an excellent company with extremely affordable solutions for web hosting. They offer free email, free SSL and robust servers even at their bottom tier. The best part is, the cost is substantially lower than GoDaddy’s plan we priced above. Let us make our way through the Dreamhost checkout and compare prices.
For Dreamhost, we will stick to the same rules as GoDaddy; find the lowest cost hosting plan that can host an e-commerce store.
As you can see in the above, we have picked a shared starter server which will perform quite well in comparison to GoDaddy’s servers. They allow you use to caching plugins and other tools to speed your website up which GoDaddy does not allow. They include SSL for free, a domain branded e-mail and a free domain when you signup.
This brings our cart and grand total to $94.80 USD ($126 CAD) for two years
Yes, you heard that right. On a higher quality server, with all the same features that GoDaddy offered. So how much do you save by choosing a provider like Dreamhost over GoDaddy?
$461.76 saved over two years
With such large savings by choosing a web hosting provider such as Dreamhost, it makes little sense why anyone would choose GoDaddy. It all comes down to marketing and tricking new entrepreneurs into overpaying with clever wording.
The customer service with Dreamhost is also phenomenal as they are a small team of web developers who actually understand technical questions. If you have ever had to deal with GoDaddy customer service, you know their workflow and corporate agenda takes priority over solving any of your issues. If you have ever tried to email GoDaddy customer service, you will also know the pain it causes; it is near pointless trying to troubleshoot with GoDaddys team via email.
Conclusion
GoDaddy is more expensive than we had originally anticipated when planning this article. We knew that GoDaddy was more expensive, but we had no idea it was almost 4x the price of Dreamhost . This goes to show that marketing is a supremely dominant factor in the web hosting game since Dreamhost offers exactly what they do and more.
We hope that whatever web hosting path you decide to take, you don’t choose GoDaddy. Save your money and support a smaller company like Dreamhost, you won’t regret it.
The e-mail inbox is still the most important point of communication for entrepreneurs trying to close sales and is a fundamental tool in any business consulting course. Everyone knows and agrees about the value of an inbox but are entrepreneurs underestimating the power of Twitter? Can you build a funnel with Twitter?
On the surface, you might overlook Twitter for being yet another social media platform to vent your thoughts and comment on your friends Tweet; woohoo, how does this help my business? Twitter is an ongoing conversation with the most important people inside of any niche. If you haven’t found the value in Twitter, you haven’t found your community inside of it. This article will help you understand how to leverage Twitter for your business and increase sales.
Identifying your Twitter community
Before we go any further, we are going to assume that you’re building a Twitter account within a niche or category and are not looking to build a personal Twitter account. A personal Twitter account would function much like your Facebook wall and consist of random posts. For the purpose of this article we are focusing on building accounts within a small niche for business.
Which Twitter accounts do I follow first?
Your first step is going to be identifying the leaders inside the niche you’re looking to integrate yourself in. When you first start prospecting Twitter accounts to follow, it’s going to be a fairly surface level quest. For example, if you wanted to integrate with the basketball community on Twitter you would start following ESPN, Michael Jordan, Nike, Lebron James. These accounts are most likely going to be verified celebrities or businesses.
The first accounts aren’t very important in themselves, it’s the clues that they present is where you will find value. As time goes on, you’re going to want to pay attention to the comments left on these accounts Tweets. Start identifying Twitter users who are consistently getting their tweets liked or up-voted. These are the most valuable accounts inside of your community.
Identifying Niche Twitter Influencers
On first look, you’d think an influence inside your niche are the same type of accounts we listed above; verified accounts for celebrities and large corporations. In the big picture, they are at the forest, but you want to focus on the trees instead.
John Wexler (@wex), Adidas executive and sneaker Twitter Star
In every Twitter community there is people who hold high credibility inside of the niche you’re focusing on. They may not be verified (the blue check mark beside their @) or have a lot of followers but you will find these people being quoted quite often. We can’t specifically tell you what to look for when identifying these accounts in your niche, but keep your eyes open and start following people you think will be important down the road.
Rising Twitter Stars
Once you have started to identify the key figures inside of your community and what sort of traits come with that, start scouting for rising stars. These are accounts that are new to the scene but you see something special in them. These people are the most likely to respond to messages, Tweets and inquiries. These accounts are also the first people you’re going to bring into your “Inner Twitter Circle”.
Again, we can’t advise you on what these personalities will look like but it should be pretty clear who is finding their way into important Twitter conversations even though they’re new to the community. Most new accounts will get ignored in Tweet threads or be overlooked due to the infancy of the account, but some will rise above this trend and those are your new friends.
Creating a Twitter Army
So how do you make the transition from commenting on a Tweet to building a relationship with someone. Bonding with key accounts is make or break for your success in the Twitter realm. Again, this will depend on what niche you’re focused on but we do have a few tips on how to strengthen that relationship.
Becoming a Twitter Community Star
Now that you’ve started to identify who the leaders of your niche community are, you can now start to rise through the ranks and become on yourself. This is no easy task and takes a considerable amount of time to achieve. If you try and force your way into a community, you will be rejected surely because you’re not speaking their jargon or you’ll eventually overstep a boundary you didn’t know existed. This is a task you cannot force and if you’re not gaining any traction, reevaluate your tactics.
Comment on a Tweet and elaborate your point inside their direct message inbox. This is important because once someone has accepted your message once, you will always rise to the top of their inbox when sending a message in the future. So when you’re ready to ask for something, you already have rapport.
Create personalized content for the people you’re trying to bond with. Don’t under estimate the power of a custom made meme or emoji because this feeds on their ego. People can’t resist being complimented and targeted content is a tactful way to do so.
Use animated gifs as replies with clever quotes. Animated gifs are a very easy to make one of your Tweets go viral. It’s all about timing and if you can get the first animated gif on a potentially viral Tweet, you’ll be soaking up likes and retweets.
Tag people in things you think they would be interested in. Many spam accounts do this and tag 10-20 accounts at a time which is a mistake. Take your time and only tag people in things you truly think they’d be interested in. Don’t forget to include a message with something along the lines of “@geek0, this is totally a recipe you’d enjoy since you’re Italian”.
Take chances with your Tweets (within reason). It’s okay to have a failed Tweet, but take chances and don’t be afraid of failing. Twitter communities forget bad Tweets overnight, but remember good ones for years.
How do I covert my Twitter followers into customers?
Again, this will be case to case depending on what niche you’ve integrated yourself in however there is some static rules that will apply to all business models. When you’re selling to someone you already have rapport with, the barriers are going to be lower and your conversion will be higher. If you’ve followed our tips in the article above and are becoming a rising star in your Twitter community, start reaching out to some of the other influential users you’ve networked with. Get these users on your side and get them helping to promote or buy your product.
Assuming you’re doing honest business, your friends are going to be happy to promote your product and if they have credibility in the community, your product is suddenly validated. Another benefit to having a supportive community behind you is you can get honest feedback from your community so you know where to tighten up details before a mass marketing campaign. The final point is members inside of your community are going to be easier to covert to to customers because you are a trusted member of the community at this point and they will be more likely to trust you.
Moving your community off Twitter
If you’re looking to further grow your community outside of Twitter, check out our guide on community building for your business.
Building your Instagram account is a very easy and successful way to create a niche sales funnel. It only becomes difficult when you’re left on the outside and the tools of the trade are foreign to you. Most successful Instagram accounts are using automation of some kind, unless by a stroke of luck they hit a viral niche and gained notoriety naturally.
However, be cautious with using automation software because it is a violation of Instagram’s terms of service and you will have your account banned instantly if they find out. Luckily for you, this guide will help to explain how to automate your Instagram with a program called Jarvee and how to avoid getting banned.
The Jarvee Dashboard
How do I start using Jarvee to build my Instagram account?
The first step to Jarvee, is to not use Jarvee right away. This might sound silly, but using automation software right away will put up a red flag on your account and increases your chances of being banned.
So, for your first month or so for the best chance of longevity on your account you want to just post from your phone and treat it like a normal Instagram account. Slowly build your following naturally and post original content. The idea is to make your account look as natural as possible, so once you do introduce automation you’ve already passed a handful of Instagram’s security filters.
The longer you naturally grow your account, the more effective automation is going to be down the road.
If you have already created 3 accounts with your phone number, you are going to need to use an external phone number verification service to activate your account. You can create an account without a phone number, however they eventually ask you to SMS verify and you will not be able to access your account until it’s verified.
Proxies for Instagram
Proxies is a way to route your connection through a separate IP to spoof your location or bypass Instagrams security that monitors usage from one IP address. Essentially, you don’t want Instgram to see that you’re running more than one or two accounts from a single IP; this is a dead giveaway that you’re using automation software. If you’re unfamiliar with proxies, this article helps explain the differences.
Where to buy proxies for Instagram is a common question you will see in your research about automation. We have been using proxies from the same website listed about (Resell Cartel Proxies) however there is many places you can purchase high quality proxies from. Most proxy providers will allow you to choose the location where the server is hosted. Ideally, you’d want to find one that is close to where you originally created the account. This is important because you may still log into the account with your home IP, so you want the proxy to be relatively close so it doesn’t look suspicious. For example. if you live in Texas and your proxy is located in California, Instagram will see you switching between those locations as suspicious behavior and your account will be flagged.
Outside of the provider we mentioned, you’re on your own when it comes to proxy research. You can technically get away with automating a handful accounts without proxies, but do so at your own risk because it could all come crashing down in a moments notice.
Jarvee – a brief overview
Jarvee is currently one of the best Instagram automation tools. It gives you a large suite of tools and flexibility to grow your instagram account. You can have your account completely hands off once you’ve optimized your Jarvee setup. You can automatically follow/unfollow users, repost pictures, like pictures, comment, direct message users and so much more. It replicates normal human interaction styles which is the secret to success when using Jarvee. For this article, we won’t be going into technical details about how to set Jarvee up, instead we will focus on best practices for Jarvee and some hacks we have come across in our usage.
Jarvee has a few different tiers that you can purchase, but they do offer a free trial so you can familiarize yourself with tool before jumping in. Their pricing can be seen here. With their base package you can run 10 Instagram accounts at once cor $29.99 a month which what we recommend when you’re getting started. Unfortunately Jarvee is only available for Windows at the moment so you’ll need to have Windows installed or use a Windows based server. Amazon AWS has a free tier option that would allow you to run Jarvee no problem.
We usually start the bot by posting 9 pictures from our phones so that the profiles looks active, then start the bot with minimum settings (~ 50 likes and ~50 follows per day). Slowly increase this number until you’re at 400 likes / 400 follows per day. We will explain these limits further down in the article and why it’s important to follow.
Where can I find Jarvee tutorials?
If you’re looking for some basic tutorials on Jarvee, their website is full of useful articles that will get you going in no time. You can access those links here . Jarvee also offers an online course that helps you understand the basic aspect of Instagram and gives you a simple recipe for success. That course can be found here and we recommend going through it.
Here is a few simple rules that we follow to grow our accounts to epic levels with Jarvee:
Set the bot to do 400 likes per day in your niche (start with only 50 in the beginning and than increase)
50 comments on posts in your niche (10 to start)
DO NOT follow/unfollow until you reach 1000 followers, than bring the number of people you follow down between 0 and 15. In the beginning the number of new followers per day will decrease but this is a necessary step! Instagram doesn’t ban people who follow/unfollow but will limit their reach. So this technique may bring you results in the early stages but will limit your growth in the long run.
Once your account gets to 1000 followers join an ENGAGEMENT GROUP! This step is what will make your profile grow very very fast if you have good content. We won’t point you towards where to find a good engagement group, you’ll need to figure that out on your own. Our best advice is just find fan pages that have some influence (perhaps at least 30-50k followers) that are in your niche and ask if they’re in an engagement group. Then ask that account to join their engagement group, or ask to form one with them. You just want bigger accounts liking and commenting on your posts.
Make contact with pages in your niche with similar amount of followers as you and ask to exchange shoutouts. You can also pay some shoutouts but be always careful, some pages have a lot of followers but their engagement rates are horrible and you will and up paying $10 for a useless shoutout. Always check how many likes their picture have (good over 5% of their followers), if the shoutout is in their stories ask always a screenshot of their current stories to see how many people have seen it, some times their engagement rate is good but no one watched their stories!
Instagram banned me for using Jarvee
This will happen to you a number of times before you find the formula that works for growing instagram accounts. In saying that, you should be okay with losing a couple of accounts because it’s nearly unavoidable. Being banned and deactivated is just a cost of being an Instagram Manager. You can get your account back if you’re lucky, but do not mention using any software in your claim or you will have zero chance at account recovery.
In most cases, Instagram will ask you to send a picture of yourself holding a piece of paper with the account name and a code they will provide to you; this doesn’t mean you’ll get the account back but it is likely.
Can I repost other users content or pictures?
Absolutely you can. Jarvee has excellent reposting tools integrated into the bot, however you will have a higher chance of success if you’re modifying the image and hash inside of Jarvee and giving credit to the original poster.
Reposting is the easiest way to get banned and flagged for botting Instagram, so do everything within your ability to keep the content natural and honest. Most large accounts aren’t creating their own content so the sky is the limit if you’re careful.
Should I buy likes ?
Previously, if you were trying to rank for a hashtag on the explore page of Instagram you could buy likes to artificially boost your posts, however this has changed in 2019. You will see much more success if your follower engagement is high when you post a picture. For example, if you’re trying to rank for #baseball and your account is already in the niche, then your own followers are the most valuable asset. Don’t ever try and create false engagement by buying likes or followers, this adds absolutely NO VALUE to your account. People who buy followers and likes are simply inflating their own egos because they don’t fool anyone else.
At one point, Future Shop was a household name for Canadians and the go to place when you wanted to acquire the latest tech. These stores were everywhere in Canada and featured a full commission sales team to assist you with your purchases. The commission aspect of Future Shop was a turnoff to some customers but it also meant that if you were going to survive as an employee of Future Shop, you needed to be educated about the products. However, the year is 2019 and Future Shop is a distant memory for Canadians as it was bought out by Best Buy in 2015, laying off all Future Shop employees in the process.
Why did Future Shop close and what lead to the demise of this iconic Canadian brand. This article will help to explain the culture of Future Shop and why Best Buy Canada eventually took over.
What was Future Shop?
Future Shop was the most popular Canadian electronics store from 2001-2015. With locations in every province, it was a national business that paid commission to it’s employees. During the early to mid millennium commission pay structures were much more common compared to a store in 2019 which has to compete with an educated customer and vast online competition.
Future Shop started to feel the pressure of the E-Commerce world as they introduced a price match policy that allowed customers to match any price of a product that was in stock online and sold in Canada. This was fantastic for the end customer as they were able to scrape the web for the lowest price, but this was a huge pay cut for the commission based work force. Employees were paid based on an algorithm that factored in margin, product cost and services added to calculate commission payouts. Once the prices were being slashed and matched so aggressively, this cut deeply into the pockets of the employees and their customer service suffered.
The beginning of the end.
Once the commission started to suffer, so did the customer service provided by the employees. Outside companies such as Samsung or Apple offered vendor backed promotions that would give a kickback on certain products sold. This kick back was a separate payout from the Future Shop commission structure, so employees were happy to sell these products at any cost. However, this ideology that price matching would benefit the customer in a commission based shark tank was false. Future Shop employees started to only target customers who were interested in buying these vendor funded kickbacks and would ignore what they deemed lower tier customers. A customer who once was treated with a fulfilling customer experience no matter what their buying habits was now ignored. This was just the climate of the market and commission sales jobs weren’t viable at this scale anymore; things needed to change or big box electronic stores might have folded in Canada. This is when Best Buy came into the picture and took over.
Best Buy vs Future Shop
The battle of big box retail had begun, however it was a false battle. Best Buy had actually acquired Future Shop long before they re-branded it to Best Buy Canada but they were split testing business models to see if Future Shop was worth keeping around. They began opening up Best Buy Canada stores within a block of Future Shop locations which appeared to be an attempt to directly test the customers response to both styles of big box retail. The results quickly spoke for themselves – the non commission, low pressure style at Best Buy was actually outperforming the seasoned crew of sales people at Future Shop. Best Buy Canada employees were selling warranty, higher margin products and in house service that the commission team couldn’t beat.
It appeared that Future Shops time had come and death was just around the corner. In 2015 Best Buy Canada officially converted all Future Shop locations into Best Buy stores. All previous Future Shop employees were laid off and new management was brought in. The end of an era had come and another iconic Canadian business was added to the graveyard.
The fashion world is ripe with arrogance and elitism however there is a dirty secret the industry has been hiding for a long time. Brands like Supreme, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and Off-White have become wildly popular for their simple designs with short slogans. Clean shirts with simple text across the chest is a hallmark t-shirt design style for top end fashion designers. These shirts are often printed on cheap cotton blanks and sold for 800% margin or more. Most surprisingly to us, the cheap shirts they’re touting as designer is the least egregious step in their design process, it’s the free fonts they’re using for design. Yes, that is correct – your favorite fashion house isn’t even designing their own fonts to print slogans and brand names across that white Gildan shirt. After reading this article, you too might be able to make millions of dollars from a collection of free fonts. We will include free download links for all the fonts listed that the fashion houses use so you can start your street wear brand.
Free streetwear fonts for all !
Supreme Font
Supreme is a skateboarding company that started in New York City. They were relatively low key and only popular within the skateboarding community until 15 years ago or so. The hype behind Supreme became larger in life as their celebrity endorsements started to grow. Supreme is infamous for their box logo sweatshirts which simply display the Supreme logo with a red box. So really, it’s a free font with a free box behind it. The popular brand name is using a font called Futura Heavy Oblique . You can download the Supreme font for free at the link we provided. Now that armed with this powerful font, you too can create your own Supreme Box Logo.
Anti Social Social Club Font
Anti Social Social club was started in 2015 by Stussy creative designers Neek Lurk in LA. Anti Social Social Club, or more commonly known as ASSC is a print on demand brand that changed the entire street wear industry. Neek Lurk was one of the first to scale a print on demand style of production to the masses. Celebrity endorsements and proper timing in the market caused his brand to explode with popularity.
COMME Des Garcon is based in Tokyo and also in the Place Vendôme in Paris, the city in which they show their main collections during Paris Fashion Week and Paris Men’s Fashion Week Their most popular graphic design is from their CDG Play collection which features the heart logo with two eyes on it; quite cute. Once again though, Comme des Garcons is guilty like the other brands we have mentioned so far of using a free front.
The font that COMME des Garcons (CDG Play) uses is Helvetica Neue 75 Bold. Helvetica and Futura are actually quite common as you start to explore the world of street wear fonts; the workhorses of the industry if you will. If you’d like to download the Comme des Garcons font click here.
GUCCI Font
There has been some debate as to what font GUCCI is using on their iconic clothing. We are going to provide a download for what we think is the best example of the GUCCI Font. You can click here to download it here. If you have a better example of the GUCCI font, please reach out or comment on this post to let us know!
