The Great eCommerce Recession

Nobody else wants to call it. Calling it doesn’t solve anything. But it does help the millions (now) of individual freelance contractors understand what’s going on.

The inexperienced reader will glance at the title and suspect me of hyperbole. The veteran readers, who have been following my work since the turn of the century, will appreciate that this is 20+ years of exclusive work as an eCommerce contractor talking.

Freelancing, so that we suffer no crisis of clarity, is fucked.

 

And to be more clear: I speak of eCommerce as the vast majority of online-only businesses; websites and channels supported by ad revenue, referral links, subscriptions, etc. From 20 years back until just a few years ago, you could set up a web domain, plug in a CMS, plaster it with ads, and make money provided your content wasn’t just useless spam. None of this applies to brick-and-mortar commerce, nor to selling physical products or paid services. THOSE markets are all doing fine, albeit with their own hangups.

But – eCommerce as in BLOGS, and the blogging bloggers who write them, are dead and buried. Not only do I feel confident that eCommerce as a stand-alone industry is in recession, but it might be in depression or even killed entirely and only come back in some other form someday – perhaps subscription services will take hold in its place.

The eCommerce recession, as I’m calling it while summoning all my remaining optimism, was the result of a perfect storm of clashing catastrophes, and indeed, the global market isn’t looking that much better. Just rest assured, Work-From-Home / remote job seekers / freelancer veterans: You’re not going crazy. It isn’t just UpWork or Fiverr or Linked-In or Indeed or whatever. It’s EVERYTHING! Nobody is getting any work, no money to spend to hire, no work to do.

After the jump: The Perfect Storm that Recession’ed eCommerce:

Continue reading “The Great eCommerce Recession”

From the Trenches of #2022 : Your War Blogger

Good morning, and how are all my cosmic blueberries? Here, if you need a mood fix, there’s a gallery of hippie New Age good vibes I threw together on an old IMGUR post.

Sorry for not catching up more, but things have been busy. Blah blah blah, Pete doesn’t blog enough, blah blah, I don’t have time to boost my own site because I’m too busy boosting my clients’ sites.

I’ve also been hypnotized by the endless Doomscrolling feed of world news like the rest of you. Ukraine Putin Russia COVID climate change. Bad news all around. I’ve been telling you all it would get this bad years ago.

I Predicted Everything!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much of the year 2022 I prophesied, years and years ago. I’ve been tracing this line between Trump and Putin since Sally Yates got fired – yes, remember her, New Years’ Eve, 2017?

Trump-fires-Yates

Oh, I am sure that we are all shocked at Vladimir’s Putin’s INSANE and senseless massacre of Ukraine, as well as his own soldiers, citizens, economy, etc. But, boys and girls, I have been following this yellow brick road a long ol’ time. Won’t you join me on my adventures?

Continue reading “From the Trenches of #2022 : Your War Blogger”

Having a Boom! With the Holidays

Who the bananas has time to blog on their own site this time of year? In between tying off the big holiday rush and jamming out my vanity projects, any non-compulsory work falls behind in priority after my dedicated #GenX slacker lifestyle.

Yeah, right. Actually, folks, in the content marketing / online blogging business, I type all day and all night until I fall asleep with my beak on the keyboard typing “zzzzzz” and then my adorable wife drags me to bed, from whence I spring into action hours later to gargle espresso and run back to the keyboard. How can you turn down extra money this time of year?

Boom 1968 screenshot

Video Review Debut: Boom! (1968)

When last we joined my escapades, I was as amazed as everyone else to have pulled off my first video review for 366 Weird Movies, with Legacy of Satan. Well, hold your horses, because I videoed again this month with a video review of Boom! (yes, it’s spelled with an exclamation point, like Yahoo!) (1968), Liz Taylor and Rich Burton.

Because those 2 movies will totally have fan overlap, right? Don’t leave now, I have done much more than this in the past month, after the jump.

Continue reading “Having a Boom! With the Holidays”

Announcing the First 366 Weird Movies Video Reviews

Howdy gremlins and goblins! Just a minute while I talk to some old people:

(This domain goes back to 2006, and I still get fanmail from my old material, so I know some old-timers have followed on. You folks know that my longest-continuous blogging gig is 366WeirdMovies. So if you know my review history, you must be on pins and needles wondering which film I selected for the very first video review. (Actually I know you all are wondering, I’m just stalling for the suspense.)

Anyway, for the rest of you: Hey kids I video-reviewed an old horror movie! It’s 1974’s Legacy of Satan, a movie not quite weird enough to be honored on The List, but worth an eyeball that seeks out weirdness. Made in partnership with some colleagues of mine from there, Giles Edwards and Greg Smalley.

But let me back up a bit here while the piano player warms up the lounge for me, because the story of how this project came together is gonna blow the training wheels right off your unicycle…

Continue reading “Announcing the First 366 Weird Movies Video Reviews”

Why I Am Not Watching Squid Game

It’s impossible to avoid now, but for future generations: Squid Game was a TV series on Netflix. It got a viral marketing boost and now all of social media is teeming with foaming-mouthed fanatics insisting that everybody MUST WATCH this show immediately or there will be consequences.

Now I will tell you why, not only am I not watching Squid Game, but you should not watch Squid Game either.

metropolis

We’ve seen enough class-struggle dystopian sci-fi

The first 10 times I saw a class-struggle-based dystopian sci-fi movie, I thought, “Yeah, great socio-political commentary!” The next 50 class-struggle-based dystopian sci-fi movies I saw, I thought, huh, neat take, but it’s been done. After that, every class-struggle-based dystopian sci-fi movie gives me the kind of heartburn you get from too much grease and not enough substance.

I’ve seen Snowpiercer, The Platform, and High-Rise. Somebody else already pointed out that they are exactly the same movie. I’ve also seen The Hunger Games, and Squid Game is literally the exact same premise. I’ve seen The Purge, Elysium, They Live, The Running Man, Freejack, Soylent Green, and V for Vendetta. Not to mention, as the above image forecasts, that Metropolis fits in this category too; the very first sci-fi movie ever made.

Let me save you some time and tell you all about every single one of the above movies. This is the entire point:

karl-marx-quote

“Proletariat vs Bourgeoisie”

  • There are RICH PEOPLE, and they are EVIL for the sake of being EVIL!
  • There are POOR PEOPLE who suffer because they are POOR!
  • The RICH stay RICH by exploiting the POOR people and keeping them POOR!
  • Nobody can seem to do anything effective about it.
  • You should be MAD about this! MAD MAD MAD!

That’s all this is. A class-struggle sci-fi movie is not inspirational or instructive or educational or witty or original. It is not deep or profound. It’s not even a story. The entire point is to invoke the Krodha rasa and turn the viewer into the Incredible Hulk. Hulk hate rich people now!

Not only that, but we have a whole wing of literature devoted to the exact same effect, called dystopian literature. They include The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Brave New World, all of which are at the top of the list of most recommended books for required reading in school. I’ve written this same blog post about why force-feeding students these novels is a crime against intellect.

But we’ll go over it again, this time with movies and TV, because what I am saying really IS an original thought which is currently absent from all of world culture.

Continue reading “Why I Am Not Watching Squid Game”

My latest adventures in Content Marketing…

Blah blah blah Pete doesn’t post often enough, blah blah blah I’m too busy working for clients to look into my own website. My own site is so neglected it’s a wonder they haven’t opened a Spirit Halloween here yet. Blah blah blah there I’m blogging now.

I see tweets like this all the time:

Except I’m a BLOGGER, so while everybody else posts a onesie-twosie WIP, I’m seeing my projects go by in a blur. Today is October 12th.

Here’s a round-up of everything I’ve been busy as a bee with in just this past month, right after the jump.

Continue reading “My latest adventures in Content Marketing…”

How To Work From Home : A Survival Guide For The Hardwood Jungle

Forgive me, I should have written this guide sooner in the pandemic. Just didn’t think it would really be needed. But now that the global pandemic is a permanent thing for a while, and so many of you are clamoring for some of my work-from-home magic, I will share my tricks of the trade.

While a 9-5 job wage-slave working remotely can benefit from some of these tips anyway, this guide is written for the freelance / professional point of view.

toddler-on-phone

[1] I’m sorry, you need self-discipline.

Do me a favor: Take a deep breath and then scream “GATEKEEPER!” at me as loud as you can. Now that we have that out of the way, I’m sorry, but nature imposes this gate, not me. Either you are a self-starter and able to discipline yourself, or you will fail. If you say, “I can’t self-dicipline,” make yourself do it. Learn how. Give yourself a new chance, maybe things have changed.

Of course, there’s days when I don’t want to work, there’s tasks I dread, there’s deadlines that I procrastinate because, to be frank, it’s fun and I perform amazing under pressure. But I get the thing done! It always eventually comes down to “it is time to sit down and plow through this unpleasant task.” There are no shortcuts, no tricks. Just start doing the work and let the momentum carry you. Really, you were doing the same thing for a boss when you worked 9-to-5. Now you get to reap the full spoils of your labor, so that’s even more motivation, right?

Wanting to work from home without self-discipline is like wanting to be a lifeguard without learning to swim.

Continue reading “How To Work From Home : A Survival Guide For The Hardwood Jungle”

Work From Home Freelance Writers: How Much To Charge?

Work From Home is the new hot trend in the COVID era. After my 20+ years in freelancing over the Internet, you’re all finally catching up to me. Good (at least I think so)! For freelancer content writers who are just starting out, the #1 most common question I see asked is about how to set rates.

I’m going to try to tell you in the clearest possible way how to set your rates as a freelance writer.

freelance-writing-rate-charge

How Much To Charge For Freelance Content Writing? (short answer)

The short answer to how much to charge is a simple formula:

  • a: Your rate per word
  • b: How many words you can write per hour (reasonably)

If A x B = a decent hourly wage for where you live, that’s a reasonable rate to charge. As a basic rule of thumb.

There’s a lot of fudge factors that affect this number, however. The content you will be writing may be faster or slower going due to the need for extensive research. The amount of non-writing effort you have to put into the project (spreadsheets, managing WordPress, communicating with the client’s team, etc.) may take up some time worth billing for too.

If I’m just raw typing on a subject I already know pretty well, I can easily do 500 words per hour. Nitpicky research, needing to format things in HTML, having to provide images, those slow me down to an average of about ~200 wph. By that point, I tend to bill by the hour instead.

Continue reading “Work From Home Freelance Writers: How Much To Charge?”

Belief in “Gatekeeping” is a Paranoid Delusion

So I’m a cultural muckraker, and consider it my station in life to slaughter sacred cows, shatter illusions, bring illumination to our dark world, and correct common misconceptions. My popularity in this regard varies depending on the target. I can savage organized religion, Wall Street, Republicans, Nickelback, whatever is the acceptable target, and then you all love me. Because you are the choir I preach to.

I could publish a recipe for BBQ Jeff Bezos right now and probably get a ticker-tape parade for it. But then, if all I did was knock down straw men all day, I’d be fat ‘n’ lazy. Instead, I choose a more difficult topic, which will make me a lot less popular.

Today, I am going to tell YOU, yes YOU READING THIS, why YOU do a bad, damaging thing on social media, and why YOU need to stop it. In fact, I am going to beat this lesson into your backside with a belt and squat you in the corner afterwards to think about what you’ve done. I do it because I love you.

I’m not very popular when I do this. There will be no ticker tape parade for me for this post, but I am OK with that. Because doing things means more to me than validation.

What is this “Gatekeeping”?

Not to single out this particular person or account or even instance, but the lesson demands a random example:

Millennials

This gem is a perfect example of the “gatekeeping” delusion. It hits all the woke buzzwords. And it shows a nasty mental virus that infests the “writing” community.

Continue reading “Belief in “Gatekeeping” is a Paranoid Delusion”

Anatomy of a Scam Link-Building Spammer Service

Dear website maintainers, editors, and eCommerce entrepreneurs:

Want a successful business? Then you’d better not deal with SubmitCore! They advertise themselves as a link-building service. I explain what a link-building service is about here, and also tell you how to do it yourself for free.

Just to reiterate, the whole point of guest-posting is to have your fine article hosted on an established website, while also linking back to your own website. Google sees the high-ranking authority site with a link to you and awards your site Pageranking points. But to be successful, your copy must be not just non-spammy, not just competent, but really great! Here is a knock-out article on Guest-Posting 101.

But some people would rather go through a paid service, and I have no truck with them. There are some good guest-posting services out there, and it is a legitimate business if done right. But don’t rely on Submit Core. I award them zero out of infinity stars, no points, last place in any contest that matters.

Now, I have not actually done business with SubmitCore. Instead, they tried to do business with me… if there is any “they” there and the whole thing isn’t just a bot. So let’s back up and I’ll share the whole story…

write_for_Dab_Connection-640x360
Continue reading “Anatomy of a Scam Link-Building Spammer Service”