The title is a little bit difficult; shortened we're mentally ill.
To shorten a detailed story, my dick is too large for her. It causes her discomfort, and we have to stop quickly because it's uncomfortable for her.
Has she has described it to me as if there's not enough natural lubrication. When we tried to combat that issue with different kinds of lubes, we ran into sensitive skin issues causing irritation and more uncomfortableness.
In fact it's been since November that we've had sex, and she's not even in the mood to receive oral. (again we're mentally ill, she's on depression + anxiety meds, but the loss of libido occurred before she was on medication)
Of course she has mentioned to me that she is trying and it is upsetting to her as well, but because she basically has no drive for it the way she explains it always comes off like she's disinterested every time.
I want to give more than I receive, but I just feel so neglected. This has started to affect my self-image, and leave me feeling insecure about myself.
Otherwise in the relationship we're nearly perfectly happy, we communicate well, try to have open discussions without bias, but when it comes to sex it's all around upsetting.
What suggestions have you for me? I'll answer questions as I can

Last week I made a post about generating 2.5 million in sales for a client without spending a dime on ads. The thing is, I did this on a brand that already did over a million in sales the year before. I got a bunch of messages from people that don't already have established brands but thought they could benefit from organic traffic. So I made this post, I'll explain exactly how you can generate sales with literally nothing other than time and a website.

Quick disclaimer, it's 10x harder to make your first 10 sales if you don't have a marketing budget or an existing audience to market to. You're going to have to consistently spend multiple hours a day working to accomplish anything. Not just mindless work either, you're going to have to be a critical thinker and have a basic understanding of human psychology to see any type of success using these methods. If you don't have time to do that, you won't see any results from these methods and you might as well stop reading now.

Now that we've cleared that up let's get to the good stuff. Here's how you make your first 10 sales without spending any money on marketing.

In order to get sales you need traffic. You can't test anything or sell anything if no one visits your site.
So here are 3 ways to generate traffic for free:

1. Become a member of the community that your customers interact in
In my last post, I explained how I built a community from scratch, but at this point, I'm assuming you don't have time to spend 3 months building a community if you haven't even proven that anyone wants to buy your products. So I'm going to teach you how to piggyback off existing communities.
It is easier said than done, but 1 good post can get easily get you your first 5 sales. You can do this on Reddit, in Facebook groups, or any other type of niche relevant group/forum. If the people in these communities think you're trying to sell something you'll probably just get banned and people will actually get mad at you for trying to sell your products. The trick is being a casual, you want to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Don't even mention your products in your first 2-3 posts. Maybe ask niche relevant questions, or provide value in comments under other people's posts and show people that you have a genuine interest in the topic. Think of this like warming up your account.
Now when it's time to sell, you do it in the most discreet way possible. The better your product is, the easier it is to do this. This is the fastest way to find out if your product is actually useful and if there's actually demand for your product. The best way to promote your product and create brand recognition is with lifestyle content. Never post a product photo with a white background in a community group. NEVER!

I'll give you a few examples of how to post product pics correctly:
Example 1
niche: dog niche
product: dog collar
You take a dog to a beautiful place. Maybe a beach by the water and you get a whole photoshoot with the dog. Bring lots of treats and showcase a happy dog wearing the collar you sell. Now you don't post the entire photoshoot in the group. You post 1 picture, not necessarily the best picture or the most professional looking one. You want to post the picture that evokes the most emotion. It's the picture with the dog making a funny face, or another dog sniffing your dog's butt, or the pic with your dog in bliss chewing his favorite treat that goes viral. Pick a picture that'll start a discussion and reply to every single comment. Then, once the post does well, without a doubt someone will ask about your product. That's when you come in and give a shoutout to the site that you got it from. If no one does this, you can literally create a fake account and ask/answer the question on your own. You're basically creating the perception of product demand.

Example 2
niche: food and beverage/electronics
Product: digital thermometer
Imagine... It's steak night, you fire up the BBQ and you want the perfect steaks! We're selling the dream of a perfectly cooked steak, not a digital thermometer. You post 2 pictures. Picture 1 is the steak on the grill with the thermometer showing the perfect temperature. Picture 2 shows the perfectly sliced steak being served. Try to capture someone that stirs emotions in the picture, whether it's a happy grandma, a kid with the steak on his fork, or a hungry pet drooling and looking at your plate. Emotion is what sells the product. Make sure you have a caption that conveys the message that you're trying to send. Use something short and simple but also try your best to convey a story. Further, convey the imagery in the comments ex. "Inlaws are over, got this thermometer to make sure everything was cooked perfectly, Now everyone thinks I actually know how to cook."

Example 3
Niche: candles
Product: candle
"Midterms are around the corner, sparked my favorite scent to set the mood tonight" (caption for the post in studying group or collage group) + a picture of an opened textbook and candle in the background, but you can clearly still see the candle label. This example is for the people who have general products. It may actually be harder for you to sell a candle in a candle subreddit because there are just too many options. So you get into the mind of your customers, you imagine the scenario your customer is in when they use your product, and you sell the feeling of enjoying the product in a situation that they've experienced before.
In the comments, you describe the scent in detail and you talk about how you prefer this candle over the one you got at Bath and Body Works because it's made from natural materials.
If you do this right, consistently. Eventually one of your posts will go viral and without a doubt that will convert into a sale.

2. Grow social media organically
This is a lot easier if you can afford to order the product that you sell. But it's still possible to make this work if you can't get the product in your hands.
With this method, you're essentially picking up a new part-time job. You are now a social media manager, you work 20 hours a week and create and post new content on multiple platforms every single day. You want to take advantage of platforms that favor new accounts. A great place to start is Tiktok but Instagram reels is pretty good too. Tiktok boosts the reach of new accounts, you can see a lot of success blitzing a new Tiktok account (2-5 posts a day). The Instagram algorithm boosts accounts that post a lot of reels because for a good while Tiktok was destroying them with short-term content. (Fun fact this feud between platforms is so deep that if you make a video on Tiktok and you cross-post it on Instagram without removing the Tiktok watermark, the Instagram algorithm will suppress the reach of the video)

You want to focus on making short videos with a focus on real-life use cases of your product. I'd break this down into 3 steps.

A. Research
B. Content Testing
C. Doubling down on what gets traction

It can take weeks or even months to get a good feel for how to create engaging content. The true key is consistency. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to volume. Not just any volume, but a high volume of quality content. Whatever platform that you decide to use, I suggest watching at least 4 hours of content on youtube from experts on the platform. You'll pick up a bunch of tricks and tips. It's important that you understand how the algorithm works on different platforms to see any type of success doing this. I wouldn't suggest attempting to scale on more than 3 platforms at once. In fact, it's actually better to focus on 1 platform and do it well over splitting your time into other platforms trying to scale 3 pages at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin.

3. Elite cart protection
If you do under 10k a month most email marketing is irrelevant. People with startup brands book calls with me all the time and I tell them the same thing. You need traffic before there's anything I can do to help you other than give some basic advice. However, there are 3 automated email flows that actually can make an impact at this point. These flows are the welcome series, the abandoned cart, and the browse abandonment. Most email platforms are free and they charge based on volume. So in most cases, this won't cost you anything. Sites like Klaviyo make it very easy to set up the basics. Don't overthink this at all, at this point you don't need beautiful designs or stand-out copywriting. You simply need to just follow up with the interested potential customers that visit your site. A healthy store converts 3% of its traffic, 7/10 people who add things to their cart don't complete a purchase. You have a second chance at converting 97% of the people that visit your site if you actually follow up with them.

I've made entire posts about how to set flows up correctly so I won't be expanding on this much more.

I know this post was a bit long-winded but if you've made it this far you must be serious. There's going to be a bunch of people that read this thread and take no action that'll stay at 0 sales. The beauty of life is that you get to choose what happens next.

With that being said, thanks so taking the time out of your day to read my post. I hope even some of the bigger brand owners were able to get something out of this post. I look forward to seeing some of you guys make your first few sales in the coming weeks. As always feel free to add onto things that I missed, or maybe share what worked for you. I'll reply to everything that I see.

Me and my husband have had our sweet boy for about three years now. He came to us when he was around 1-1.5 y/o and has been the most loving addition to our little. My sister recently got a kitten and it got on well as a playmate for her other cat, and we've considered doing the same but I'm hesitant. I would love a new kitten but I'm not sure if my little guy would feel the same. Is there any way to know if your cat would or wouldn't be suited to have another kitty companion? I've done some research into scent swapping and placing their food near each other's with a barrier and the likes but is there any way to know if he would be okay with it without just bringing a new cat in? Id hate to adopt and have to bring the new baby back but I want my current cat to be comfortable and for both to be happy and safe. Does anyone have any experience in either them hating each other long term and is that a possibility?

Last week I made a post about generating 2.5 million in sales for a client without spending a dime on ads. The thing is, I did this on a brand that already did over a million in sales the year before. I got a bunch of messages from people that don't already have established brands but thought they could benefit from organic traffic. So I made this post, I'll explain exactly how you can generate sales with literally nothing other than time and a website.

Quick disclaimer, it's 10x harder to make your first 10 sales if you don't have a marketing budget or an existing audience to market to. You're going to have to consistently spend multiple hours a day working to accomplish anything. Not just mindless work either, you're going to have to be a critical thinker and have a basic understanding of human psychology to see any type of success using these methods. If you don't have time to do that, you won't see any results from these methods and you might as well stop reading now.

Now that we've cleared that up let's get to the good stuff. Here's how you make your first 10 sales without spending any money on marketing.

In order to get sales you need traffic. You can't test anything or sell anything if no one visits your site.
So here are 3 ways to generate traffic for free:

1. Become a member of the community that your customers interact in
In my last post, I explained how I built a community from scratch, but at this point, I'm assuming you don't have time to spend 3 months building a community if you haven't even proven that anyone wants to buy your products. So I'm going to teach you how to piggyback off existing communities.
It is easier said than done, but 1 good post can get easily get you your first 5 sales. You can do this on Reddit, in Facebook groups, or any other type of niche relevant group/forum. If the people in these communities think you're trying to sell something you'll probably just get banned and people will actually get mad at you for trying to sell your products. The trick is being a casual, you want to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Don't even mention your products in your first 2-3 posts. Maybe ask niche relevant questions, or provide value in comments under other people's posts and show people that you have a genuine interest in the topic. Think of this like warming up your account.
Now when it's time to sell, you do it in the most discreet way possible. The better your product is, the easier it is to do this. This is the fastest way to find out if your product is actually useful and if there's actually demand for your product. The best way to promote your product and create brand recognition is with lifestyle content. Never post a product photo with a white background in a community group. NEVER!

I'll give you a few examples of how to post product pics correctly:
Example 1
niche: dog niche
product: dog collar
You take a dog to a beautiful place. Maybe a beach by the water and you get a whole photoshoot with the dog. Bring lots of treats and showcase a happy dog wearing the collar you sell. Now you don't post the entire photoshoot in the group. You post 1 picture, not necessarily the best picture or the most professional looking one. You want to post the picture that evokes the most emotion. It's the picture with the dog making a funny face, or another dog sniffing your dog's butt, or the pic with your dog in bliss chewing his favorite treat that goes viral. Pick a picture that'll start a discussion and reply to every single comment. Then, once the post does well, without a doubt someone will ask about your product. That's when you come in and give a shoutout to the site that you got it from. If no one does this, you can literally create a fake account and ask/answer the question on your own. You're basically creating the perception of product demand.

Example 2
niche: food and beverage/electronics
Product: digital thermometer
Imagine... It's steak night, you fire up the BBQ and you want the perfect steaks! We're selling the dream of a perfectly cooked steak, not a digital thermometer. You post 2 pictures. Picture 1 is the steak on the grill with the thermometer showing the perfect temperature. Picture 2 shows the perfectly sliced steak being served. Try to capture someone that stirs emotions in the picture, whether it's a happy grandma, a kid with the steak on his fork, or a hungry pet drooling and looking at your plate. Emotion is what sells the product. Make sure you have a caption that conveys the message that you're trying to send. Use something short and simple but also try your best to convey a story. Further, convey the imagery in the comments ex. "Inlaws are over, got this thermometer to make sure everything was cooked perfectly, Now everyone thinks I actually know how to cook."

Example 3
Niche: candles
Product: candle
"Midterms are around the corner, sparked my favorite scent to set the mood tonight" (caption for the post in studying group or collage group) + a picture of an opened textbook and candle in the background, but you can clearly still see the candle label. This example is for the people who have general products. It may actually be harder for you to sell a candle in a candle subreddit because there are just too many options. So you get into the mind of your customers, you imagine the scenario your customer is in when they use your product, and you sell the feeling of enjoying the product in a situation that they've experienced before.
In the comments, you describe the scent in detail and you talk about how you prefer this candle over the one you got at Bath and Body Works because it's made from natural materials.
If you do this right, consistently. Eventually one of your posts will go viral and without a doubt that will convert into a sale.

2. Grow social media organically
This is a lot easier if you can afford to order the product that you sell. But it's still possible to make this work if you can't get the product in your hands.
With this method, you're essentially picking up a new part-time job. You are now a social media manager, you work 20 hours a week and create and post new content on multiple platforms every single day. You want to take advantage of platforms that favor new accounts. A great place to start is Tiktok but Instagram reels is pretty good too. Tiktok boosts the reach of new accounts, you can see a lot of success blitzing a new Tiktok account (2-5 posts a day). The Instagram algorithm boosts accounts that post a lot of reels because for a good while Tiktok was destroying them with short-term content. (Fun fact this feud between platforms is so deep that if you make a video on Tiktok and you cross-post it on Instagram without removing the Tiktok watermark, the Instagram algorithm will suppress the reach of the video)

You want to focus on making short videos with a focus on real-life use cases of your product. I'd break this down into 3 steps.

A. Research
B. Content Testing
C. Doubling down on what gets traction

It can take weeks or even months to get a good feel for how to create engaging content. The true key is consistency. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to volume. Not just any volume, but a high volume of quality content. Whatever platform that you decide to use, I suggest watching at least 4 hours of content on youtube from experts on the platform. You'll pick up a bunch of tricks and tips. It's important that you understand how the algorithm works on different platforms to see any type of success doing this. I wouldn't suggest attempting to scale on more than 3 platforms at once. In fact, it's actually better to focus on 1 platform and do it well over splitting your time into other platforms trying to scale 3 pages at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin.

3. Elite cart protection
If you do under 10k a month most email marketing is irrelevant. People with startup brands book calls with me all the time and I tell them the same thing. You need traffic before there's anything I can do to help you other than give some basic advice. However, there are 3 automated email flows that actually can make an impact at this point. These flows are the welcome series, the abandoned cart, and the browse abandonment. Most email platforms are free and they charge based on volume. So in most cases, this won't cost you anything. Sites like Klaviyo make it very easy to set up the basics. Don't overthink this at all, at this point you don't need beautiful designs or stand-out copywriting. You simply need to just follow up with the interested potential customers that visit your site. A healthy store converts 3% of its traffic, 7/10 people who add things to their cart don't complete a purchase. You have a second chance at converting 97% of the people that visit your site if you actually follow up with them.

I've made entire posts about how to set flows up correctly so I won't be expanding on this much more.

I know this post was a bit long-winded but if you've made it this far you must be serious. There's going to be a bunch of people that read this thread and take no action that'll stay at 0 sales. The beauty of life is that you get to choose what happens next.

With that being said, thanks so taking the time out of your day to read my post. I hope even some of the bigger brand owners were able to get something out of this post. I look forward to seeing some of you guys make your first few sales in the coming weeks. As always feel free to add onto things that I missed, or maybe share what worked for you. I'll reply to everything that I see.

Pretty much as the title says. Can a person lean more towards a specific season but also pull from other, different seasons? I'm struggling a bit to find my season at the moment and feel like I may straddle multiple?
For context, I am fair with cool undertones (Armani Luminous Silk Concealer 3.75 is a near perfect foundation match for me if that helps). My eyes are a dark blue that transition to a fairly icey blue right around the pupil. I am medium to high contrast with brown-auburn hair (I naturally straddle the brunette-auburn continuum but I do dye it one shade darker just for a little added drama.) Playing around with color wise, I always get classified as Cool Summer or Cool Winter, depending on where on my face I took the color sample from.
Overall, I feel either of these seasons generally makes sense and many of the colors in these palettes tend to be shades I naturally gravitate towards in terms of clothing. (And I personally think the Cool Summer palette may look a little bit better on me. I think winter colors can sometimes be a little too bright/overwhelming?) Orange, salmon pink and tomato reds tend to give me a bit of a jaundiced effect. Whereas both bluer, more raspberry/strawberry reds tend to brighten my face up. Rosey beige pinks tend to be a great nude/natural lip for me. I can't wear mustard yellow but I think I can pull off brighter and lighter lemon-y yellow shades.
However, my issue is when it comes to neutrals. I feel as if all the greys and many of the purples in the WinteSummer color schemes make me look incredibly sickly, like they basically just suck all life from my face and I look tired, gaunt. They play up dark undereye circles and shadows in my face. I'm not sure if it's because of the warmth in my hair, but I feel many of the neutrals found in warmer seasons suit me better? Even straight black and white don't seem to have this same effect on me as putting on wintesummer greys or purples.
Does this mean I'm actually a different season? Or is it acceptable to build a personal color palette inclusive of many different seasons?

So I have a teenage mutant ninja Aussie named Sirius who is now 8 months old. He is a LOT to handle, especially as we live in the city, but all in all, I’m happy to say, he is now pretty cool to be around for me, and our trainers (we have 2) also say we are doing nice for his breed and age.
However, as is inevitable for a young hyperactive shepherd, he has tons of protective and herding instincts, and sometimes they bite me in the ass (pretty literally). I know I’m doing everything I could, I know it just takes patience from me, maturing from him, and repetition from us both, but God I get so frustrated when he is acting up around other people. Sometimes he is barky, sometimes he decides he needs to lunge on everyone in the 10 meters vicinity of himself, sometimes he forgets he can live for 2 hours without me and tries to get out of the window when I leave. But what gets me is that all the time, people around are criticising me, giving unsolicited advice, opening up with “You know you should train your dog, right?”and threatening to report me to I don’t even know whom.
I mean, you could say he looks adult when he’s really a puppy and that’s what makes people judge, but actually where I live, in Germany, people, especially neighbours, didn’t give me any grace period even for his baby puppy stage, complaining about we go on potty breaks near the house too often or asking whether I’m aware that crating is considered torture.
I know I do inconvenience people sometimes, and I can imagine it sucks for them, but why do they need to be so rude and devoid of empathy? Every single accident is nothing in itself, but over time, it accumulates into this notion of “I’m doing everything I can, and am everyday reminded it’s not enough”.
At the moment, we’re on a vacation with him. I think in part I want to be away from home just to catch a break from being judged all the time. But of course travelling is also stressful. Yesterday I left him in our hotel room for 1.5 hours to go to dinner, and I know he barked for a few minutes and then stopped. And just now we were returning from a walk, and we stumbled upon some other guests who screamed at me: “this DOG!!! Barked yesterday! For HOURS!”.
And I’m sitting in my room crying because I just can’t take it anymore… I know it’s probably a me issue as I used to try to be invisible and convenient to people all my life, but I’m so so tired of inconveniencing everyone and being chastised for it…
Please, if you have some words of support for me, or advice that could help in communication with people about unwanted dog behaviour, I would be so grateful to hear it!!

Last week I made a post about generating 2.5 million in sales for a client without spending a dime on ads. The thing is, I did this on a brand that already did over a million in sales the year before. I got a bunch of messages from people that don't already have established brands but thought they could benefit from organic traffic. So I made this post, I'll explain exactly how you can generate sales with literally nothing other than time and a website. Quick disclaimer, it's 10x harder to make your first 10 sales if you don't have a marketing budget or an existing audience to market to. You're going to have to consistently spend multiple hours a day working to accomplish anything. Not just mindless work either, you're going to have to be a critical thinker and have a basic understanding of human psychology to see any type of success using these methods. If you don't have time to do that, you won't see any results from these methods and you might as well stop reading now. Now that we've cleared that up let's get to the good stuff. Here's how you make your first 10 sales without spending any money on marketing. In order to get sales you need traffic. You can't test anything or sell anything if no one visits your site. So here are 3 ways to generate traffic for free: 1. Become a member of the community that your customers interact in
In my last post, I explained how I built a community from scratch, but at this point, I'm assuming you don't have time to spend 3 months building a community if you haven't even proven that anyone wants to buy your products. So I'm going to teach you how to piggyback off existing communities. It is easier said than done, but 1 good post can get easily get you your first 5 sales. You can do this on Reddit, in Facebook groups, or any other type of niche relevant group/forum. If the people in these communities think you're trying to sell something you'll probably just get banned and people will actually get mad at you for trying to sell your products. The trick is being a casual, you want to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Don't even mention your products in your first 2-3 posts. Maybe ask niche relevant questions, or provide value in comments under other people's posts and show people that you have a genuine interest in the topic. Think of this like warming up your account. Now when it's time to sell, you do it in the most discreet way possible. The better your product is, the easier it is to do this. This is the fastest way to find out if your product is actually useful and if there's actually demand for your product. The best way to promote your product and create brand recognition is with lifestyle content. Never post a product photo with a white background in a community group. NEVER! I'll give you a few examples of how to post product pics correctly: Example 1 niche: dog niche product: dog collar You take a dog to a beautiful place. Maybe a beach by the water and you get a whole photoshoot with the dog. Bring lots of treats and showcase a happy dog wearing the collar you sell. Now you don't post the entire photoshoot in the group. You post 1 picture, not necessarily the best picture or the most professional looking one. You want to post the picture that evokes the most emotion. It's the picture with the dog making a funny face, or another dog sniffing your dog's butt, or the pic with your dog in bliss chewing his favorite treat that goes viral. Pick a picture that'll start a discussion and reply to every single comment. Then, once the post does well, without a doubt someone will ask about your product. That's when you come in and give a shoutout to the site that you got it from. If no one does this, you can literally create a fake account and ask/answer the question on your own. You're basically creating the perception of product demand. Example 2 niche: food and beverage/electronics Product: digital thermometer Imagine... It's steak night, you fire up the BBQ and you want the perfect steaks! We're selling the dream of a perfectly cooked steak, not a digital thermometer. You post 2 pictures. Picture 1 is the steak on the grill with the thermometer showing the perfect temperature. Picture 2 shows the perfectly sliced steak being served. Try to capture someone that stirs emotions in the picture, whether it's a happy grandma, a kid with the steak on his fork, or a hungry pet drooling and looking at your plate. Emotion is what sells the product. Make sure you have a caption that conveys the message that you're trying to send. Use something short and simple but also try your best to convey a story. Further, convey the imagery in the comments ex. "Inlaws are over, got this thermometer to make sure everything was cooked perfectly, Now everyone thinks I actually know how to cook." Example 3 Niche: candles Product: candle "Midterms are around the corner, sparked my favorite scent to set the mood tonight" (caption for the post in studying group or collage group) + a picture of an opened textbook and candle in the background, but you can clearly still see the candle label. This example is for the people who have general products. It may actually be harder for you to sell a candle in a candle subreddit because there are just too many options. So you get into the mind of your customers, you imagine the scenario your customer is in when they use your product, and you sell the feeling of enjoying the product in a situation that they've experienced before. In the comments, you describe the scent in detail and you talk about how you prefer this candle over the one you got at Bath and Body Works because it's made from natural materials. If you do this right, consistently. Eventually one of your posts will go viral and without a doubt that will convert into a sale. 2. Grow social media organically This is a lot easier if you can afford to order the product that you sell. But it's still possible to make this work if you can't get the product in your hands. With this method, you're essentially picking up a new part-time job. You are now a social media manager, you work 20 hours a week and create and post new content on multiple platforms every single day. You want to take advantage of platforms that favor new accounts. A great place to start is Tiktok but Instagram reels is pretty good too. Tiktok boosts the reach of new accounts, you can see a lot of success blitzing a new Tiktok account (2-5 posts a day). The Instagram algorithm boosts accounts that post a lot of reels because for a good while Tiktok was destroying them with short-term content. (Fun fact this feud between platforms is so deep that if you make a video on Tiktok and you cross-post it on Instagram without removing the Tiktok watermark, the Instagram algorithm will suppress the reach of the video) You want to focus on making short videos with a focus on real-life use cases of your product. I'd break this down into 3 steps. A. Research B. Content Testing C. Doubling down on what gets traction It can take weeks or even months to get a good feel for how to create engaging content. The true key is consistency. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to volume. Not just any volume, but a high volume of quality content. Whatever platform that you decide to use, I suggest watching at least 4 hours of content on youtube from experts on the platform. You'll pick up a bunch of tricks and tips. It's important that you understand how the algorithm works on different platforms to see any type of success doing this. I wouldn't suggest attempting to scale on more than 3 platforms at once. In fact, it's actually better to focus on 1 platform and do it well over splitting your time into other platforms trying to scale 3 pages at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin. 3. Elite cart protection If you do under 10k a month most email marketing is irrelevant. People with startup brands book calls with me all the time and I tell them the same thing. You need traffic before there's anything I can do to help you other than give some basic advice. However, there are 3 automated email flows that actually can make an impact at this point. These flows are the welcome series, the abandoned cart, and the browse abandonment. Most email platforms are free and they charge based on volume. So in most cases, this won't cost you anything. Sites like Klaviyo make it very easy to set up the basics. Don't overthink this at all, at this point you don't need beautiful designs or stand-out copywriting. You simply need to just follow up with the interested potential customers that visit your site. A healthy store converts 3% of its traffic, 7/10 people who add things to their cart don't complete a purchase. You have a second chance at converting 97% of the people that visit your site if you actually follow up with them. I've made entire posts about how to set flows up correctly so I won't be expanding on this much more. I know this post was a bit long-winded but if you've made it this far you must be serious. There's going to be a bunch of people that read this thread and take no action that'll stay at 0 sales. The beauty of life is that you get to choose what happens next. With that being said, thanks so taking the time out of your day to read my post. I hope even some of the bigger brand owners were able to get something out of this post. I look forward to seeing some of you guys make your first few sales in the coming weeks. As always feel free to add onto things that I missed, or maybe share what worked for you. I'll reply to everything that I see.

Was anyone else sometimes bothered by the combos of gloves, hats, shoes, dress? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the items themselves and the effort, but I found it distracting when Midge (and sometimes Rose) would have like a hot pink dress and salmon gloves, and a blue hat, and purple shoes when those colors weren’t anywhere else in the outfit or in the same hue/value (like a neon color with a dusty different color with a different jewel tone color). We know she has many, many clothes and accessories, so you’d think she’d have shades/colors for accessories to pull from any dress or be complimentary together.

Sorry for the long message but some reason I have the motivation to vent to random strangers at almost 3 am in the morning lol It feels like a majority my friends are all liked by other friends and get girls but neither of those happen to me. I know I'm average but its devastating to think that a girl who I thought was a perfect fit most likely doesn't even like me back a single bit. People always assume stuff about me and my personality and they don't really talk to me. A lot of my friends have become popular and left me behind and there are only a few left who actually like me. I know, right? I sound like a total loser. Why don't most people and girls even consider talking to me at school but they talk to everyone else? It feels like I'm acting normal but people still just think I'm just an irrelevant kid standing on the sidelines. I can be a very nice person if you're actually friends with me but people overlook that. I'm tired of being treated like i'm just a nobody that pretty much the whole school doesn't like. I'm tired of being made fun of by other people. I just want to be respected and treated like a normal kid.

Last week I made a post about generating 2.5 million in sales for a client without spending a dime on ads. The thing is, I did this on a brand that already did over a million in sales the year before. I got a bunch of messages from people that don't already have established brands but thought they could benefit from organic traffic. So I made this post, I'll explain exactly how you can generate sales with literally nothing other than time and a website. Quick disclaimer, it's 10x harder to make your first 10 sales if you don't have a marketing budget or an existing audience to market to. You're going to have to consistently spend multiple hours a day working to accomplish anything. Not just mindless work either, you're going to have to be a critical thinker and have a basic understanding of human psychology to see any type of success using these methods. If you don't have time to do that, you won't see any results from these methods and you might as well stop reading now. Now that we've cleared that up let's get to the good stuff. Here's how you make your first 10 sales without spending any money on marketing. In order to get sales you need traffic. You can't test anything or sell anything if no one visits your site. So here are 3 ways to generate traffic for free: 1. Become a member of the community that your customers interact in In my last post, I explained how I built a community from scratch, but at this point, I'm assuming you don't have time to spend 3 months building a community if you haven't even proven that anyone wants to buy your products. So I'm going to teach you how to piggyback off existing communities. It is easier said than done, but 1 good post can get easily get you your first 5 sales. You can do this on Reddit, in Facebook groups, or any other type of niche relevant group/forum. If the people in these communities think you're trying to sell something you'll probably just get banned and people will actually get mad at you for trying to sell your products. The trick is being a casual, you want to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Don't even mention your products in your first 2-3 posts. Maybe ask niche relevant questions, or provide value in comments under other people's posts and show people that you have a genuine interest in the topic. Think of this like warming up your account. Now when it's time to sell, you do it in the most discreet way possible. The better your product is, the easier it is to do this. This is the fastest way to find out if your product is actually useful and if there's actually demand for your product. The best way to promote your product and create brand recognition is with lifestyle content. Never post a product photo with a white background in a community group. NEVER! I'll give you a few examples of how to post product pics correctly: Example 1 niche: dog niche product: dog collar You take a dog to a beautiful place. Maybe a beach by the water and you get a whole photoshoot with the dog. Bring lots of treats and showcase a happy dog wearing the collar you sell. Now you don't post the entire photoshoot in the group. You post 1 picture, not necessarily the best picture or the most professional looking one. You want to post the picture that evokes the most emotion. It's the picture with the dog making a funny face, or another dog sniffing your dog's butt, or the pic with your dog in bliss chewing his favorite treat that goes viral. Pick a picture that'll start a discussion and reply to every single comment. Then, once the post does well, without a doubt someone will ask about your product. That's when you come in and give a shoutout to the site that you got it from. If no one does this, you can literally create a fake account and ask/answer the question on your own. You're basically creating the perception of product demand. Example 2 niche: food and beverage/electronics Product: digital thermometer Imagine... It's steak night, you fire up the BBQ and you want the perfect steaks! We're selling the dream of a perfectly cooked steak, not a digital thermometer. You post 2 pictures. Picture 1 is the steak on the grill with the thermometer showing the perfect temperature. Picture 2 shows the perfectly sliced steak being served. Try to capture someone that stirs emotions in the picture, whether it's a happy grandma, a kid with the steak on his fork, or a hungry pet drooling and looking at your plate. Emotion is what sells the product. Make sure you have a caption that conveys the message that you're trying to send. Use something short and simple but also try your best to convey a story. Further, convey the imagery in the comments ex. "Inlaws are over, got this thermometer to make sure everything was cooked perfectly, Now everyone thinks I actually know how to cook." Example 3 Niche: candles Product: candle "Midterms are around the corner, sparked my favorite scent to set the mood tonight" (caption for the post in studying group or collage group) + a picture of an opened textbook and candle in the background, but you can clearly still see the candle label. This example is for the people who have general products. It may actually be harder for you to sell a candle in a candle subreddit because there are just too many options. So you get into the mind of your customers, you imagine the scenario your customer is in when they use your product, and you sell the feeling of enjoying the product in a situation that they've experienced before. In the comments, you describe the scent in detail and you talk about how you prefer this candle over the one you got at Bath and Body Works because it's made from natural materials. If you do this right, consistently. Eventually one of your posts will go viral and without a doubt that will convert into a sale. 2. Grow social media organically This is a lot easier if you can afford to order the product that you sell. But it's still possible to make this work if you can't get the product in your hands. With this method, you're essentially picking up a new part-time job. You are now a social media manager, you work 20 hours a week and create and post new content on multiple platforms every single day. You want to take advantage of platforms that favor new accounts. A great place to start is Tiktok but Instagram reels is pretty good too. Tiktok boosts the reach of new accounts, you can see a lot of success blitzing a new Tiktok account (2-5 posts a day). The Instagram algorithm boosts accounts that post a lot of reels because for a good while Tiktok was destroying them with short-term content. (Fun fact this feud between platforms is so deep that if you make a video on Tiktok and you cross-post it on Instagram without removing the Tiktok watermark, the Instagram algorithm will suppress the reach of the video) You want to focus on making short videos with a focus on real-life use cases of your product. I'd break this down into 3 steps. A. Research B. Content Testing C. Doubling down on what gets traction It can take weeks or even months to get a good feel for how to create engaging content. The true key is consistency. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to volume. Not just any volume, but a high volume of quality content. Whatever platform that you decide to use, I suggest watching at least 4 hours of content on youtube from experts on the platform. You'll pick up a bunch of tricks and tips. It's important that you understand how the algorithm works on different platforms to see any type of success doing this. I wouldn't suggest attempting to scale on more than 3 platforms at once. In fact, it's actually better to focus on 1 platform and do it well over splitting your time into other platforms trying to scale 3 pages at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin. 3. Elite cart protection If you do under 10k a month most email marketing is irrelevant. People with startup brands book calls with me all the time and I tell them the same thing. You need traffic before there's anything I can do to help you other than give some basic advice. However, there are 3 automated email flows that actually can make an impact at this point. These flows are the welcome series, the abandoned cart, and the browse abandonment. Most email platforms are free and they charge based on volume. So in most cases, this won't cost you anything. Sites like Klaviyo make it very easy to set up the basics. Don't overthink this at all, at this point you don't need beautiful designs or stand-out copywriting. You simply need to just follow up with the interested potential customers that visit your site. A healthy store converts 3% of its traffic, 7/10 people who add things to their cart don't complete a purchase. You have a second chance at converting 97% of the people that visit your site if you actually follow up with them. I've made entire posts about how to set flows up correctly so I won't be expanding on this much more. I know this post was a bit long-winded but if you've made it this far you must be serious. There's going to be a bunch of people that read this thread and take no action that'll stay at 0 sales. The beauty of life is that you get to choose what happens next. With that being said, thanks so taking the time out of your day to read my post. I hope even some of the bigger brand owners were able to get something out of this post. I look forward to seeing some of you guys make your first few sales in the coming weeks. As always feel free to add onto things that I missed, or maybe share what worked for you. I'll reply to everything that I see.

When I grew up, I had difficulty looking people in the eyes, either avoiding it or dissociating and my eyes become unfocused when making actual attempts. In a way I was "lucky" to talk to a guidance counselor that gave me the advice to look at their nose or in-between the eyes or eyebrows to trick them into thinking I was making eye contact. Not much "lucky" because I also have amnesia and assume what people interpret of me is the truth (ex: "you never have difficulty with [thing I actively struggle with]"), so I thought I didn't have this issue with eye contact.
With changing jobs and not having to rely on attempts on eye contact anymore, I noticed it started getting difficult looking at people's faces from not having to mask. I started just not turning to face people when talking to them or only glancing at their mouth or nose and then looking away or my eyes constantly dart away from them. However, like today, I noticed I kept dodging looking at people's faces or at their eyes as usual, but had an easier time looking at someone with glasses on when they were talking to me.
I'm not sure if it's the frame of the glasses itself giving an easier focus that works well with the advice I was given by that one guidance counselor or what, but does anyone else have something similar, or this type of experience? Do others here find it easier to look people in the face when they have an accessory near their eyes like glasses, or does the nose and in-between advice work for them more?

TLDR and my log is at the end.
Hi all just wanted to share my breakthrough regimen that has resulted in excellent improvements in sexual function as well as some improvement in the anhedonia category. The anhedonia i believe is not caused by PSSD or it had very little to do with it. Regardless, it does seem to have improved mostly the feeling of being able to connect with females. I was targeting sexual function improvements. I took a combination of E2 injections, E2 gel and hops supplement. Everything else had been stable for a minimum of 6 months. Attached a document below that i recorded my trial on. It's now been a month+ since i last used E2 and very rarely do i take hops anymore. Improvements have stuck and seem to be getting better. Big improvements in erection quality, sensitivity and less so in libido.

I'll try to quantify the improvements but its difficult. As always things will fluctuate based on other factors like sleep, attractiveness of girl, mood that day, stress etc. The "Before" will be my baseline which was a combination of various supplements and medications. The heavy hitters are TRT (~125mg/week split into 2 doses Monday and Thursday), bromantane, NA Semax, selegiline in no particular order. Viagra is often used before sex as well. After my E2 trial i no longer need viagra all the time. Normally I am having sex almost daily which can be a bit taxing on the body i think. The sensitivity improvements are problematic on occasion. It becomes difficult to continue to have sex and i have to use tricks and techniques to not cum too quickly. I dont wish to try E2 again for the time being as the increased sensitivity causes issues.
The lower the score the worse it is. 1/10 sensitivity would be near total genital numbness and no pleasure.10/10 would be pre-PSSD levels for me that align with the best I've felt in my life in that area. It's not the most scientific approach if anyone has a proper form to fill out for recovery I could give it a go.
Before
Erection quality (being able to get an erection and maintain it during sex) 5/10
Libido - 3/10
Sensitivity - 5/10
Anhedonia - 7/10
Refractory Period - 1 day (assuming having sex daily)
After
Erection quality (being able to get an erection and maintain it during sex) 8/10
Libido - 5/10
Sensitivity - 8/10
Anhedonia - 8/10
Refractory Period - Varies, limited data. 1-2 hours has been possible on several occasions so far. Definite improvement

A big thanks to u/Sweaty_Literature_69 (Spyros) for sharing his theory
TLDR: Took E2 injections/gel and hops and got big improvements in sexual function across the board that have stuck for a month+

---------Log Below-------

-------------------------------

mike1 — 03/20/2023 1:31 PM

Just applied 1.25g (0.75mg of 17 β estradiol) gel to test the waters about 40 minutes ago. will see if there's any effects i wont be doing a proper trial (following sweaty's pdf) because there's too many restrictions. will try with the gel for now and then move to injections later perhaps Some background: Ive been on trt for 2-3 years already. I've had PSSD for ~3 years from prozac (fluoxetine). Ive tried many things to see what will work for me. I would say I experienced a 30-40% improvement from baseline with my current regimen. The best window I ever had was my initial dose of proviron which prompted me to give this theory a shot. This lasted 2 days or so. I felt like a God every aspect was improved. It wasn't a manic phase though. Current regimen (the heavy hitters): TRT ~125mg/week No HCG NA Semax 300-600mcg/day Bromantane varying dosages Selegiline 1.25mg/day sublingual Various other supplements that I dont think matter all that much. Sexmas, Bromantane, Selegiline were all added individually after 1-2month minimum baseline was established. (edited)
2.
Akas — 03/20/2023 2:52 PM
May i ask why you didn’t pair Test with HCG from the beginning to prevent ball shrinkage?

[2:53 PM]

And may i also ask which Ssri you took, how long you took it for and how hold you are?
4.
mike1 — 03/20/2023 3:21 PM
May i ask why you didn’t pair Test with HCG from the beginning to prevent ball shrinkage? - I have 0 sperm count now which is very useful for unprotected sex. I have used hcg in the past. And may i also ask which Ssri you took, how long you took it for and how hold you are? - Fluoxetine for ~12 years, 30 years old
5.
Akas — 03/20/2023 3:33 PM
So you are dealing with sexual symptoms right now? But you have recovered some of your sexuality/libido? (edited)
6.
mike1 — 03/20/2023 3:41 PM
yea mostly just sexual symptoms and some aspects of anhedonia but im not a severe case. i can have sex daily if i use viagra. i dont have much libido the brain to dick connection isnt there much and genital numbness

u/mike1

yea mostly just sexual symptoms and some aspects of anhedonia but im not a severe case. i can have sex daily if i use viagra. i dont have much libido the brain to dick connection isnt there much and genital numbness
14.
mike1 — 03/20/2023 6:31 PM
Update 1: Roughly 5 hours since gel application. Had a little surge in genital/skin sensitivity around the 1 hour mark. Feel like i am beginning to retain water and blood pressure going up a bit. Nothing uncomfortable but its noticeable. Better sense of well being around the 2-3 hour mark which has faded. No other side effects or improvements to note. (edited)

[7:23 PM]

What are your current doses ?

u/mike1

Update 1: Roughly 5 hours since gel application. Had a little surge in genital/skin sensitivity around the 1 hour mark. Feel like i am beginning to retain water and blood pressure going up a bit. Nothing uncomfortable but its noticeable. Better sense of well being around the 2-3 hour mark which has faded. No other side effects or improvements to note. (edited)
Survivor — 03/20/2023 7:43 PM
Blackcreative also had the same reaction after 5 hours

u/Zyzz Brah

What are your current doses ?
mike1 — 03/20/2023 9:59 PM
dosage is posted. first line in the first post
20.
Survivor — 03/20/2023 10:01 PM
u/mike1 are you gonna use this amount of gel daily for your current protocol?
21.
mike1 — 03/20/2023 10:05 PM
The bioavailability of oestradiol from the gel was 61% - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10465378/
PubMed
Absorption and bioavailability of oestradiol from a gel, a patch an...
The doses used of the transdermal gel and the patch roughly corresponded to each other with regard to the amount of oestradiol absorbed whereas the bioavailability from the tablet was significantly higher than from the gel. The lack of bioequivalence, the different serum oestradiol profiles and the …
📷

u/Survivor

u/mike1 are you gonna use this amount of gel daily for your current protocol?
mike1 — 03/20/2023 10:07 PM
i think ill increase it tomorrow to 1.6mg of 17 β estradiol. that should mean roughly 1mg is absorbed (edited)

[10:07 PM]

double today's dosage
24.
Survivor — 03/20/2023 10:07 PM
What is the bioavailability of gels usually?

mike1

The bioavailability of oestradiol from the gel was 61% - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10465378/
mike1 — 03/20/2023 10:08 PM
i dont know. i just posted the bioavailability of E2 gel

[10:08 PM]

depends on what body part you put it on too

[10:08 PM]

i did inner thigh

u/mike1

depends on what body part you put it on too
Survivor — 03/20/2023 10:08 PM
Where is it the highest?
29.
mike1 — 03/20/2023 10:09 PM
i read inner thigh, inner upper arms is good

[10:11 PM]

Update 2: Around 9 hours since application. No changes, no improvements/side effects. Had sex with viagra as normal. Seemed to have better sensitivity, bit more libido than yesterday. No crazy improvements though. My sexual function fluctuates ive had days like this before. If i could have this level of function consistently though that'd be a marked improvement.
March 21, 2023
31.
mike1 — 03/21/2023 8:26 PM
Update 3: Applied roughly 1.6mg of 17 β estradiol gel 5 hours ago so roughly 1mg is absorbed. No changes to report. No improvements, no side effects. Will try to get injections soon see if that helps. May add in hops too.
March 27, 2023
34.
Update 4: Applied roughly 1mg of 17 β estradiol gel 4 hours ago an d 1240mg hops. No changes to report. No improvements, no side effects. seems improvements have stopped. what little improvements there were anyways will keep going. but this doesnt seem to be the magic bullet i had my best ever window years ago on proviron. must be some hormone combo that will fix it mike1 — 25/03/2023 19:25 Update 5: Applied roughly 1mg of 17 β estradiol gel yesterday and took 1240mg hops again. No changes to report. No improvements, no side effects.
36.
mike1 — 03/27/2023 5:03 PM
thanks. just got oestradiol benzoate today for injection. injected 1mg 5 mins ago will report back later

[5:04 PM]

i am not on hcg btw. if you want to edit the title

[5:04 PM]

on TRT, e2 gel, now e2 injections

u/mike1

The bioavailability of oestradiol from the gel was 61% - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10465378/
Matiyar — 03/27/2023 5:08 PM
61% as compared to a pill ,-,

[5:10 PM]

Biovailability of oral estradiol ranges from less than 1% to around 15%, so according to this research you can expect ~9% absorption at best
43.
mike1 — 03/27/2023 5:14 PM
really? that seems incredibly low, almost useless

[5:15 PM]

his cream is 85% he says
46.
Matiyar — 03/27/2023 5:20 PM
I don't know from where he pulled that number

u/Matiyar

I don't know from where he pulled that number
mike1 — 03/27/2023 5:21 PM
i would guess the manufacturer? ill ask him
48.
Survivor — 03/27/2023 10:07 PM
u/mike1 When did you stopped e2 gel?
49.
Ratatouileee — 03/27/2023 11:50 PM
u/mike1 any different feeling?
March 28, 2023

u/Survivor

u/mike1 When did you stopped e2 gel?
mike1 — 03/28/2023 12:17 AM
yesterday

u/Ratatouileee

u/mike1 any different feeling?
mike1 — 03/28/2023 12:19 AM
Update 6: Injected 1mg of estradiol benzoate. Today was also my day for TRT injection. 1 hour in feel more sensitivty, hard flaccid type dick (this a positive). dick feels more full. It persisted for a few hours then declined. Had great sex, increased sensitivity, more libido. Maybe a 15% improvement so far over baseline so far. I feel the most effects shortly after injection and shortly after applying the gel. (edited)
Survivor — 03/28/2023 12:22 AM
Awesome man
53.
Dixon Uranus — 03/28/2023 1:07 AM
Great news, bro!

[1:07 AM]

Do you have cognitive or emotional symptoms at all?

[1:08 AM]

If yes, any changes on these fronts as well?
56.
mike1 — 03/28/2023 10:37 AM
I might have some degree of anhedonia. I believe ive had it since a young age before ssri though. I cant feel love/connections but again a problem since i was young. Still can feel a range of emotions but im mostly in the middle not many ups and downs. Cognitive im fine. No changes there. Bromanatane and semax helped my cognitive aspects already. Still on those.
57.
Survivor — 03/28/2023 12:44 PM
u/mike1 Are you gonna continue estradiol benzoate im?
58.
mike1 — 03/28/2023 2:14 PM
yea my plan is to do a week
59.
Ratatouileee — 03/28/2023 3:38 PM
u/mike1 have you had windows before you started the estrogen or is this the first time you got your libido and sensitivity back?

u/Ratatouileee

u/mike1 have you had windows before you started the estrogen or is this the first time you got your libido and sensitivity back?
mike1 — 03/28/2023 3:43 PM
from my OP: "The best window I ever had was my initial dose of proviron which prompted me to give this theory a shot. This lasted 2 days or so. I felt like a God every aspect was improved. It wasn't a manic phase though."
61.
138791 — 03/28/2023 3:51 PM
I felt the same from mini recoveries
62.
Survivor — 03/28/2023 8:26 PM
u/mike1 Any update today?

u/mike1

Update 6: Injected 1mg of estradiol benzoate. Today was also my day for TRT injection. 1 hour in feel more sensitivty, hard flaccid type dick (this a positive). dick feels more full. It persisted for a few hours then declined. Had great sex, increased sensitivity, more libido. Maybe a 15% improvement so far over baseline so far. I feel the most effects shortly after injection and shortly after applying the gel. (edited)
LastRiver — 03/28/2023 9:08 PM
Sorry man I'm confused by your wording. Are you saying hard flaccid is a positive? I don't think I'm understanding right lol

u/LastRiver

Sorry man I'm confused by your wording. Are you saying hard flaccid is a positive? I don't think I'm understanding right lol
mike1 — 03/28/2023 11:14 PM
yea it is in this context. imagine a hard flaccid as your baseline during the day vs a shrunken dick. when i had sex i was able to have a strong erection with a small dose of viagra

u/Survivor

u/mike1 Any update today?
mike1 — 03/28/2023 11:14 PM
i was busy today and forgot to inject. didnt realize until it was late evening time

u/mike1

yea it is in this context. imagine a hard flaccid as your baseline during the day vs a shrunken dick. when i had sex i was able to have a strong erection with a small dose of viagra
LastRiver — 03/28/2023 11:24 PM
Hard flaccid is a shrunken dick

u/mike1

i was busy today and forgot to inject. didnt realize until it was late evening time
Survivor — 03/28/2023 11:31 PM
Your e2 levels must be peaking tomorrow after 48 hours

u/LastRiver

Hard flaccid is a shrunken dick
mike1 — 03/28/2023 11:35 PM
Opposite of that. Its semi hard, hands wells, but not an erection
March 29, 2023
70.
mike1 — 03/29/2023 6:45 PM
i injected around an hour ago. will report later
71.

u/mike1

Update 6: Injected 1mg of estradiol benzoate. Today was also my day for TRT injection. 1 hour in feel more sensitivty, hard flaccid type dick (this a positive). dick feels more full. It persisted for a few hours then declined. Had great sex, increased sensitivity, more libido. Maybe a 15% improvement so far over baseline so far. I feel the most effects shortly after injection and shortly after applying the gel. (edited)
mike1 — 03/30/2023 9:05 PM
Update 7: injected 1mg yesterday. Improvements thus far have stuck. No improvements beyond what i reported before. Today no injection. (edited)
April 1, 2023
76.
mike1 — 04/01/2023 11:51 AM
sexual function not as good yesterday. was a bit stressed too
April 2, 2023
79.
mike1 — 04/02/2023 3:57 PM
Update 8: Today is day 4 of no injection. Nothing to report. Maybe a 5% improvement has stuck from my E2 usage prior (edited)
April 3, 2023
82.
mike1 — 04/03/2023 3:41 PM
Update 9: Day 5 of no injection. Performance was good last night. Definitely better than normal. Feeling good today will see how performance is tonight.
83.
Survivor — 04/03/2023 4:08 PM
u/mike1 It’s good you are seeing improvements. I pray to god that this might be the key for all of us .

u/mike1

Update 9: Day 5 of no injection. Performance was good last night. Definitely better than normal. Feeling good today will see how performance is tonight.
April 4, 2023

u/mike1

Update 9: Day 5 of no injection. Performance was good last night. Definitely better than normal. Feeling good today will see how performance is tonight.
Akas — Yesterday at 7:50 AM
That’s dope. Your libido/sex drive is feeling high?
88.
mike1 — Yesterday at 11:44 AM
not high. just better than normal. i would say erection quality and sensitivity is the most improved. libido still low

u/Survivor

You must be a hyper responder getting improvement with such low dose initially
mike1 — Yesterday at 7:36 PM
low dose of what?

u/mike1

low dose of what?
Survivor — Yesterday at 7:55 PM
E2
92.
mike1 — Yesterday at 8:09 PM
hmm i dont think its a low dose. maybe compared to what other people are doing. but more e2 than you would get from TRT or a big test injection.
April 5, 2023
93.
mike1 — Today at 2:45 PM
Update 10: Today is day 7 of no E2 injections. I have been taking hops before sleeping on occasion the last few days. Performance is better than normal for sure. Maybe a 15% improvement for erection quality and sensitivity has stuck so far at this point. I will be starting NAC+Sarcosine tomorrow
Final update 28/4/2023 – I have been on NAC+Sarcosine and around 900mg of hops per day. It has been 4 weeks since I began E2 or hops. Sensitivity improvements have stayed. Better erections, slightly more libido. Libido is still low otherwise I am very happy with my improvements.

In my opinion, the most promising cure to hpv in our near future. A single week of treatment cleared hpv in half of participants, and 82% clearance in 12 weeks. This is a slightly long read but if you struggle with hpv I recommend checking out what I typed and check out the studies at the bottom. This provided me a lot of hope and I hope it does for others with recurrent long term infections, or anyone who is worried of future hpv infections.
For those looking into therapeutic hpv vaccines. I’m sure xdhpv has already posted something on this but I found it particularly interesting given the fact that lopimune utilizes two combined hiv antivirals that are already fully developed, available, and proven to be highly effective in eliminating hiv primarily by targeting viral pi protease inhibitors in hiv. Similar protein (pi) structures are found in hpv. The combination of lopinavir and ritonavir was found to achieve full clearance of hpv in half of studied patients in 1 week. Incredible. Just 12 weeks into the study over 80% of participants had full hpv clearance.
I have read over hundreds of studies on drugs and vaccines to treat ongoing hpv infections, but everything seems to questionable if in late phases or novel in other cases. This may be early in terms of research, but given the fact these drugs are already proven safe in effective in hiv treatment, I’d say this is highly promising to pass phase 2/3? clinical trials that are now ongoing in the UK.
Ongoing clinical trials to prove the effectiveness of lopimune, which is a combination of the antiviral HIV drugs lopinavir and ritonavir, in treating existing HPV infections. Trials carried out in Kenya have shown very promising results so far: after one year, 82% of patients were HPV-negative. The drug is now currently in phase II of clinical trials in the UK.
There is also ongoing research at the University of Leeds and the University of Birmingham into how HPV infections occur have led to the identification of a specific protein known as STAT3, which allows HPV to infect cells and replicate, and the individual enzymes that activates the protein. By identifying these proteins and enzymes that enables the spread of HPV, scientists can develop drugs that can specifically target them and prevent HPV from infecting other cells.
Kenya HPV study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4732739/
Current trials for AIN: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05334004

Is dumpster diving for waste products from stores, like clothes, shoes, etc , legal here? Are there recommended places to go? Would anyone teach me? I hate how much fabric is wasted especially w companies throwing old clothes out and I know myself and friends could definitely use said fabric to create some new pieces and save them from the tip
Same as any non perishable items, I and my friends are all incredibly creative and into DIY and can upcycle pretty much anything, let's save the planet and make a lil money on the way, yaknow?

I originally wanted to post this in /relationship_advice, but kept getting deleted for asking for moral judgement. I know this sub has a similar rule, so i hope I'm not violating it, but i don't think I'm asking purely for simple reassurance. I would like some honest to god advice and guidance, or even reprimand XD
Using an old throwaway account cuz i don't know who might see this, so i hope that explains the poor karma and history.
At the time of this post I am (29M)
So honestly, i imagine the situation I'm in right now is not so unique, but i honestly have no idea how to proceed, so pls help reddit people
So i guess a little backstory, just for context. A little more than two years ago, in the first covid winter, I was dumped pretty suddenly by my SO of about 3 years. I'd known her through college, but we only began a "serious" relationship after we'd both graduated. Overall we'd known and been at least friendly and sometimes intimate with each other for about 7 years. The relationship was long distance, however, and covid restrictions only exacerbated that difficulty. Long story short, she revealed to me that she had been seeing someone else during our covid related longterm separation, and she'd decided to pursue that relationship instead. Literally that sudden and final. I'll admit it did a pretty critical blow to my psyche during a time when i (like I assume many people were) was not very well grounded emotionally and mentally to begin with.
I'll yada yada a bit so as to get to the main issue at hand, but overall the experience hurt me incredibly deeply and for a long time completely wrecked my willingness and indeed my ability to trust and emotionally connect with people. I became super isolated, and watched with some apathy at the time as many other bridges in my life burned around me. I'm not proud of how i acted, but i was in no way sound of mind and emotion at the time, so lately I've been trying to forgive myself too.
Fast forward to March of last year. A little more than a year after my breakup, and around the time i heard my ex was getting married to the guy she left me for. Well wishes, and all that. I'd finally gotten to the point where I was trying to build connections again, and i started with old acquaintances who i hadn't spoken with for a long time, some since college. One of these people being a woman (28F) who I'd once been in an extracurricular club with long ago back in college. We'd been passing close, and although I'd always liked her and enjoyed her company, we'd always seemed to pass through different social circles aside from directly club related interactions. At the time, although I found her attractive and fun, i was mostly friends (and admittedly a romantic admirer) of one of her close friends, and that was how our relationship at the time existed.
I reached out to her with an old joke i remembered we'd shared, not expecting much given our mostly cordial relationship in the past. But she almost immediately reached back, and with such a surprising warmth and compassion that before long i found myself spilling my badly bruised guts to her about everything i felt and where i found myself in life at the time. In return, she began to share with me her own struggles, namely that she was trapped in an unhappy and at times emotionally abusive relationship. Its not my place to go into the close details, but suffice to say she was an objectively good person whose partner had convinced her that she was basically dirt lucky to be tracked into his house on his shoes.
Ill be completely honest here: i related really personally with a lot of her feelings of self doubt and loss of meaning in the relationship. I saw in her a lot myself at my own worst after my breakup. I wanted to help her, truly and without artifice, to see that she was so much more than what her situation had reduced her to. In essence, i wanted to be for her what i felt no one had been for me when i was at my most lost and hopeless. I swear i had no ulterior goal in mind at the time. I just saw someone i thought i could help, maybe, and i didn't want her to feel as lost as i had. And in truth, in trying to help her, i felt i could at least apply some meaning to my own emotional suffering. Even if i couldn't save myself, at least i could be part of her safety net.
So that's what i endeavored to be. I gave her truly heartfelt words of affirmation, chiding when she forgave her partner for things she shouldn't have (imo), and tried to remind her often enough what she meant to people outside of her romantic life. I really tried to be what in retrospect i wished someone had been for me. I was wary of developing any sort of savior complex. I made sure to remind myself that I'm no hero here, that ultimately whether she saved herself from this relationship or not was up to her choices and actions, and that I'm only a small and distant part of her life, existing only in texts and phonecalls. I'd learned already about the shockingly ephemeral nature of long distance, electronic communication based relationships anyway.
Along the way however, i came to realize how much our interests coincided with each other. She was easy to talk to in a way no one had been for a long time. I never felt like i needed to contrive topics for us to talk about, like i did with so many others, and similarly i never felt embarrassed to share things with her, both personal and irrelevant, that i would have otherwise kept to myself in fear of alienating the other party. We shared personal stories, participated in writing exercises with one another, sent photos (some of which i couldn't exactly say would be completely sfw, though they were more artsy than erotic), and indulged in our shared professional passions.
I wasn't trying to develop feelings for her. I don't think i was looking for excuses to try and fall for someone again. Like i said, i was especially wary because there was distance between us physically, and I am in no way super interested in trying something long distance again. And in the meantime, locally, I had been going on dates and trying to meet new people, just without much success and no "clicks."
My feelings for her were muddled for some time, and honestly i didn't really want to explore them. This changed after visiting her in person, finally, after about a year of contact. Nothing romantic or sexual happened. In fact, over the few nights i was there, she spent one of them with her partner (though at the time, without again going into much detail, things were "complicated" and they "weren't actually dating"). But for me, i think it solidified something inside, like a weight dropping into my gut. She was so much fun to spend time with, and to talk to. It wasn't just some strange parasocial thing that only existed in text and phone call. I don't know. I think for the first time then i acknowledged that my attachment to her might've become something more than just platonic. I'd gone out with other women in the meantime, but for the first time i found all my bitterly nostalgic thoughts of my ex were being completely replaced by thoughts of someone new.
Maybe this all sounds just like normal friend stuff but honestly this type of relationship doesnt happen for me with just friends. I haven't gotten this close with someone not just since my last relationship but including many years before that too. Outside of my ex, this is the deepest relationship I've had since my days in freshman and sophomore years of college, when i was a completely different person. Recently, it seems she finally broke up with her partner. At least it seems to be permanent, and she seems to be adamant that its over between them. I'm hopeful, in that I've seen her for the first time acknowledge that she felt like a worse person when they were together and that his behavior made her feel awful more often than it made her feel happy. I'm elated, but i now feel guilty about my reaction. I want to be her supporter, and I tell myself that i can be happy no matter what she decides to do with single life or who, if anyone, she may decide to pursue next (as long as they're better than this last one). I truly do have a personal emotional stake in purely seeing her find some happy ending. But now there's a part of me that wishes it could be with me.
I've spoken mostly about myself and my feels here, but obviously this isn't just me trying to cast myself as the sole character. For her part, she hasn't made any explicit indication that she is interested in me in that light. Or at least i don't think so. Maybe that's the big weight that sinks this whole thing and makes everything you've read a waste of time lol. But then again, I also have not made any advances myself that, i think, would indicate that i was interested in anything other than the status quo either. And in any case, she's just gone through her own major breakup and i know as well as anyone how long it can take to recover from that, and how new advances are probably not exactly something at the top of her list of wants atm. I obviously want to respect that. I don't plan on not being her friend through this, and have told myself I'll be ok even if she hits a rebound or five. Im honestly not really concerned w her sexual history anyway.
To be honest, I am afraid of losing the relationship we already have. She's one of if not the most important person in my life, beating out a lot of my local connects even though she and i are purely long distance communique. This is a long fuckin story mostly to ask reddit; how should i approach the future of our relationship? I think i might love this woman. She means more to me than anyone since my ex, and if I'm being honest i think i enjoy spending time with her even more than i did my ex. But at the same time, i feel like by pursuing that i'd be betraying a relationship built on mutual openness and unconditional support. Im clearly not good at casual dating. And my last longterm relationship was pretty not "normal" by most peoples standards. So i also kind of worry I'm just mistaking mutual trust and support for romantic love just because I've really.. not gotten much of either of those things before and don't confidently know the difference.
If anyone makes it through all this, just give me your fairest thoughts. Honestly i could just be making mountains out of molehills here, but i want to move forward in a way that she and i can both be happy, so i just need someone else to see what I'm thinking and yell at me one way or another. Thank you in advance. Tl;drl - I helped an old acquaintance get through a difficult breakup after going through a difficult breakup of my own, and tho i started with purely noble intentions, i may have fallen in love with her by the end and don't know what to do

Last week I made a post about generating 2.5 million in sales for a client without spending a dime on ads. The thing is, I did this on a brand that already did over a million in sales the year before. I got a bunch of messages from people that don't already have established brands but thought they could benefit from organic traffic. So I made this post, I'll explain exactly how you can generate sales with literally nothing other than time and a website. Quick disclaimer, it's 10x harder to make your first 10 sales if you don't have a marketing budget or an existing audience to market to. You're going to have to consistently spend multiple hours a day working to accomplish anything. Not just mindless work either, you're going to have to be a critical thinker and have a basic understanding of human psychology to see any type of success using these methods. If you don't have time to do that, you won't see any results from these methods and you might as well stop reading now. Now that we've cleared that up let's get to the good stuff. Here's how you make your first 10 sales without spending any money on marketing. In order to get sales you need traffic. You can't test anything or sell anything if no one visits your site. So here are 3 ways to generate traffic for free: 1. Become a member of the community that your customers interact in In my last post, I explained how I built a community from scratch, but at this point, I'm assuming you don't have time to spend 3 months building a community if you haven't even proven that anyone wants to buy your products. So I'm going to teach you how to piggyback off existing communities. It is easier said than done, but 1 good post can get easily get you your first 5 sales. You can do this on Reddit, in Facebook groups, or any other type of niche relevant group/forum. If the people in these communities think you're trying to sell something you'll probably just get banned and people will actually get mad at you for trying to sell your products. The trick is being a casual, you want to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Don't even mention your products in your first 2-3 posts. Maybe ask niche relevant questions, or provide value in comments under other people's posts and show people that you have a genuine interest in the topic. Think of this like warming up your account. Now when it's time to sell, you do it in the most discreet way possible. The better your product is, the easier it is to do this. This is the fastest way to find out if your product is actually useful and if there's actually demand for your product. The best way to promote your product and create brand recognition is with lifestyle content. Never post a product photo with a white background in a community group. NEVER! I'll give you a few examples of how to post product pics correctly: Example 1 niche: dog niche product: dog collar You take a dog to a beautiful place. Maybe a beach by the water and you get a whole photoshoot with the dog. Bring lots of treats and showcase a happy dog wearing the collar you sell. Now you don't post the entire photoshoot in the group. You post 1 picture, not necessarily the best picture or the most professional looking one. You want to post the picture that evokes the most emotion. It's the picture with the dog making a funny face, or another dog sniffing your dog's butt, or the pic with your dog in bliss chewing his favorite treat that goes viral. Pick a picture that'll start a discussion and reply to every single comment. Then, once the post does well, without a doubt someone will ask about your product. That's when you come in and give a shoutout to the site that you got it from. If no one does this, you can literally create a fake account and ask/answer the question on your own. You're basically creating the perception of product demand. Example 2 niche: food and beverage/electronics Product: digital thermometer Imagine... It's steak night, you fire up the BBQ and you want the perfect steaks! We're selling the dream of a perfectly cooked steak, not a digital thermometer. You post 2 pictures. Picture 1 is the steak on the grill with the thermometer showing the perfect temperature. Picture 2 shows the perfectly sliced steak being served. Try to capture someone that stirs emotions in the picture, whether it's a happy grandma, a kid with the steak on his fork, or a hungry pet drooling and looking at your plate. Emotion is what sells the product. Make sure you have a caption that conveys the message that you're trying to send. Use something short and simple but also try your best to convey a story. Further, convey the imagery in the comments ex. "Inlaws are over, got this thermometer to make sure everything was cooked perfectly, Now everyone thinks I actually know how to cook." Example 3 Niche: candles Product: candle "Midterms are around the corner, sparked my favorite scent to set the mood tonight" (caption for the post in studying group or collage group) + a picture of an opened textbook and candle in the background, but you can clearly still see the candle label. This example is for the people who have general products. It may actually be harder for you to sell a candle in a candle subreddit because there are just too many options. So you get into the mind of your customers, you imagine the scenario your customer is in when they use your product, and you sell the feeling of enjoying the product in a situation that they've experienced before. In the comments, you describe the scent in detail and you talk about how you prefer this candle over the one you got at Bath and Body Works because it's made from natural materials. If you do this right, consistently. Eventually one of your posts will go viral and without a doubt that will convert into a sale. 2. Grow social media organically This is a lot easier if you can afford to order the product that you sell. But it's still possible to make this work if you can't get the product in your hands. With this method, you're essentially picking up a new part-time job. You are now a social media manager, you work 20 hours a week and create and post new content on multiple platforms every single day. You want to take advantage of platforms that favor new accounts. A great place to start is Tiktok but Instagram reels is pretty good too. Tiktok boosts the reach of new accounts, you can see a lot of success blitzing a new Tiktok account (2-5 posts a day). The Instagram algorithm boosts accounts that post a lot of reels because for a good while Tiktok was destroying them with short-term content. (Fun fact this feud between platforms is so deep that if you make a video on Tiktok and you cross-post it on Instagram without removing the Tiktok watermark, the Instagram algorithm will suppress the reach of the video) You want to focus on making short videos with a focus on real-life use cases of your product. I'd break this down into 3 steps. A. Research B. Content Testing C. Doubling down on what gets traction It can take weeks or even months to get a good feel for how to create engaging content. The true key is consistency. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to volume. Not just any volume, but a high volume of quality content. Whatever platform that you decide to use, I suggest watching at least 4 hours of content on youtube from experts on the platform. You'll pick up a bunch of tricks and tips. It's important that you understand how the algorithm works on different platforms to see any type of success doing this. I wouldn't suggest attempting to scale on more than 3 platforms at once. In fact, it's actually better to focus on 1 platform and do it well over splitting your time into other platforms trying to scale 3 pages at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin. 3. Elite cart protection If you do under 10k a month most email marketing is irrelevant. People with startup brands book calls with me all the time and I tell them the same thing. You need traffic before there's anything I can do to help you other than give some basic advice. However, there are 3 automated email flows that actually can make an impact at this point. These flows are the welcome series, the abandoned cart, and the browse abandonment. Most email platforms are free and they charge based on volume. So in most cases, this won't cost you anything. Sites like Klaviyo make it very easy to set up the basics. Don't overthink this at all, at this point you don't need beautiful designs or stand-out copywriting. You simply need to just follow up with the interested potential customers that visit your site. A healthy store converts 3% of its traffic, 7/10 people who add things to their cart don't complete a purchase. You have a second chance at converting 97% of the people that visit your site if you actually follow up with them. I've made entire posts about how to set flows up correctly so I won't be expanding on this much more. I know this post was a bit long-winded but if you've made it this far you must be serious. There's going to be a bunch of people that read this thread and take no action that'll stay at 0 sales. The beauty of life is that you get to choose what happens next. With that being said, thanks so taking the time out of your day to read my post. I hope even some of the bigger brand owners were able to get something out of this post. I look forward to seeing some of you guys make your first few sales in the coming weeks. As always feel free to add onto things that I missed, or maybe share what worked for you. I'll reply to everything that I see.

We're having our first baby and I'm currently 32 weeks pregnant. We're also both turning 30 this summer.
He's always been an anxious person but it's only gotten worse over the past few months. He's had two anxiety attacks during this time. We just recently went to the doctor and he'll be hearing from a behavior health representative next week to possibly schedule some sort of therapy. He's very against medications and has had bad experiences in the past/negative reactions. I'm hoping having a professional to talk to will help. This will be the first time he's seeked help for anxiety and I know I'll have to get on him about following through (stubborn man).
We're both working and I plan on working until I have the baby, not much choice otherwise, lol. He has the GI bill from serving in the navy and plans to go back to school in the fall, but with work currently, the baby and his uncertainties about schooling, he's been very stressed.
I've also brought up to him that he has had a lack of involvement and motivation regarding anything baby related. I've been the one finding everything we need, stocking up on supplies, finding a pediatrician, doing research on caring for baby, reading books on parenting, ect. It's been emotionally difficult for me that he's been distracted/distant. I know it's not because he doesn't care and I've never gotten angry with him but I have brought it up more than once. He knows he needs to be more proactive and that it would help ease his anxiety to make progress. Even if it's one step at a time.
I've been extremely stressed as well but not nearly to the same degree as him. His anxiety is effecting his health as well. In the form of headaches, difficulty breathing and other aches and pains. While at the doctor's they did a series of tests, so we know it's nothing physically wrong with him.
We have some friends who have young kids, who we can go to for help. But our families live in other states or hours away, so it's mostly on us.
Hopefully I've provided enough information for context.
If there's any advice or maybe someone has had similar experiences, I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.
I love my husband and I want to help ease his anxiety, which in turn will give myself peace of mind.
Sorry for the format, I am on mobile.
Thanks in advance for any input.

so i finished school about 2 weeks ago and got my license number last week! super excited but mentally quite exhausted. i've had a difficult time maintaining and finding job/school that worked for my brain (anxiety/adhd/etc) and i think esthetics is (hopefully) that sweet spot where i can have both activity (cleaning, prepping, sharing all the knowledge i collected over the years as a big skincare nerd), and the calmness of being in a facial room and focusing on the client, i get really into it and feel sleepy and relaxed myself, so i really enjoy it! i even enjoy waxing much more than i thought, very satisfying to see so it's not too bad for me despite being a bit more noisy!
i'm just mentally in a block. i'm hoping to get a job at the massage envy near my house, they have a recent esthi job opening, and my neighbor who saw me in school was super sweet saying how good i did she wants to see me when i work etc and her and her husband regularly get massages there and said they'd put in a good word as well. i was also potentially looking into a derm tech position, which is definitely a different enviroment and doesn't have the calming facial aspect, but i'm very used to medical offices from my own visits and i have worked in a very intense hospital setting as a CNA, so a derm clinic is pretty quiet but still interesting. not sure if it's exactly what i'm looking for but it's something! my resume isn't bad, and i have it mostly written out, i just need to find a template i like and transfer. i'm just having trouble making the leap. i did really well in school, and being home for a couple weeks i feel so on edge not doing anything, but moving forward is scary. a lot of this is my own issues with anxiety, which is a whole big thing on its own, but i was hoping for any words of encouragement or advice! i've been pretty active here as i've gone through school and gotten some great info as well as been participating myself as well as other skin condition and skincare subs that i would normally just lurk to test my knowledge and practice giving information. i'm keeping up, just need a little push! thanks!

Last week I made a post about generating 2.5 million in sales for a client without spending a dime on ads. The thing is, I did this on a brand that already did over a million in sales the year before. I got a bunch of messages from people that don't already have established brands but thought they could benefit from organic traffic. So I made this post, I'll explain exactly how you can generate sales with literally nothing other than time and a website.
Quick disclaimer, it's 10x harder to make your first 10 sales if you don't have a marketing budget or an existing audience to market to. You're going to have to consistently spend multiple hours a day working to accomplish anything. Not just mindless work either, you're going to have to be a critical thinker and have a basic understanding of human psychology to see any type of success using these methods. If you don't have time to do that, you won't see any results from these methods and you might as well stop reading now.
Now that we've cleared that up let's get to the good stuff. Here's how you make your first 10 sales without spending any money on marketing.
In order to get sales you need traffic. You can't test anything or sell anything if no one visits your site. So here are 3 ways to generate traffic for free:
1. Become a member of the community that your customers interact in In my last post, I explained how I built a community from scratch, but at this point, I'm assuming you don't have time to spend 3 months building a community if you haven't even proven that anyone wants to buy your products. So I'm going to teach you how to piggyback off existing communities. It is easier said than done, but 1 good post can get easily get you your first 5 sales. You can do this on Reddit, in Facebook groups, or any other type of niche relevant group/forum. If the people in these communities think you're trying to sell something you'll probably just get banned and people will actually get mad at you for trying to sell your products. The trick is being a casual, you want to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Don't even mention your products in your first 2-3 posts. Maybe ask niche relevant questions, or provide value in comments under other people's posts and show people that you have a genuine interest in the topic. Think of this like warming up your account. Now when it's time to sell, you do it in the most discreet way possible. The better your product is, the easier it is to do this. This is the fastest way to find out if your product is actually useful and if there's actually demand for your product. The best way to promote your product and create brand recognition is with lifestyle content. Never post a product photo with a white background in a community group. NEVER!
I'll give you a few examples of how to post product pics correctly: Example 1 niche: dog niche product: dog collar You take a dog to a beautiful place. Maybe a beach by the water and you get a whole photoshoot with the dog. Bring lots of treats and showcase a happy dog wearing the collar you sell. Now you don't post the entire photoshoot in the group. You post 1 picture, not necessarily the best picture or the most professional looking one. You want to post the picture that evokes the most emotion. It's the picture with the dog making a funny face, or another dog sniffing your dog's butt, or the pic with your dog in bliss chewing his favorite treat that goes viral. Pick a picture that'll start a discussion and reply to every single comment. Then, once the post does well, without a doubt someone will ask about your product. That's when you come in and give a shoutout to the site that you got it from. If no one does this, you can literally create a fake account and ask/answer the question on your own. You're basically creating the perception of product demand. Example 2 niche: food and beverage/electronics Product: digital thermometer Imagine... It's steak night, you fire up the BBQ and you want the perfect steaks! We're selling the dream of a perfectly cooked steak, not a digital thermometer. You post 2 pictures. Picture 1 is the steak on the grill with the thermometer showing the perfect temperature. Picture 2 shows the perfectly sliced steak being served. Try to capture someone that stirs emotions in the picture, whether it's a happy grandma, a kid with the steak on his fork, or a hungry pet drooling and looking at your plate. Emotion is what sells the product. Make sure you have a caption that conveys the message that you're trying to send. Use something short and simple but also try your best to convey a story. Further, convey the imagery in the comments ex. "Inlaws are over, got this thermometer to make sure everything was cooked perfectly, Now everyone thinks I actually know how to cook." Example 3 Niche: candles Product: candle "Midterms are around the corner, sparked my favorite scent to set the mood tonight" (caption for the post in studying group or collage group) + a picture of an opened textbook and candle in the background, but you can clearly still see the candle label. This example is for the people who have general products. It may actually be harder for you to sell a candle in a candle subreddit because there are just too many options. So you get into the mind of your customers, you imagine the scenario your customer is in when they use your product, and you sell the feeling of enjoying the product in a situation that they've experienced before. In the comments, you describe the scent in detail and you talk about how you prefer this candle over the one you got at Bath and Body Works because it's made from natural materials. If you do this right, consistently. Eventually one of your posts will go viral and without a doubt that will convert into a sale.
2. Grow social media organically This is a lot easier if you can afford to order the product that you sell. But it's still possible to make this work if you can't get the product in your hands. With this method, you're essentially picking up a new part-time job. You are now a social media manager, you work 20 hours a week and create and post new content on multiple platforms every single day. You want to take advantage of platforms that favor new accounts. A great place to start is Tiktok but Instagram reels is pretty good too. Tiktok boosts the reach of new accounts, you can see a lot of success blitzing a new Tiktok account (2-5 posts a day). The Instagram algorithm boosts accounts that post a lot of reels because for a good while Tiktok was destroying them with short-term content. (Fun fact this feud between platforms is so deep that if you make a video on Tiktok and you cross-post it on Instagram without removing the Tiktok watermark, the Instagram algorithm will suppress the reach of the video)
You want to focus on making short videos with a focus on real-life use cases of your product. I'd break this down into 3 steps.
A. Research B. Content Testing C. Doubling down on what gets traction
It can take weeks or even months to get a good feel for how to create engaging content. The true key is consistency. At the end of the day, it's gonna come down to volume. Not just any volume, but a high volume of quality content. Whatever platform that you decide to use, I suggest watching at least 4 hours of content on youtube from experts on the platform. You'll pick up a bunch of tricks and tips. It's important that you understand how the algorithm works on different platforms to see any type of success doing this. I wouldn't suggest attempting to scale on more than 3 platforms at once. In fact, it's actually better to focus on 1 platform and do it well over splitting your time into other platforms trying to scale 3 pages at the same time. Don't spread yourself too thin.
3. Elite cart protection If you do under 10k a month most email marketing is irrelevant. People with startup brands book calls with me all the time and I tell them the same thing. You need traffic before there's anything I can do to help you other than give some basic advice. However, there are 3 automated email flows that actually can make an impact at this point. These flows are the welcome series, the abandoned cart, and the browse abandonment. Most email platforms are free and they charge based on volume. So in most cases, this won't cost you anything. Sites like Klaviyo make it very easy to set up the basics. Don't overthink this at all, at this point you don't need beautiful designs or stand-out copywriting. You simply need to just follow up with the interested potential customers that visit your site. A healthy store converts 3% of its traffic, 7/10 people who add things to their cart don't complete a purchase. You have a second chance at converting 97% of the people that visit your site if you actually follow up with them.
I've made entire posts about how to set flows up correctly so I won't be expanding on this much more. I know this post was a bit long-winded but if you've made it this far you must be serious. There's going to be a bunch of people that read this thread and take no action that'll stay at 0 sales. The beauty of life is that you get to choose what happens next.
With that being said, thanks so taking the time out of your day to read my post. I hope even some of the bigger brand owners were able to get something out of this post. I look forward to seeing some of you guys make your first few sales in the coming weeks. As always feel free to add onto things that I missed, or maybe share what worked for you. I'll reply to everything that I see.

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