Written on June 10th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

Blogging Goals - Final Reader Submissions

enternetusers Site News 4 comments

Thanks to everyone who has submitted entries in this week’s Blogging Goals Group Writing Project. There were 130 submissions in total (49 more than last time) - so many that it was a little overwhelming to keep up with listing them all - especially when I got distracted reading them all along the way!

What I was impressed about this week was the variety of blogs that were represented in terms of topics, genres, parts of the world and even language (we had a few non English submissions this week which was exciting).

Before you check out the latest batch of submissions - remember that there is no WINNER for each project but I do encourage you to surf through the list and find the posts that are winners in your own mind. Leave them an encouraging comments and post about them on your own blog. In the process I’m sure you’ll find some great new blogs (like I have in putting this project together this week).

Here’s the final reader submissions which will be added to the central page where you’ll see every post for the week. Enjoy!

• Why Blog? by Bald Man
• Losing Lists and Forgetting My Goals by Deb S
• Blog Goals: Building a Non-Tech Community by Ross
• Take this Job and Shove it by Honest Abe
• Ditch Queries, Cranky Editors and the Starving Freelancer Existence! by Yuwanda Black
• Goals for Bank Bonuses Blog by Andy
• Why You Should Read this Blog by James Thoenes
• How to Pee off your Balcony - by Graydon
• Blog Goals of a Third World Blogger by Razib Ahmed
• Taido/blog Holy Trinity by Andy Fossett
• Getting Laid and Getting Paid… The Tao of Seduction Blogging by Asian Playboy
• Blogging for Myself by Wintermute
• My Digital Photography School Goals by Darren Rowse
• Aiming for the Stars: to Boldly Go Where no Blogger has Gone Before by Trevor Hampel
• Action for Success Plan by Shane Ellis
• Read my Blogging Goals or Else! by Fitness Mantra
• Toward 200 by Chris Howard
• In the Garage blogging Goals by Joey Marchy
• Goals in the Stream of Conscience by Gailann
• If I Don’t Keep This Blogging Goal, You Can Have my PEZ Dispenser by Easton Ellsworth
• Get Rich or Die Trying (OK not really, but it sounds cool, No?) by Ben Yoskovitz
• Pure Genius of Online Marketers by dropout
• My blogging Goals by FMSRA
• World Cup Blog Factory by Milo Riano
• Goals for New Bloggers by Sabine
• Prevent a Midlife Crisis - Blog! by Sheila Scarborough
• Welcome to Communication-Works.org by Cole Parker
• Jason Boog Always Screws Up His Goals by jason Boog
• A Mid Year Blog Reflection by Hendry Lee
• Simple Goals by hiking
• What i Want to do When I Grow Up - The Ted Rap Goals by Ted Demopoulos
• The Cord Blood Goals by Mike Willis
• One Goal to Rule Them All by Christine Kane
• Long Term Goals and Abandon Nest by Nick
• How to ensure you achieve your Goals by Phil Newton
• Multiple Blogging Goals by Royston
• Taking Business Blogging Goals Personally! by Paul Niederer

Don’t forget to surf the list and link up to your favorites.

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Written on June 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 08:06 pm by Darren Rowse

AdSense adds ‘Site Diagnostics’ Feature

Adsense 14 comments

AdSense publishers will notice a new tab when they log into their accounts next - ‘Site Diagnostics’.

It seems that this new tool highlights any pages that AdSense is having problems running ads on.

There are a number of reasons why ads might be having problems that are listed at their help page - Why is my URL showing up as blocked?

I’m not seeing any blocked pages come up yet for me but have heard from a number of AdSense publishers who are telling me that this new diagnostics tool has already identified problems that they were not aware of.

There’s no announcement yet on any official AdSense pages apart from that help page with more information but at a first glance it looks like it could be helpful.

Thanks to the numerous people who emailed me about this including the first two (seconds apart) Michael and AH.

Update: It looks like this feature was either launched by mistake too early, or they are having problems with it because most peole are not seeing it any more. Very odd.

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Written on June 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 01:06 pm by Darren Rowse

Speedlinking - 9 June 2006

Pro Blogging News 4 comments

• The Blog Studio have just released another of their free WordPress templates. This one is called STTP (Straight to the Point) and it comes in Blue, Green and Red. You can see a working version of it here (blue).
• Ahmed has a timely post (if you’re into the World Cup) with a Guide to Blogging Sports Events - by the way if you’re into Football/Soccer you might like to check out b5’s Football blogs that are covering the world cup.

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Written on June 9th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

How to Kill Your Blog Successfully - The Methods

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 17 comments

We’ve been talking this week about why blogs die and factors to consider when deciding whether to end them or not.

If you get to the point where you think it’s best that you end a blog there are a number of options before you as how to do it. Here’s a few that come to mind:

Just Stop Writing

This is perhaps the most common approach that bloggers take when ending their blogs. It can happen quite gradually over time as posts become less frequent or it can happen very suddenly as a blogger just decides it’s over. In most cases these blogs remain online in the state that they were in the day they were last posted to and in a sense they become something of an archive. The beauty of this approach if you have a commercial blog is that it will continue to make money for you into the future. Even if it’s not performing brilliantly - over time it adds up.

The other good thing about this approach is that if you’re stopping your blog because it’s not performing well it could do a turn around in the weeks or months after you stop writing. I had a blog once that I stopped writing because it wasn’t doing well with traffic but a few weeks later Google updated and my traffic increased 10-fold. I’m glad I didn’t kill that blog off completely because it came back to life by itself and when I started blogging to it again it found a second wind.

If you’re going to take this approach I would highly recommend considering two things:

• 1. Communicate with your Readers - tell your readers that the blog is over, give a reason (if appropriate) and say good-bye. It’s amazing how attached readers can become to a blog and to give it a definite end not only gives them a little closure but it also gives you some also.

• 2. Consider Comment Spam Strategy - inActive and unmaintained blogs tend to be a target for comment spammers. I’ve come across a few inActive blogs lately that have sadly become overrun by the underbelly of the web with all manner of filth. Remember that if you leave your blog online that your name and reputation continues to be associated with it and what is on it. If you’re not willing to continue maintaining your comments sections either consider switching them off or putting some sort of spam killer in place.

Delete It

This is another strategy that some bloggers use, especially those who have their own domain and hosting but who don’t want to continue to pay for that into the future. Sometimes it happens quickly after a blog dies - but other times it happens at the end of a hosting contract or when a domain comes up for renewal.

Once again - I think it can be a good strategy to communicate what you’re intending to do with this. I know of one blogger who deleted his blog at one point and who in doing so disillusioned a lot of people who used the archives of the blog daily as a resource for their businesses. If he’d communicated his plan to delete his blog he might have given his readers a chance to get the information they needed off his blog or would probably have found a buyer for it. Instead the information on his blog was virtually lost (except to those who knew how to access archival sites).

Also if you’re considering the ‘delete it’ option - really think ahead. Don’t do it on the spur of the moment, don’t do it in anger, don’t do it if there is any chance of you wanting to start up again later and consider what useful information there might be on the blog that you might want to back up first.

Reinvent it

Another option for bloggers making the decision to end a blog is to consider reinventing it. Many bloggers who end blogs go on to create other ones, sometimes on very very similar topics to the first. Instead of running out and buying a new domain it might well be worth simply re-launching your new blog in the same place as the old one. The benefits of this is that you’ll find any traffic, search engine ranking etc that you already have will be easier to leverage in your new re-launched blog. This is not an option for everyone of course - sometimes a completely fresh start can be just what you and your blogging needs.

Find Another Blogger

Instead of letting your blog die completely you might find that you can let it live under the authorship of another person or group of people. I’ve seen this happen on a number of blogs where on announcing that a blog was going to end that a blogger had readers volunteer to take if over.

In doing this you continue to provide a space for people to come and interact around a niche, you continue to get any income that it might have brought in and you keep your options open for reengaging with the blog later on.

Of course this approach will depend upon a number of factors including how central you are to the success of your blog (some blogs are more reliant upon the personality of their blogger than others) as well as the quality of the blogger/s who take over.

You’ll also need to work out a fair way of compensating the bloggers who take over if your blog is a commercial blog. You might want to offer them anything from a share of the revenue on the posts that they write, to a flat fee per post, to some sort of incentive for building traffic/revenue.

Sell it

Another increasingly popular way of ending a blog is to put it on the market and see what people are willing to pay for it. This won’t work for everyone and will depend upon the popularity of your blog and it’s earning potential but you might be surprised what an established could be sold for.

Keep in mind that in selling your blog you’re selling a lot of content that you will lose control of (unless you build conditions into the sale). So if you want to use some of the content later you’ll want to avoid this approach, take if off the blog before selling it or build it into the sale agreement.

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Written on June 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 pm by Darren Rowse

FeedBurner and TypePad Integrate Blog Feeds

Blogging Tools and Services, RSS 4 comments

Feedburner and Typepad are announcing a way for TypePad users to redirect their TypePad RSS feed into a Feedburner one. This will give them a more integrated way to track stats.

It sounds similar to what the Feedburner plugin for WordPress does that I’ve spoken about previously.

Found via Micro Persuasion

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Written on June 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 11:06 am by Darren Rowse

AdSense are Hiring

Adsense 6 comments

If you love AdSense and wouldn’t mind being a part of their team the AdSense blog just announced that there are positions vacant for AdSense staff on a number of areas. For all you’d have to be willing to live in Mountain View California (that counts this Aussie out) They do have international opportunities too though at Google.

Of course if you get a job with AdSense after seeing this post I’ll be requiring that you send me inside information!

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Written on June 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 11:06 am by Darren Rowse

My Digital Photography School Goals

Case Studies 14 comments

Since I’ve set the topic for this week’s group writing project I thought I’d better submit an entry myself on Blogging Goals.

It’s a fairly wide topic, especially if I was to tackle it on a macro level thinking across all of my blogs, so I’ll just focus on one of them, my newest one, Kevin Carr.

Before getting into goals I’ll give a little update on how it’s been going (something I promised I’d do).

Digital Photography School - So Far

• I started posting on DPS in earnest on 17 April of this year so it’s still relatively new (53 days old).
• I’ve written 48 posts in that time - most of which are fairly instructional in nature.
• April saw the page get around 2500 unique visitors for the month, May hit 65,000 and so far in june we’re at around 52,000 visitors.
• Most traffic has come from a number of links it’s had on sites like Lifehacker, Engadget and Gizmodo as well as the flow on effects of being picked up on social bookmarking sites.
• This week it’s averaging around 3000 RSS readers (this number goes up and down significantly)
• My DPS newsletter subscriber list has grown to around 1800 subscribers
• Earnings vary considerably from day to day but are averaging around $25 per day this month. I know I could do much better than this with more aggressive ad positioning but this is not my priority at this point.

Originally when I started DPS my goal was to leverage traffic that I already had on my other blogs, particularly those with a digital imaging focus. While there was some traction in this idea (I do interlink the blogs and use my other blog’s newsletters to send traffic) the majority of traffic has come via other sources (as mentioned above). As a result my goals have changed a little….

Goals

• Continue writing 3-4 similar style posts per week - so far I’ve been averaging over 5 a week but now the site is a little established and has a decent level of content on it I’ll pull this back slightly. The focus of the articles is at the beginner through to intermediate digital camera user. Over time it might widen to begin including some more advanced techniques but that’s not something I’m wanting to focus on too early - my goal is for the blog to grow up along with it’s readership in it’s focus and expertise.
• Continue to develop relationship with other larger key sites - knowing when to submit a post to bigger sites and when not to do it is important. I do not push all of my posts in this way but pick those that I think will have broad appeal.
• Grow Newsletter Subscriber List by 30 subscribers per day - this will mean 12 months after launch the list stands at around 10,000 subscribers.
• Add at least 1 author - I’m currently attempting to recruit a second author to DPS. While I enjoy the blog immensely it would be good to have another contributer to help carry the load to enable me to develop other aspects of the site. It would also add to the depth of expertise on the site. While I think I’m a decent photographer I’m not a technical one and would love to add that aspect to the blog through the addition of a new blogger (initially I’ll probably keep it at just one).
• Develop relationships with affiliate partners - one future income stream for DPS will be promoting quality affiliate products. I am already in relationship with a couple of producers of such products and once the site becomes more established will look to work with them to create offers that benefit my readership.
• Continue to Build Incoming Links - I am not anticipating that this site will ever bring in massive Search Engine Traffic but any incoming links will of course be a bonus. Incoming links from other sites are coming in currently in a very organic way. I’m not doing any link exchanges but rather sites are linking up to things that genuinely interest them. I’ll continue to foster these types of relationships. Apart from this and some basic common sense in the structure of the blog I plan to do no overt SEO on the blog.
• Redesign - as I’ve mentioned before I’m not really happy with the current design. It’s a free template that serves a purpose but that doesn’t really add to what I’m trying to do on the site. I’ll keep things as they are in the short term but will look to engaging the services of a designer at some point in the coming months to give it a more professional look that fits with my overall strategy.
• Enjoyment - I guess my last goal is to continue to enjoy the blog. So far I’m loving it. I’m learning a lot about my own photography and enjoying the passion that it’s reigniting in me for taking photos. Ultimately this is why I wanted to start this blog and is the reason I’ll continue to work at it over time.

Long term Goals and Ideas
I have many ideas and thoughts for this blog which I will not explore for at least 6 to 12 months including:

• Repackaging Content - I’m very aware that the content I’m producing at present could be used in a variety of other ways including e-products, books, magazines etc.
• Forums - I’m happy to keep comments off this blog at present (for reasons previously stated here and here) but down the track I do hope to make the space much more interActive in a number of ways, including forums (the other ways I’ll keep to myself for the time being).
• Premium Sponsorship - Depending upon traffic levels there could be opportunities to sell advertising space directly to sponsors. My hope is to keep this blog with limited advertising in the hope of being able to offer advertisers exclusive deals at premium rates.

By no means am I completely satisfied with how DPS is currently functioning. There are plenty of ways to improve it that I will work on in the coming months but for the length of time it’s been live I’m very happy with the progress so far.

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Written on June 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 10:06 am by Darren Rowse

Blogging Goals - Readers Submissions Part III

enternetusers Site News 9 comments

Today’s submissions for the Blogging Goals Group Writing Project are following (don’t forget - one day to go til this project closes):

• Team Blogging Goals by Catherine Morley
• Goal Setting: I Need your Help by Mary Jo Manzanaes
• Blogging for Business Goals by Ted Demopoulos
• Thatta Kedona Making a Difference Through Blogs by Doll
• Ready, Set, Goals by Jon
• How I will become the next Jason Calacanis by Chris
• Why I Write this Blog about YWAM by Bill Hutchison
• My Blogging Conspiracies by Miriguy
• Beating Google at their Own Game by Brian Bischof
• Blog Less by Kim Bah Lee
• 356 Days Left to Kill This Blog - This is What I Call a Killer Blog Goal by Jack
• Musotoku by Tillerman
• How Lazy Can You Get? by Connie
• Hence I Blog by Werner Absenger
• My Goal on Making Money Online by dynn
• Have Goals (or unGoals) by Jill Murray
• Why You Can’t have a Blog without a Blogtrepreneur! by Adnan
• There is Only One True Blog Goal by Josh Emsley
• How to Set and Achieve All your Blogging Goals by Pat Gundry
• Blogging the World Cup - A guide to blogging sports events by Ahmed Bilai
• Bone, Bark and Bite to attain Blog Goals by Renee

I’ve also added each of these links to the central submissions page here.

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Written on June 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 03:06 am by Darren Rowse

Does Blog Post Frequency Matter?

Writing Content 32 comments

Eric Kintz has written an interesting post on Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore.

I like some of what Eric’s got to say but do not agree with it completely for all types of bloggers. Perhaps it’s a bit too simplistic a statement to make. Below are Eric’s headings in bold and a few of my own thoughts under each outlining where I agree and disagree with his statements:

1. Traffic is generated by participating in the community; not daily posting - I would argue that traffic can be generated by both participation in the blogging community AND daily (or regular) posting. Both can be factors depending upon the blog and it’s strategy. I know with most of my own blogs that my traffic levels do go up (on some blogs quite considerably) each time I post something - particularly those blogs who have an RSS readership.
2. Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success anyway - Eric’s argument is that the key is to reach your target audience and not just have your blog read by lots of people. This is true to some extent. I’d much rather enternetusers be read by 100 bloggers wanting to make money blogging than 1000 non bloggers. Having said that, I’d still prefer to have 200, or 1000 or more bloggers who want to make money reading this blog and coming back every day than having 100 bloggers coming once a week. So I guess traffic is relevant to my blog’s success also (and I suspect most bloggers would feel the same).
3. Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0 - I get asked about Web 2.0 a lot and while I am a believer in it and think some of the things being developed are wonderful I don’t know that we’re really living in a Web 2.0 world yet. Eric writes in this post about RSS and how it is making it less important to post daily because RSS readers will just come over to read when you update. I totally agree with this IF your blog has a high level of RSS readership. The reality is that while those of us who are bloggers use RSS all day everyday to read blogs that the majority of web surfers do not - yet. I would estimate that here at enternetusers about 50% of my traffic comes from RSS readership (although this is decreasing as my search engine profile rises) but on my other blogs (not about blogging or Web 2.0 type topics) my RSS readership would be less than 5-10%. The majority of my readers come either from search engines, referrals from other sites or bookmarks on their computers (people who manually hit my site every day). Hopefully RSS and other Web 2.0 technologies will increase in popularity - but until then I think bloggers need to embrace readers who are Web 1.0 (and those who are not even at that point yet).
4. Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty - good point here. I know I’ve unsubscribed from a few blogs in the past few months that I just can’t keep up with the posting frequency on. I’m a big believer in bloggers sensing how much their readers can handle to read in a day/week and trying to post at around that frequency.
5. Frequent posting keeps key senior executives and thought leaders out of the blogosphere - time is definitely an issue that bloggers need to count the cost of when deciding to start a blog and if the expectation is that it needs to be daily then it will rule out some bloggers. I would argue that blogs don’t have to be updated daily but that it’s best that they have a regularity to them. This regularity could be daily (or every hour or two for that matter) but it could also be weekly (or some other time frame). Developing some sort of rhythm is important on a number of levels, both for the blogger themselves to develop the discipline of maintaining a blog, but also for readers getting some sort of expectation of what they’ll get.
6. Frequent posting drives poor content quality - I understand where Eric is coming from with this one but again would argue it’s not always the case. I guess it’s about a blogger finding a frequency that they can maintain without it detrimentally impacting the quality of their work - if this is daily then let it be daily - if it’s less frequent then so be it. I would also argue that bloggers quoting the work of others is not always a bad thing and that if it’s done in a way that adds something to the work of others or that makes it more useful to readers (with proper attribution and within copyright) that it can be quality content. This is probably a whole post in and of itself. Having said that - I agree with Eric that some bloggers end up going to quantity of posts over quality to a point where they are creating useless clutter.
7. Frequent posting threatens the credibility of the blogosphere - Once again I think there is truth in Eric’s thoughts under this heading but that he’s talking about what happens when frequent posting is taken to the extreme. Most bloggers that I read still check sources and are responsible with their posting.
8. Frequent posting will push corporate bloggers into the hands of PR agencies - I don’t have much to add to this point as it’s not my area of expertise.
9. Frequent posting creates the equivalent of a blogging landfill - Eric quotes some of Technorati’s figures on inActive blogs. I share some of his concerns but wonder whether a large proportion of the inActive blogs that Technorati tracks are spam blogs (which don’t tend to last long). There are a lot of inActive/junk blogs floating around though.
10. I love my family too much - Eric points to an amusing post - Bloggers Anonymous.

I guess having worked through Eric’s points that I’d say that a lot of what he says does resonate with me. Daily Posting is not the be all and end all but I’d be hesitant to throw out the idea that frequent posting is important.

The frequency of posting should be determined on numerous factors and will vary from blog to blog and largely comes down to the goals and strategies behind the blog. In addition to that I’ve outlined 8 factors to consider in my post How Often Should a Blogger Post? and hope they add something to the conversation.

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Written on June 8th, surf Active Apparel website 1cecilia28 zone.at 12:06 am by Darren Rowse

How to Kill Your Blog Successfully - Factors to Consider

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 9 comments

Yesterday I started talking about how to end blogs well and today I want to run through a number of factors to consider when asking whether you should end a blog or continue with it. Hopefully in pondering some of these questions bloggers will be able to make a a good decision.

Keep in mind that not all of the questions will relate to every blog. In actual fact each blogger needs to take a look at whatever goals they have for their individual blog and to see if they are on the way to meeting them before making this type of decision.

Here are a few factors I generally consider before pulling the plug on a blog (stay tuned for tomorrow’s post on how I suggest you actually kill one).

Blogger Time and Energy Levels

do you have the energy or time to maintain your blog?

Blogs don’t just happen and good ones take significant levels of time and energy - without them you might just be kidding yourself that you can keep things running for the long term.

Topic Passion

does the topic of the blog interest you?

A blog not only takes energy to run but it actually can give energy to a blogger if it’s on a topic that they are passionate about. As i look at my most successful blogs that have sustained themselves over time that they are all ones with topics I am interested in - others that I’ve had less passion about have tended to die pretty natural deaths.

Is the Niche Alive?

is the topic one that others are interested in?

While a topic may interest and energise you it won’t ever grow it’s readership if it’s not on a topic that interests and energises others? Of course there are more reasons to blog than just being popular but if you’re blogging at least in part because you want to be read by others a topic that people Actively seek information on will be one that you’ll want to identify. Another question to ask around the topic of ‘niche’ is whether your blog’s topic is too wide or narrow? Sometimes a blog is unsustainable because you can’t possibly keep up with the width of the niche, other times it’s because there just isn’t enough to write about because it’s too narrow.

Traffic Levels?

are people reading your blog?

Traffic isn’t everything, but in most cases it will be a factor to consider when deciding on whether to let your blog die. Particularly consider traffic levels in connection to the length of time you’ve been blogging (see below). Also don’t just consider absolute numbers of visitors but the trend in your traffic - is it on the rise, has it hit a plateau, is it on the decline?

Income Levels?

is writing the blog worth the time you put into it financially?

This won’t apply to all blogs of course but if one of your goals is to make money from your blog you’ll want to judge your blog on the actual income it earns. Once again you’ll need to factor in the length of time you’ve been blogging into this as building an income takes significant time and it’s often not until you’ve been at it a while that things come good. Another related question to ask is ‘what opportunities is your blog opening up for you?’ Direct financial income from a blog is just one way of benefiting from it - other indirect income and opportunities can make it well worth a blogger’s while.

Have I given it enough time?

how long have you been blogging? Is it long enough to test how it’s going?

In my conversations with many successful bloggers over the past few years I’ve noticed that a common feature of their approaches has been to take a long term approach. Few blogs hit large levels of traffic (or income) quickly - most take at least 12 months to hit their straps.

Blog Reader Interaction Levels

how are readers interacting with your blog?

Traffic numbers are not everything - in fact sometimes a blog with a small readership but an Actively engaging community can be a very powerful thing. Are people leaving comments, do people link to your blog, is the vibe a positive and life giving one or a negative energy draining one?

What other Factors would/do you consider when ending a blog?

Tomorrow I’ll continue this mini series with a post talking through a few options of how to end a blog.

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