How to Set Up a Self Hosted Wordpress Blog Under 10 Minutes!

Undoubtedly, creating a blog is the most popular way to secure a platform in the web industry. You can build a blog using various blogging softwares. Some of them are free such as blogger, wordpress.com etc. But you will get the most benefit from the self hosted wordpress blog. Those who don’t know the difference between a wordpress and self hosted wordpress , here is a quick review.

What's The Diffrernces Between Free Wordpress.com Blog and Self Hosted Worpress Blog?

Wordpress.com blogs are free and are subdomains of the main software. You can create a blog whenever you want but you can not have the full domain. The domain will look like this www.yourname.wordpress.com. You can use limited services such as plugins , themes and you are not allowed to monetize your blog.

In self hosted wordpress you will get every benefit from the blogging platform. You can use your unique domain (www.yourname.com), you can use unlimited plugins, themes from wordpress.org and you can monetize your blog too.Most of the bloggers choose self hosted wordpress because of its wide range of services and ease of control. I highly recommend you to do so.

So, let’s open a blog on self hosted wordpress within 10 minutes!

The Things That We Need to Open  a Self-hosted Wordpress Blog are

1.    A Domain  Name

2.    You Credit Card Number

3.    And Ten Minutes Only

Set Up Your Hosting Account

Before we proceed we need to open our hosting account. Hosting means the place where you will install your  blogging software. It’s the place to keep your blog alive. There are many blog hosting services. But the most reliable service provider is Bluehost.com. Most of the professional bloggers use bluehost and it has money back guarantee if you are not satisfied with its service.It’s quite inexpensive compared to other hosting services.

So, type www.bluehost.com. In the url bar. In the section "I need a domain" , enter the domain name you want to set for your blog. Hit the next button. Bluehost will check the availability of the domain. If it is available, it will show “the domain is available”. If it is not, it will suggest other domain or you can enter another.

Fill Up The Credit Card Information

Then fill up the credit card information to pay for the hosting service. You have to pay for advance obviously. There are different packages designed to different using period. The longer period of time you choose, the cheapest service cost you will get. Select the package you want to deal with and confirm that you have read bluehost’s terms of services. Then hit the next button. Then it will take time to verify your billing information. After within a second, you will be notified “congratulations”. Then choose a password for your account. Be careful when you create password. Try to make password that is really hard to guess and has a mix of numbers, letters and symbols. You can use password generator to generate a rough and tough password and copy paste that into the password section

Login To Your Hosting Account and Install Wordpress

Now it’s time to login to your account. Bluehost will automatically insert your domain name, if it is not inserted, just type it and provide the password you have just created. Click login. Then you will be at the welcome screen. Don’t  panic! There are a lot of buttons, look for “Website Bulilders”. Click wordpress. It will take some time. Then you will see Install wordpress screen and click “start”. Select the domain name  and hit “Check Domain”.

It will come up with an error message  (oops) but don’t panic again. Just select the check box and again hit check domain. Then you will be shown this message “You are almost there”. Hit the “install” button. It will take sometime, you can sing a beautiful song on that moment for passing time!

When the process is finished, bluehost will provide you with url of your blog, url of your login, your  username and password . Take a screenshot of these information and try to keep a back up.

Login to The Dashboard of Your Blog

Then click on the blog’s url. A screen will come up with useramne and password. Enter the information and login. This is the backend of your blog or dash board of your blog. You can control everything of your blog from here. This is it. You have just opened a self hosted wordpress blog within ten minutes. Now it’s time bookmark the page for your convenience to login. And, lastly, create a first post for your blog. Say “Hello Dear!”

You have the privilege to use all the plugins and themes from wordpress.org for free. There are some premium services which will cost you some money, but most of the plugins and themes have high quality. It’s pretty easy to maintain your wordpress blog. You don’t need to know any HTML or CSS coding for your blog. Just download services from wordpress.org and install on your blog. That’s it. This is why wordpress is so popular!

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How to Use a Facebook Fan Page to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

Tired of using the seo techniques that result in nothing to drive traffic? It’s the condition of thousands of bloggers out there in blogosphere. Everyone is looking for a new way to drive immense traffic to their blog. Have you considered a facebook fan page? Yeah, a facebook fan page is one of the simplest but most powerful traffic source for your blog. Many bloggers have created a facebook fan page featuring themselves and their blogs. You might be thinking why you have to create a facebook fan page? Because it’s very easy to manage and interaction with your audience is spontaneous. 

You have the biggest chance to create loyal audience as the audience are active for most of the time. Whatever you post on your facebook fan page, will be shown on to the feeds of your audience. That means you get more chance to promote your blog than any other traffic source. If you are looking for a powerful yet simple traffic management system, creating a facebbok fan page is the appropriate option for you

Here are 6 awesome tips to drive massive traffic from a Facebook fan page

1. Make Your Pictures Talk!

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I have seen some of the facebook fan pages with a huge number of likes ( like193K). How do they do that? After reading all of the posts, I found out that they have used clear, full size images in every post. May be you are thinking, it’s not a big deal, but it really matters. Images are really a powerfull way to communicate to others. When you use an expressing and persuading image alongside with  a quote, you are definitely going to have more attention. More attention results in more facebook engagement. And obviously, use full size image when you post. Try to upload the image directly; it will result in good quality.

 2. Create Persuading Short Posts to Get More Attention

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 Your main intention is to drive the traffic to your blog. So you are required to make a persuading short posts that will make the audience click your link. It has been found that posts within 140 words are better convincing and people like to read those one. You have to consider your other audiences who use mobile apps of Facebook Just see the text and the image below. Doesn’t it look persuading?

3. Make Your Audience Talk

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What’s the best way to interact with your audience? Simply, just ask questions, ask for their opinions and suggestions. As the Facebook page owner you have the opportunity to talk everytime, but it’s your responsibility to make others talk. This conversation will make your facebook fan page more interactive and popular. People always want to speak. They want to share their feelings. Offer them the opportunities on the page. If they want your permission to post something good, you should accept the request. When you give something to them, they will give you something on return, it’s natural!

 4. Quotes Express a Lot!

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Sometimes, it’s better to post only a quote from your blog post. It  may prove as  one of the most powerful  traffic driving factor. Here, you are just  making your fans taste a portion of your post and telling them you have more to enjoy! People like to share quotes a lot. If you fans share your content on Facebook, you have greater chance to make people click on the post. So, find out the best lines from your post and create a facebook post with that. That’s it! If you wish, you can use an image.

 5. Never Use Direct Links to FB Posts

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It looks odd when you post a huge link on the posts, people get annoyed with it. You don’t need to post links at all. Create a neat and clean post that attracts audience at first glance. See the below picture and you will have a good idea.

6. Use Video to make More Attention

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Images are great way to communicate but posting a video gives the audience the essence of what your blog post is all about. You can use your own video or share something unique from video sharing sites. But always post short video that express a lot. Avoid posting boring and uninformative   ones

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The Smarter Way To Blog In 2014

The blogging world has significantly changed over the last few years. The methods that we used  to reach people before stand no longer valid after sometime. It’s a constant process.

For example, back in 5 years, we were heavily dependent on Seo to reach more people on the web. People went crazy to come in the first page of Google. But now, Seo is dead! No matter how much you do on search engine optimization, there is no guarantee that you will get significant traffic. Social medias have become the new sources of traffic for the blogs. Surely the way of blogging has changed, but the fundamentals remain the same. You must provide the value to your audience and reach to them. You must be at your audiences’ service at any cost.

Here are some smarter tips to blog more effectively in 2014

1.      Is Your Blog a Unique One?

     The fact is, there are thousands of blogs out there and you are one of the owners of such kind of blog. Everyone has a blog this time. What’s your blog about? It may be on a common topic, but you can certainly work on that and improve the quality of it very easily. Invest more time to research on your blog’s post.  Just think about your audience’s need, what type of post they have never seen on the web? Can you produce that type of unique post day after day? Think about new services you can provide to your audience. Do you think that service will benefit your audience? Will it create a spark? Try to imagine differently, think out of the box. Make your blog a special one that attracts everyone.

2.      Do You Have a Good Story to Tell?

     I don’t know, whether you have noticed it or not, many of my posts have an initial story. I began my post telling something of my own life or stories of other bloggers. Why do you think I do that? Because it’s a good way to capture the attention of the audience at the very first moment. But not only capturing the attention is not enough, you need to create a good pillar post that will make your audience say “Awesome”. Telling stories is a great way to make your audience concentrated on a post for a long time. You must have your own successful stories to share with others.

3.     Your Audience Has More Knowledge, Can You Offer Them New Information? 

    Before visiting your blog, an audience might have read ten more blogs on the same niche. They know a lot and have been hearing the same advice from every blog. Do you have some new information to offer that the audiences have never heard of? Or you can share a new method that works pretty fine than the conventional methods? If you really want to make an impact, you must offer ideas that are sophisticated.

4.      Your Competitors Are Doing Fabulous Job! Are You Observing Them?

    Just don’t focus on your blog only. To gain more success , you must observe other bloggers on your niche. How they are offering to their audiences can be the new idea for you. You can invent new services for your audience by observing your competitors blog. Have a good relationship with them, share their contents. It’s not going to decrease your traffic at all. Keep connected with the blogosphere. There are no bindings for an audience.  He/she may read as many blogs as they want.

5.  The Quality of Content Is The Foremost Thing That Matters, Are You Providing It?

    I have said it many times and you might be tired of hearing this. You must produce quality pillar articles to grab the attention of your audience. The more pillar articles you have, the greater the chances to make success with your blog. Everything in the blogging world has changed in the last couple of years except this fundamental. It won’t change ever. Invest more time to create great pillar article that can provide value to your audience.

6.        Are You  On Every Media?

      Now audience expects every form of information available to them. No matter what it is you must provide it. Share posts with pictures that make it more explanatory. Attach video or audio where it is needed.  Don’t miss a single chance to contribute to the audience.

7.     Loyalty-Your Weapon Against All Odds

     Have you ever thought of that situation when you are feeling low and some people are making you feel comfortable? They are doing everything possible to make you happy. Who are these people? They are your parents, friends, relatives. They are loyal to you. You need same kind of loyal audiences to your blog who will do everything for you. No matter what happens, they will stick to you. At present, if you don’t create a loyal audience, there is nothing for you!

8.      The Number of Internet Users Has Increased Radically, How You Are Going to Reach Them?

There are endless ways to reach to your targeted audience. But you must decide which one you want to implement. May be you don’t know which one will work but you need to experiment with all the methods available to you to find out the most fruitful ones. Once you make it, that’s it. Keep the momentum. It will bring more success to you

9.      Conversation Is Important to Your Audience

     The blog readers wants to interact with the blog authors frequently. They want to share the feeling on every post. Are you ready to interact with them frequently? Can you satisfy them with the appropriate answer?  These questions matter to your audiences. If you can’t  provide them the time to have interactions, they won’t be loyal to you.

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How to Set Up a Free Blogger Blog-Step By Step Guide

Blogger is the official blogging platform of Google. It has become one of the most popular platforms due to its numerous benefits provided to the bloggers, especially newbies to this world. The greatest advantage of blogger is it’s completely free. Yeah, Blogger won’t charge a penny to host your blog. Even if you earn from your blog, you are not required to pay commission for it. And the another advantage is you will be dealing with Google when you set up a blog in blogger. And Google means simply  the Best!

Google is not only giving you the opportunity to contribute to the blogging community, it is also providing you the opportunity to earn some extra amount of money from your blog. Yeah, you can earn a good amount of money from your blog by publishing ads on it. You can apply for Google adsense or other ad services such as chitika  to show ads on your blog. You can even work as an affiliate marketer and sell products using your blogger blog. Google will provide you every monetary option availaible in the internet if you wish to use this blogging platform.The main competitor of Blogger is Wordpress. Wordpress also provides free blogging platform like blogger but it won’t allow you to show ads on it. It also restricts other monetization options for your blog. That means you you are not allowed to earn money if you use wordpress. If you are a new blogger and don’t want to spend single penny but want to earn , friends Blogger is the best option for you.

 How to Set up Your New Google Blogger Blog

If you want to set up a  free blogger blog, you need to open a Gmail account. After opening the gmail account Just go to Blogger.com. Blogger will ask you to enter a gmail account and it’s password. Just provide those information and hit sign in. Then you will see “Display Name”. It’s the name of your blog. Such as mine is “Sonia Rahaman”. The name of the blogs will be Sonia Rahaman’s blogs. Just give a name and enter continue.

Here is how you set up your first blogger :

1.  Hit this button “Create A New Blog”

2.  In the space of Title try to give a suitable title that matches your blogs name. If your blog is about cooking , you can give a title like “ Cooking Made Easy”. If your blog is about beauty tips, you can give a title like “Women’s Beauty World”.

3.  Then in the space of Address enter  an url address  in which you want to show your blog. Such as “Cookingmadeasy.blogspot.com” or Beachef.blogspot.com. You can enter any address you want but the host will check the availability of that address. If it is available, you can use that otherwise the host will suggest you different url. And the word “Blogspot” will always be attached with the url because you are using a subdomain.

4.   Choose a template for your blog. There are several designs available, just pick one of them. It will work as layout of your blog. If you don’t like these templates, no problem at all. You can change it later. There are numerous third party template available in the internet. You can use those templates as well.

5.   Ok, that’s it. You have just created a free blogger blog in only five minutes. Now it’s time to post something. Go to New post. Enter the title of your post and then create the post. It’s so easy. You don’t need to know any html, css coding for publishing your post. Just type! Nothing else. If you want to insert any picture, video you can do that easily with the upper buttons beside “compose”. After you finish your post, click “publish”. Then the post will be published on your blog. If you want to look ho how the post looks, click “view blog”.

 I’m currently using blogger platform for a long time. I can express my experience with just one word” Awesooome”. Blogger is truly a flexible, easy and the most comfortable blogging platform you can ever have. So, when are you creating your blogger blog, huh?

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Fundamentals of Blog Traffic- What Are The Best Traffic Techniques?

Once you create your own blog, the first thing comes to your mind is traffic. So, how you are going to create a long lasting traffic system for your blog?

Fundamentals of Blog Traffic

There are two fundamentals of  building traffic .One  is creating pillar contents and the other is marketing that content .These two are the foundations of successful blogging.  Marketing the contents is simply creating communication channels relating to others.

 If you don’t know about pillar content, you can read my article on pillar content. A pillar is tries to teach you something in a tutorial way. It’s the most popular content form on the web. In my blog, you will find almost every post as a pillar. In fact, the post you are reading right now is a pillar content. Pillar content is the reason for what audience will come to your blog again and again.

Marketing ( communication channels) are the way to make people read your pillar content. It’s simply making more and more audience come to your blog. It does not matter how good writer you are , if the audience don’t know about your blog, how can you expect  people to come  to read your post? Success in blogging comes only if you can combine these two fundamentals.

So, The Equation Somewhat Looks Like This

Pillar content+ Effective Marketing (communication channels) = Huge traffic

The reason for the failure of most of the bloggers lies within the equation.  To be honest, most of the bloggers don’t even know how to market their contents. Pillar contents will do half of the job, but if the marketing tactics  aren’t good, nothing is going to  work for you.

Let’s see how we can implement marketing fundamentals for creating traffic to our blog.

After you have a good number of pillar posts in your blog, the next step is to market the pillar contents. There are numerous tactics you can use for marketing but you must find out the most effective ones.  Here, the more time you give, the better result you get. Some techniques will require only few minutes, the reward will also be small.  Powerful techniques require more energy and time and provides more success. It’s you get what you pay for.

The Small Marketing Channels Are

1  .    Commenting in others blog

2  .    Forum marketing

3  .    Article marketing

4  .    Directory submission

5  .    Social bookmarking

The   Large Marketing Channels Are

1  .    Facebook, twitter, Google Plus, Tumblr, Pinterst

2  .    Reddit, Digg

3  .    Your blog in a famous news letter

4  .    Blog with large number of audience linking to your blog

Small channels such as commenting in others blog, posting in forums , submitting your article in different directories and blog carnivals. These channels  will provide you with few traffic. For most of the bloggers, these channels don’t provide significant result. But that does not mean that you should not use these small channels. These are baby steps towards the large communication channels. It works like a ladder. So, never underestimate these small channels.

Smaller Channels Are first Steps to Larger Ones

Everyday invest  some of your time on smaller channels. Just go to some of the popular blogs, read their articles and try to create value by posting a good relevant comment. Just don’t finish it here. Make yourself introduced with others who are also  commenting on the post. Be familiar. Eventually they will know about your blog and tell others . You can apply the same technique to forum posting  as well. You never know ,the people who will be introduced to you might have a huge number of audience. He/she can refer your blog link to others by mentioning your name in their blogs. These smaller techniques work slowly, but you will certainly get something valuable for your blog.

 It’s Time to Think Big!

Once you have a good number of audience (300-400) , it’s time to move on to larger communication channels. Larger channels are almost based on social media. Facebook, Google plus, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr are some of the Biggest social networking sites on the web. People spend most of their online time on these networks. This is your chance to attract more audience to your blog.

Start promoting your blog through these channels. Don’t rush and post links every now and then. Provide value. Listen to your followers, ask them questions, appreciate their opinions and try to solve their problems through your blog posts. There are different techniques for each social media. Things that will work for facebook might not work Twitter or Google Plus. Know the differences, implement these. Work consistently, one day  you will get a flood of traffic for sure!

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How Successful Bloggers Earn Money From the Web

Bloggers are making money from the web. In fact, not only making money ; some of them became millionaires . It inspires us but do we really know all the things that these successful bloggers implemented? What are the things that made them stand out among thousands of bloggers in this competitive world of internet? Let’s find out those factors that worked for successful bloggers.

Before I go through the factors, here is a quick summary of how bloggers can make money from their blogs. There are three ways

1.   Advertising relevant ads on the blog

2.   Working as an affiliate programmer

3.   Selling  own services and products

You see, there is no other way bloggers can make money from the web. All the income sources fall into these three criteria.

But the fundamentals remain the same for everyone. If you have intention to earn from your blog, you must produce quality pillar contents regularly. If you have not  heard about pillar content , I advise you to read my article about pillar contents.

After you build a quality blog with loads of pillar contents, now it’s the time to experiment what monetize option is going to work for you. Keep it in mind that, not every monetization option works for every bloggers. It’s also depends on what type of blog you are running. You never know which one will work for you, that’s why you must experiment with each of the options available to you.

Advertising on your blog is the primary focus of every blogger. It’s quite easy . You will find many Advertising organizations on the web who want to use your blog’s space to advertise. In most of the cases, you will be paid for per clicks. The more clicks you can generate from your audience, the higher money you  can earn. Some prefer Google AdSense as it is one of the most trusted pay per click program on the web. There are other pay per click programs paying decent amount of click rates to the publishers.

You can sell other’s product on your blog as an affiliate marketer. You need to promote the products  to your audience and you will be paid  commission every time you make a sale for them. It’s quite easy and most of the successful bloggers have implemented this program from the beginning.

The last monetization option for bloggers is to sell their own services and products on their blogs. The services may be advising, writing guest posts, selling tutorials , ebooks, audios etc.  Those bloggers with a huge numbers of  audiences are earning massive from this. It’s real jump-off technique for successful bloggers.

But wait a minute , do you think that these monetization option will work for you?

Is the audience coming to your blog and finding value from you?  Are they satisfied with your service? Are they going to visit your blog again?

Try to answer these questions, don’t be illogical…be rational. Are you providing good services and quality information that will work as leverage to your blog?  Make your answer  “ yes” .

The Formula is Simple : Give Something, Take Something

All the successful bloggers had the same answer “Yes” to all those questions asked above. That’s why they have climbed to the pick of success. Those who failed could not provide value to their audience. You know, blogging world is a two way street. If you don’t provide me with something of value, I won’t  provide you anything. It’s a give and take policy. In fact, it’s the old principle of business. The business place have changed, but the policy did not. The rules are still the same.  If you want something from anyone, first provide them value that they are looking for.

Satisfied Audience is The Only Key to Your Successful Blogging Career

No matter how much you spend on your blog’s appearance, on Seo and other things; I assure you nothing is going to work for you unless you satisfy your audience.  Your key to success is your audience. So, audience is the king.

You can read the story of the successful bloggers, they have one thing in common. They created satisfied audiences, later  thses satisfied aidiences turned into loyal ones. Once they became loyal to you, you don’t need to think for anything. They will do the rest for you. They will click your ads, buy products from your referral,  purchase your own products and service. You don’t need to to anything, just relax!

 After you build up a large number of loyal audience you can experiment with any of the methods of monetization. You can even mix  those options together to have superior result. Every thing will  work for you as long as your audience is  satisfied with you.

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How to Earn From Amazon's Affiliate Program- Your Ultimate Guide

Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the oldest affiliate programs on the web. It’s  easy and the most trustworthy one at present.  To be honest, the commission you receive for each sale you make is pretty low. It’s about 4-10 percent on average and depends on the  increase in the number of sales. But you can earn a good amount of money from  amazon if you implement certain tips regarding promoting the products.  The more sale you make, the higher commission you achieve.

Joining  Amazon's Affiliate Program

Here is the link that will direct you to Amazon’s Affiliate Program. You will see a sign up page when you click it. Just give some information and submit it. After your application has approved by the authority, you will become an affiliate. Then you can start promoting products on your blog/website.

Why Do Some People Bother Using Amazon’s Affiliate on Their Site?

I have come across many people who don’t  want to be an amazon’s affiliate because the commission rate is ver low. But there is some unique features of amazon, it sells almost everything that you can’t imagine. May be you are selling a product which is not promoted by anyone in the web. You have the higher chance to make a sale

Amazon make a persuasive effort to sell more products whenever a visitor comes from an affiliate link. This increases the chances of your earning more. If you are a regular visitor of Amazon. Com, you have certainly noticed it.

Amazon will show more products to visitors according to their current products.  As a result, the visitors will be spending  much more amount of money than the actual planed amount. It will add up tp your commission as well. So, you see half of the job is done by Amazon. Your earning increases every time you promote any product.

10 Practical Tips to Succeed with Amazon’s Affiliate Program

          Build Huge Traffic

The first think you need  to do is build massive traffic to your blog.  It increases your chances of earning more and thus increases your commission rate as well. Those  sites with few visitors is not going to have much earning at the end of the month. But that does not mean that you can’t use amazon’s affiliate ads with little traffic. Surely, you can; but you will get the best result when you come up with huge  followers to your site.

Create Loyal Relations with Your Audience

Don’t just spend time on building traffic. Give your best to your audiences, talk with them, share and listen to them. Provide value and thus create loyal audiences to your site. A loyal audience will listen to your words if you recommend something to them.  These loyal audiences will visit your site almost everyday.  Whenever you recommend a product they will pay attention to your advice and you get the chance to make a sale.

Produce Relevant Contents

This depends on the sense of the affiliate marketers. They must show ads which are relevant to the contents. Suppose  you are writing a content on tips for buying camera. So, you can place the ads of  Canon camera  between the post. Believe me, it’s too persuasive. You have the greatest chance to make a sale when you show relevant ads with your content. Don’t mess up friends…just be relevant to your content.

          Promote Products that Come Up with Discount

Amazon has a large number of special products  with discount rate up to 30%. These discount rates are eye catching and easy to convince the visitors.  Just look for this kind of product because it has more chances to make sales. Try to mention the discount rate in your article so that you can persuade the audiences to purchase the product.

Use “Buy Now” Button with Review Post

You can use a “Buy Now” button  in every review post you write for any product. You can place it in a suitable place of the post and make it easier  for your audience to purchase the product in a quick manner. Many of the affiliate marketers have used this button and succeeded making more sales. It’s really a helpful technique you can think of  using on your site.

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