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Like the 18-21 girls? well if so my friend sugarnips just let me know about her new site, check it out: Teenie Shower. more teen thumbs than you can shake a dick at. you should try anyways tho.

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I am not a good looking guy. Not at all. I’m fat, fat as they come. Not to mention ugly. And broke. doesnt change the fact that I had a lot of success with Adult Friend Finder. I signed up for a silver membership (which was like 30 bucks) [...]

Defending your turf against the onslaught of broadleaf weeds isn’t easy. You might never be able to wipe them out forever, but you can control their growth and spread. Our experts advise that before you treat, do a little investigation....

Why take a trip to the golden arches when you can make the nuggets at home? This copycat recipe gets you perfect nuggets every time, fried to just the right golden brown that you remember.

Get your taste buds two-stepping with these Texas enchiladas. Loaded with chili gravy, ground beef, and cheese, they're a meal worthy of any Texas-sized appetite.

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Out of shortening and need some for a recipe? No problem, this clever substitute will work just fine in most baking recipes.

Computer maintenance tips to optimize the performance of your computer

Computer Maintenance tips to make your computer perform better and last longer.

The internet is all the rage when it comes to real estate. According to the National Association of Realtors, when a buyer starts thinking of buying, the first place they turn is the internet. Just 10 years ago - it was getting in the car and driving around.

With gasoline prices approaching $3 a gallon, more and more people will search online first before they do any driving.

So - if you are an agent or a seller, how do you get your property noticed online?

Let's talk about being an agent first. If you are with a national franchise and/or your company is affiliated with the local board of Realtors, there is a good chance that your listings will get streamed to Realtor.com. Relator.com is the #1 property search engine in the world and just keeps getting bigger and better. The site is ranked by Alexa.com as the #8 site - in the WORLD. That's pretty big. Real estate agents already have this site in their favor.

As a home seller, you do not have such an advantage. You can either buy into one of the FSBO (For Sale By Owner) products out there that will put your home on the internet for you, or you can put up your own site and sales page for your home. Of course, if someone is searching for a home in your area, and your site doesn't come up on the first page or two of the major search engines, no one will ever see it.

With people shopping more online and doing less driving around, it puts todays home sellers (those selling without an agent) at a pretty big disadvantage. If they would list their home with an agent whose company has a popular internet presence, their home would sell a lot faster because of the increased exposure.

Our company site is such a site. If you go to Google and search on "Birmingham Alabama Homes for Sale", you will see that the Access Realty site comes in at #3 or #4 on the first page. That's a huge advantage for anyone who wants to sell a home in Birmingham.

One other way to sell a home is to generate a large roster of interested buyers. This can be accomplished online by setting up what are called mini-sites designed to capture llists of people who are currently in the market for a home. This works great for real estate agents but may not work so well with a seller of just one home. You can get more information on these mini-sites and how to accomplish this HERE. As I said before, this type of buyer generation works extremely well these days because almost everyone shops online before getting in the car and driving around looking for homes.

Almost any source you looki at will tel you that between 80% and 90% of For Sale By Owners will eventually list their home with a real estate agent. There are a myriad of reasons why this happens but it all boils down to this: agents have the inside track on attracting buyer traffic to the home. They also do it full time so that even when the seller is gone to work, the house is still "for sale" and can be shown.

So, if you find yourself thinking of hiring an agent, which one should you hire?

First of all, consider paying the highest price for a good agent. Interview several of them and then ask them to cut their fee. The one that refuses to is probably your best bet. Why? When it comes to selling your home and getting your proce, you want an agent who is NOT a noodle...someone with a little back bone. If they won't cut their fee and they promise a higher level of service and service quality, then they will also negotiate the hardest in the trenches when people are trying to cut your price on your home.

Second: if the agent you call doesn't answer their phone or call back within a half hour - stop trying to get them. If they don't answer or call back when you try to call them for an interview, what makes you think they will answer calls from buyers for your home?

Lastly, when you are doing the interview and listening to the agent's marketing plan, look for the things that are different. If you talk to 2 agents and they pretty much do the same things... a sign, MLS, and a few ads... keep talking to more agents. What you are looking for is the agent who has a unique approach or ads value by adding unique tools. Agents that use the talking house transmitter or a 24 hour hotline system are some examples. If the agent you hire isn't doing extra things to make your home stand out in the marketplace, you are just going to get the same ole, same ole. Look for something different.

I hear this questions a lot in the daily real estate game, "can you give us part of our fee back after the closing?"

The answer is yes but only if done in a certain way.

RESPA, the Real Estate Settlement Procdures Acts, requires a couple of things that need to be mentioned. The first thing is that payment cannot be made for services not performed. The second one is that if any payments are made, they must be disclosed on the HUD-1 Settlement Statement.

Futher, Alabama License Law, and most states License Laws, require that no "rebate" be made to any party in a real estate transaction from another party. Another section of the code also requires that the TRUE terms of a real estate transaction be diclosed to the lender or lending institution.

What does all this mean? For starters, if your agent says they can give you cash back after the closing, in nearly every case, this is both against case law and the license law governing the licensees in your state. So - in short - don't do it. If you are a participant in a transaction and you recieve cash back later, after the closing takes place, then you are participating in loan fraud. Fraud is a crime. Because the lender didn't know that you were receiving additional cash proceeds from the sale, they are not aware of the TRUE details of the transaction. Alomst every loan program for the purchase of a home has the provision that the buyer cannot receive what is called "cash out" - that is - get money back when they make a purchase. This, in essence, would be overfinancing the home. on a refinance, however, this is okay.

The way to get a credit back from your agent is to have the credit put on the settlement statement as a CREDIT to you and then the credit is applied to any costs you have to pay at the closing table. This applies whether you are buying or selling.

Basic Rule of them: If you can put the cash payment on the HUD-1 settlement statement so that it is disclosed to all parties, including the lender, chances are it's AOK to do it.

I guess it's now official. The real estate bubble has burst. When the inventory figures for homes show they are going up nationwide AND it's in the national media, you can be sure that it's already been happening for a few months now. The NY Times and Jouranl and just about every other news outlet decided today that it was a story - so I guess it's official.

Those of us in the real estate business have known it for the last 3 months and we could have told you so. We have sales figures and "time on market" statistics that can back up our claims. We have been telling successful sellers what's happening and how to price their homes accordingly. Now - 3 months later, the media is catching on.

The story is that the supply of homes on the market is rising and the number of buyers isn't. What that means to you is that your home will sit on the market longer without selling. In fact, two of the articles I've read state simply that it would take over 6 months to sell all the homes currently for sale. What they leave out is that more homes come on the market every day, further increasing the glut.

As the number of homes on the market increases, it takes further price reductions to get some of those homes to sell quicker, which, in turn, lowers the reflected market price of all homes. Sellers will wait and wait and then lower their price - too late. What they don't realize is that they are chasing the market down.

The market price of their home goes down and then they lower their price just above the market price and wait. While they wait, the market price goes down further, putting them farther and farther away from the market value, until they lower the price again.

So, as a seller, what should you do right now?

Simple, lower your price to a point that is BELOW the current market value. Ask your agent to take some time and do a good market analysis to get a feel for what your home is worth right now. Then, price it below that number. If you do this, you will have hungry and willing buyers lining up to make offers on your home... but only for a short time in a falling market. If you wait too long, and the market coninues to drop, then you will be priced above the market again and have to reassess the situation.

The smart thing to do is price your home low and let the market come to you, rather than chasing the market down. One strategy results in buyers, the other results in foreclosures. But you have to decide which strategy to persue.

(Birmingham, AL) The most recent fallout from the mortgage crisis that began last summer is now rearing it's ugly head in the form of Fannie Mae approved loans that cannot get insured by Mortgage Insurance companies.

Mortgage insurance companies, spurred on by recent recommendations in congress, are tightening their credit standards for providing insurance. Without mortgage insurance, borrowers are forced to provide a down payment equal to 20% of the purchase price of a home - something very few home buyers can afford to do. Just this past week, mortgage insurance companies raised their credit score requirement to 620, effectively cutting out 50% of home buyers from the home buying market. The move came unnanounced and without any notice to lenders or to Fannie Mae.

In fact, lenders are still approving loans that meet Fannie Mae guidelines for purchase in the secondary market, but then find, just before closing, that there is no mortgage insurance available to insure the loan. Without insurance on money loaned that is over 80% of the value of the property, the loan is declined. Buyers that have a "loan approval" from a lender should immediately ask their lender if the lender can get their loan insured. Otherwise, homebuyers could spend hundreds and even thousands in the days leading up to the closing only to find, at the last minute, that loan insurance is not available to them.

This move by the Mortgage Insurance companies will only add fuel to the fire that is the current US Housing market. By effectively eliminating more home buyers from the market, at a time when the housing market needs more buyers, not fewer, the mortgage insurance companies have put another nail in the coffin of the housing market. The resulting effect on the market will be an even bigger drop in home prices. The immediate impact of this new policy will be felt quickly in the market, not over time as has been the case with loan defaults, adjusting loan interest rates, and foreclosures.

Be forewarned: if you are a seller, drop your price now before the market itself forces an even larger price reduction. If you are a home buyer, your credit score must be above 620 or you cannot get a loan.

A bank or mortgage company forecloses on a property. After a few months of legal hassles, the lender finally gets clear title to the property and hires a local real estate agent. Of course, the lender, at this point, wants to try and recover almost all of the money lent on the property.

6 months or a year go by and this period is full of price reductions and repairs to the property. The property may have been vandalized, lived in by squatters, had new carpet and paint, even had new landscaping. The problem is usually that the lender refuses to set the price where it should be so the property, although shown many times, continues to sit on the market.

There is a hidden time limit for this lender. Does anyone know how long it is? How long can the lender keep a non-performing asset on its' books? How long can the property be an REO? We aren't talking about government foreclosures here (FHA and VA loans), the government can keep them forever. We are talking about bank or lender owned foreclosures.

I have a done a little research and it appears that the time limit that a private lender can keep an REO on its' books is 2 years plus or minus a little.

The questions is... What happens to the house or property AFTER the statutory time period has expired and the lender is forced to "get rid of the property at any price"?

Unfortunately, researching this topic has produced very little in the way of usable results. However, I did happen upon a few references to something called The REO Black Hole List. Apparently there really is a place that lenders can "dump" their old REO inventory as a last measure. And, they dump them at dirt cheap prices - usually for thess than lot value.

My research has found that there appears to be a handful of asset managers, companies that buy these old REO properties in bulk, that lenders turn to when they absolutely must liquidate the non-performing assets. These asset managing companies turn around and sell, in bulk, to a "secret" list of private, seasoned investors who actually purchase 50 to 100 to 400 houses at a time.

And guess what? These investors are able to purchase these homes, on average, for $2350 to $5000 per house! I kid you not. I actually spoke to an investor who bought around 182 houses direct from Fannie Mae for $400,000. You do the math. That is under $2500 per house.

The thing about this kind of setup is that the investor must buy all of the homes in a package - whether they are vacant lots, burnouts, or condemned. AND - they are not in one location but spread out all over the country. That's why the average price per home is so cheap...to spread the risk. But, these homes have all been in an MLS system somewhere - they were all REO properties at one time - so there is a way to find the market value pretty easily: Call a local agent!

AND since the investor may live in Maine or south Florida, he or she will also call a local agent to list these properties. They usually pay a high commission because the price will be low and because they have very little invested in the house. Does anyone have any experience with these types of investors? Or - if you know a local investor, would they be interested in this kind of "bulk buying"?

One other little tidbit I found out: a lot of the packages that these asset managers sell consist of only 10 or 20 homes. Think about that. You could buy 10 homes for $30,000 or $40,000. While some of them may not be the jewels you would want, several of them will always be great fix and flip homes that will sell for as much as you paid for the entire package.

Again, little information can be found on this "underground network" and the only place I could get any information was at this REO site. I know it exists. If you know how to get on this list or how to get in touch with the investors that participate, please post it! If you are in Ohio and I am in Alabama, we are not competing against each other!

Now there's an easy way to find the open houses in the Birmingham, AL area with just the click of your mouse.

Weichert, Realtors - Access Realty has just launched www.8YellowBalloons.com

Tune in to 8yellowballoons.com every week to see where the open houses are going to happen. You would drive around looking but it's a lot easier with a map.

You can also custom design your own Open House Home Tour!

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC released their third annual study of advertising revenue in podcasting last week. Although the studys headline is yet another year of steep growth, the numbers show that growth has peaked and is slowing down. The numbers show that podcasting will need to find other sources of revenue if its commercial viability is ever going to be proportional to its growing listenership.

The study indicates that podcast advertising brought in $479 million in 2018 and estimates that it will scrape past $1 billion by 2021. Last year's revenue is a 53% increase over 2017, but growth is expected to slow down to about 20% in a couple of years.

These numbers are much lower than those from other forms of ad-supported online audio content. PwC's Global Entertainment and Media Outlook last year estimated $1.65 billion in ad revenue for internet streams of AM/FM radio stations in 2018, growing to $2.2 billion by 2021.

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There are big opportunities for the music industry in podcasts, but one of the big barriers is licensing: the cost and complexity for podcasters of securing the rights to actually play music in their shows.

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The podcast industry is growing fast; the industry generated an estimated $479.1 million in revenue in 2018 and is expected to produce more than $1 billion by 2021, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC. The latest revenue figure represents an increase of 53 percent in just a year.

The shift to podcast ads backs up what industry titans, like Spotify, have been saying for months. The company plans to spend up to $500 million this year on podcast-related acquisitions.

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Over the past few years, there have been a number of major developments within the advertising world, but one of the most fascinating is the tremendous growth of the podcast. Podcasting, by many measures, is clearly on the rise. As the fortunes of podcasts rise, so too do those of individual podcasters, who have legions of devoted fans looking forward to their next episodes. Podcasting has created a new type of influencer, one who has the ability to reach people wherever they are, whether it’s at home, in their car, or during their daily commute.

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Nielsen has launched Nielsen Podcast Listener Buying Power Service, an analytics tool providing insights matching podcast listeners by genre with their buying habits.

The tool is placed to help pair podcasts with advertisers by detailing the interests and expenses of audiences.

The product, from Nielsen Scarborough, launches with iHeartMedia, Cadence13, Stitcher, Westwood One and Cabana as clients.

Clients will be able to profile shows using program titles collected from subscribers. In order to connect specific types of listeners with particular advertisers and specific program-level insights - built from a sample of 30,000 respondents.

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One-third of Americans over 12 listen to podcasts. But just as the business gets booming, are there already too many podcasts?

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Audiobooks and podcasts have been sky-rocketing in popularity over the past three or four years. In 2019, the number of Americans who had listened to an audiobook passed 50%, a first for the medium. Podcasts are also on the rise, with investments from companies like Spotify and Pandora further encouraging a virtious cycle of audience growth and a broadening pool of podcasters.

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NPR is projecting that podcast sponsorship revenues will surpass revenues from broadcast sponsorships next year for the first time.

During NPR’s membership meeting Sept. 5, Chief Financial Officer Deborah Cowan told public radio station leaders that the network has budgeted about $55 million in corporate sponsorship revenues from podcasts in fiscal year 2020.

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The face of audio media is changing and it is all because of podcasts.

Audio media has always been prominent as it was the first true form of entertainment to exist before television came into being, and quite genuinely, I have to say I am beyond thankful radios have not yet fallen from the face of the earth.

Audio media is a key component of both traditional and contemporary technology. But, more personally, it is something that has been in my life since the day I became capable of retaining memories. With podcasts becoming increasingly popular, I believe radios will go out of style, and I will have to adjust accordingly.

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Reflecting the fact that 75% of UK advertisers are upping spend in podcasts, Nielsen has unveiled a measurement tool to gauge effectiveness in this growing ad space.

Nielsen believes that the UK’s 6 million weekly podcast listeners will double in the next three years. It is putting the tools in place for brands to “quantify the impact and effectiveness of their podcast ads” with the Nielsen Podcast Brand Effect.

The tool has already been running in the US and so far the results have found that 57% of podcast ads tested outperformed pre-roll video in driving purchase intent and 70% of respondents agreed that the podcast ads increased their awareness of products and services.

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Podcasts are now produced by commercial broadcasters, individuals and companies with no connection to broadcasting. In fact anyone with something to say, and a few pounds to spend on the equipment to say it, can get involved.

The digital audio files are cheap to produce and, thanks to the internet, easy to distribute.

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The U.S. podcast market has been on the rise for years, but 2019 marked an extraordinary year of growth for the space.

At least 90 million U.S. consumers (27% of the population) listen to podcasts monthly, up 23% from 73 million in 2018, which is an acceleration from the 9% year-over-year growth monthly podcast listening experienced last year, according to Edison Research and Triton Digital.

Top 19 Media Trends of 2019: The Podcast Boom

There is an industry trend toward more direct listener monetization and engagement. This includes crowdfunding, membership, tipping, and donations, as well as exclusive and premium content.

This is a healthy development — expanding the range of touch points with listeners beyond the ad impression and helping publishers diversify their revenue and business models. The trend speaks to the depth of experience that spoken-word audio elicits, and it encompasses other podcast engagement strategies such as live shows, email newsletters, fan clubs, surveys, and experiments with personalization and interactivity.

PodPass wants to build the identity layer for podcasting

The audio technology company Voxnest owns the podcasting platform Spreaker. The Italy-based StreetLib is a digital book distributor. Last week, they teamed up for a symbiotic relationship that will let StreetLib’s book publishers create podcasts and Spreaker’s podcasters create and distribute digital books or audiobooks.

The Publishing And Podcasting Industries Are Getting Even Cozier

More than half of the U.S. population over age 12 has now listened to a podcast, according to Edison Research. The medium has fundamentally altered the landscape for audio content, liberating and empowering both listeners and creators. And big acquisitions such as Spotify’s purchase of Gimlet Media signal that the business of podcasting is coming of age, too.

But there remains an economic gulf that some entrepreneurs and investors see as an opportunity. Ad spending on podcasting is around $500 million, by some estimates, but that compares to $17 billion or more for radio.

So where is podcasting heading next? How will speech recognition, smart speakers and other innovations change the landscape for podcasts? Should you start your own show? Could you make any money if you did?

The future of podcasting: Can the business of audio content catch up with the creative revolution?

As 2019 moves to a close, Spotify is giving its yearly version of the personalized Spotify Wrapped, as well as a unique one that showcases your listening records through the last decade.

That indicates your Wrapped will add the songs, artists, albums, and podcasts you found on Spotify in 2019, plus the artists you streamed across the past decade, by a My Decade Wrapped option.

Spotify Wrapped extends to add your favorite music from the decade, plus podcaster metrics

On a recent rainy afternoon, a panel featuring a mixture of hip young creatives took place at YouTube’s Manhattan studio space. The topic of discussion? Podcasting. Organized by New York-based podcast hosting platform Simplecast, the event drew a crowd of young creators with a hunger to learn how to produce and distribute their own podcasts.

How Podcasting Became the Next Content Medium Race

I do believe the spike in podcast popularity will be good for its myriad providers in many ways. The rising tide and all of that good stuff. But I do worry that many of its most unique independent voices will get bulldozed as big companies rush to construct skyscrapers. It is our job as listeners, fans and podcasters to make sure those voices are not drowned out.

Independent Podcasts

The soundproof Staples Connect Podcast Studios, developed in partnership with iHeartRadio, will include professional equipment -- a RODECaster Pro control board, RODE microphones and SHURE headphones -- and space for up to four people.

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We have seen how the radio industry has steadily increased its digital revenue, crossing the $1 billion mark in 2019, according to the RAB. As radio stations look to generate new business, to battle digital monsters Facebook and Google who are coming for their local ad dollars, could podcasting be radio’s next revenue star?

Radio has certainly gotten into the podcast content game, with big companies launching their own networks, some creating original content and most stations converting on-air shows to on-demand podcasts. Revenue has been somewhat elusive so far.

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Spotifys continued investment in podcasts appears to be paying off, after the company reported that podcast listening has increased by 200 percent year-on-year in its fourth quarter earnings today. The company says it now has over 700,000 podcasts on its platform, and that over 16 percent of its users now listen to podcasts. Spotify says the amount of users paying for its premium tier increased to 124 million.

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The decision to implement a private podcast is a critical first step to improving your business communication, but there are a number of other important decisions you have to make before the show becomes a reality. In this article, we’ll focus on one unavoidable decision: what type of equipment should you buy?

The answer, perhaps unsatisfyingly, is that it depends. However, here are the questions you should be asking yourself as you begin the search for podcasting gear.

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Apple Podcasts reported to have 800,000 shows and over 30 million episodes as of December 2019. According to Edison Research and Triton Digital, there are currently 62 million Americans who listen to podcasts each week.

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Like so many people throughout the country, we at NPR's Student Podcast Challenge are working from home right now. And after months of teaching students how to make a homemade podcast, we put our skills to the test: The latest episode of our podcast was recorded from our bedrooms.


Host/producer Lauren Migaki recorded a podcast from her home/pillow fort studio.

We used pillow forts (just like in our how-to video!), bulky headphones and special, professional-grade microphones. But don't let the equipment discourage you — with just a couple tweaks you can use essentially the same setup: Replace the headphones with earbuds, and the mics with a mobile device like a cell phone or tablet, and you are ready to go!

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Seventy-five percent of Americans aged 12 and older (about 212 million people) are now familiar with podcasting, up from 70 percent in 2019. Fifty-five percent (155 million) listen to podcasts in general while 37 percent (104 million people) listen to podcasts monthly, up from 32 percent (90 million) in 2019.

It is more important than ever that brands create content easily retrievable through voice as consumption of both podcasts and voice-operated assistants rise. Over six in ten Americans use some form of voice assistant technology and nearly one-third of smart speaker owners have three or more devices in their homes.

Other noteworthy survey findings include smartphone ownership growing to 240 million, smart speaker awareness growing to about 220 million and smart speaker ownership growing to 76 million. The mean number of smart speakers per household grew from 1.7 in 2018 to 2.2 in 2020. As smart speaker ownership increased, radio ownership decreased, as the mean number of radios per household went from three in 2008 to 1.5 in 2020.

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What are the biggest digital marketing and branding trends shaping the year ahead? How will marketers approach increasing brand awareness, attracting new customers and growing revenue in an always on digital world where the only guarantee is change?

2020 will be like nothing we have seen before in the digital landscape.

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As the global COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, it appears more people are turning to podcasts for news and scientific information as much as a distraction.

Acast, one of the world's largest podcast hosting and analytics companies, said new listening figures for March 21-22 saw a 7% increase in listens globally, equivalent to more than 750,000 podcast plays.

Although some categories experienced declines, podcasts in the education, entertainment, science, medicine and health genres were all up more than 10%.

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Podcast marketing is on a roll in 2020 with many companies releasing audio content to build trust, connect with their audience on a personal level, and boost brand awareness.

1. Ease of production
2. Low entry costs
3. Language is no barrier
4. Repurpose your blog and video content as audio
5. Less competition than blogging and YouTube
6. Easier to grow a following as a podcaster
7. Successful podcasters make millions of dollars a year
8. Build connections by interviewing influential guests
9. Showcase your speaking skills
10. Build high-DA links back to your website

With commuting on hold and everybody Zooming all the time, podcast consumption has taken a bit of a hit as listeners look for new ways to fit shows into their daily routines.

Last month, the analytics firm Chartable released research suggesting that podcast downloads were 10% lower on March 25 than they were on February 26.

Those numbers deserve to be taken with a grain of salt. Chartable, like Podtrac and other podcasting analytics services, is an opt-in analytics service, and many different podcast networks, ranging from Entercom to Vox Media, showed increased listening last month.

Storytelling is powerful.

With the influx of media—both social and traditional—getting consumed in a 24/7 news cycle can be overwhelming and optional. The concept of time seems irrelevant lately leaving our fingertips free for endless scrolling, a particularly slippery slope for mental health during this global pandemic.

Individuals, families and communities worldwide are learning how to grapple with the effects of a changing social paradigm, seeking ways to stay connected and safe.

Adaptability during this new paradigm is key and many tech companies are stepping up to the plate to perfect, iterate, and improve on products to keep up with a new normal and compete in an evolving landscape.

There are early signs that media will be one of many industries to take a huge blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, with sharp declines in ad revenue and significant layoffs. Podcasting is unlikely to be an exception; Podtrac recently reported that downloads have fallen 10% since the beginning of March, while unique listeners fell by 20%.

A different picture emerged when I spoke to Ross Adams,  CEO of podcast advertising company Acast, which works with both bedroom podcasters and large publishers like the BBC and PBS NewsHour.

Adams said listenership is not down — it’s just that audiences have changed when they are listening and what they’re listening to, with Acast  seeing its largest weekends ever in recent weeks. And plenty of people want to start new podcasts; signups for the Acast Open platform increased 49% month-over-month in March.