Wealth  How Can I Make Money Right Now?

Chase

Chieftan
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tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
5,481
I've been getting this question a lot in the comments section of my articles. I'm not an authority on making money... I'm sure there are plenty of guys who know better than I do. However, since I'm getting asked, I figured I'd just get up a post with everything I know on it to refer guys to in the future.

If you want to make money in the short-term, with a limited skill set, there three (3) ways I know:

  • Freelance
  • Get a job
  • Arbitrage / deal-making


FREELANCE

If you have a skill of some sort, even just a little bit, you can freelance. Here are some sites you can freelance on:

  • UpWork (arguably the best one as of 2016)
  • eLance
  • Guru
  • Freelancer
  • Fiverr

To do this, first decide what you're there to do. Your headline should be based around this. If you do what most people do and give yourself a headline like

  • "Serious Professional Experienced at Marketing and Programming"

... no one will pay attention. It's vague.

Give yourself a headline instead like:

  • "PHP Whiz w/ 5 Years Exp - Nothing I Can't Do"

or

  • "Hungry Copywriter: My Copy Will Always Be Closing!"

... folks start to notice you and get intrigued.

Profile design's important too: focus on numbers and achievements. Leave out the vague generalities and business codespeak. xx% income boost from the copy I've written, modules that do xyz written, bug-tested, and launched to production in 7 days, 400 emails / day handled as a virtual assistant (and I could've done twice that!), etc. Use numbers and talk achievements: what you have done. Not what you "could" do. No one trusts could, not when he's hiring.

If you go the Fiverr route, study the folks who are good and have lots of reviews. They focus on upsells. They offer a small part of their services for $5, and to get more (often to get the real package), you pay more. Often substantially more.

Things you can do as a freelancer:

  • Graphic design
  • Video work
  • Audio work
  • Proofreading and editing
  • Writing (creative writing, blog writing, copywriting, technical writing)
  • Research (web research, contact research)
  • Programming (PHP, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Python, you name it)
  • Customer service (answering phone calls, email)
  • Management roles, often managing teams of virtual assistants
  • All manner of odd jobs you couldn't possibly guess at until you start surfing these sites and seeing what people are selling

Neat thing about freelancing is you can start off with just a basic skill set, and if you bid low and look for jobs that don't need a huge amount of skill you can learn on the job and get paid to do it. You may even find you have people recruit you specifically to train you, which is always fun.

When you're starting off, you won't have ratings, so bite the bullet and be the low bidder (only on short-term / fixed price deals. Don't take a $2 / hour job for the next 6 months for Christ's sake). You'll have crap assignments with lots of work and little pay at the start, but do a good job, get your 5-star ratings or "Job completed successfully" reviews and then you can start ramping up your asking price.


GET A JOB

Easier said than done?

Check out this post on building a résumé that gets past online recruiters' digital guardians and gets you tons of interviews.

On preparing for the interview: go to Hoovers.com, research the company you're interviewing with, and learn as much as you can about these areas:

  • Its company values
  • Its history
  • Its growth markets

Plan, at some point in the interview, to discuss how you want to work at the company because its values are a good fit with your own, then discuss examples of your own work experience that are examples of that value. For instance, if one of the values is "Technology that serves people", discuss how you were working at a company with a customer support system that wasn't really serving your customers and you were able to get changes made that made the system more customer friendly.

Then plan, at the end, when they ask you any questions you have, to bring up one of the growth markets for the company, and express your interest in that area and ask if there are opportunities at some point to get involved with that aspects of the business. For instance, if they're growing their consumer products business in South America, let them know you speak Spanish and have been to Chile and Bolivia and you'd love to help grow their Latin America consumer products division at some point down the line.

If you need help with interviewing, sign up at Big Interview for 25 bucks a month, and take the training there - the videos interviews are expertly and realistically done, and they hit you with all the standard questions you'll face in an actual interview, plus guides on how to answer them.


ARBITRAGE / DEAL-MAKING

This is the one everyone who's desperate for cash wants to do, and the hardest one to do effectively unless you've got unusual amounts of pluck or an uncommonly good network.

Arbitrage is buying something low to sell it high. Buying cheap goods in bulk from a supplier and selling them piecemeal on eBay, for instance. I had a buddy who made a bundle selling iPhone cases like this in 2008; when he tried doing it in 2010 though, he really struggled to sell off his inventory and ended up getting rid of the cases at cost, because eBay'd been flooded by vendors at that point and the opportunity to make any real money in arbitrage had vanished.

To make money in arbitrage, you've got to 1) identify an opportunity to buy something cheap and sell it higher, and 2) make sure you're one of the few folks who've identified it, like my pal in 2008, and aren't walking into a saturated market where arbitrage no longer exists, like my pal in 2010. The guys who are successful at this are either really lucky, or have excellent instincts (and do lots of homework). Most folks who try arbitrage just bleed money.

Day-trading (or any kind of short-term trading) is something I'd lump into the arbitrage category. You're buying something you think is undervalued, to sell it later when it is (hopefully) more valuable... or overvalued. Again, most of the folks I've met who've tried day-trading are breaking even at best, even if they've worked places like Goldman Sachs. Read some Nassim Taleb before you do any of this.

Deal-making I also lump into the same category. It's another middle man role, where your value is to spot the opportunity and connect the parties. Real estate agents, M&A specialists, the "money guy" who's good at hooking up investors with investment vehicles, all these are deal-makers. The problem with being the deal-maker is everyone wants to cut you out, so you've got to have pluck and know your way around social situations (especially social situations where folks are trying to screw you out of your commission - when they start saying, "Hey, wait a minute; John's got the oil field, Frank's got the mining equipment - what do you do, Ben? You just introduced us! You don't get 8% for that..."). If you want to be a deal-maker, read Robert Ringer's book To Be or Not to Be Intimidated?: That is the Question.


IT'S ALL WORK, AIN'T IT?

I feel like half the time I get asked this question, the guy wants me to tell him where he needs to go to scratch off that winning lottery ticket or where he needs to swing his pick axe to get black gold shooting out of the ground and into his face. But chances are as you read this post you're thinking, "Damn, that takes a lot of work. And THAT takes a lot of work. It ALL takes a lot of work!"

Well, sure. If you didn't want an income source that was going to take a lot of work to get, you could just go work for Starbucks or McDonald's.

This is for how you can make SERIOUS money, in the not-too-distant future.

If you just need ANY kind of money, right now, go work retail. Someone will hire you so long as you wear a button-down, speak articulately, and make sure to shower before your interview.

Otherwise, if you want something that's going to pay you well, and have the perks of flexibility (like freelancing), the appeal of stability + decent pay (like the job), or the promise of a high payout (like arbitrage), you'll have to do some work to get there.

Just like picking up girls, eh?

Chase
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
Hi Everyone,

Let's be a BUSYBODY and add to Chase post. :D


Get a job:

Events


There's a lot of events spread across the year. You have to be fast if you want good events. Events is one of the best jobs you can ever do. Some management sucks. Some management, you basically there doing practically nothing and earn big bucks. It can be super fun.

Audio system DJ

This job is hard to get because many people are looking for it. You just stand there and play the audio system and watch the event.

Stocktaker

Be a stock taker at supermarkets. Some of it will require travelling but it is basically counting stocks at supermarket. Easy job but boring nevertheless. Just grind through it. It's not that boring.

Ushers

Like retails, you basically stand for 4 to 5 hours. And if you work with people who suck, too bad! Haha.. Otherwise, it can be fun because you basically doing close to nothing (depend on the event and what nature of it).

Conference assistants

Just help set up audio visual equipments and sit there watch the conference and be slight aware if there's a problem in case. ;)

Expo sales cashiers where you practically do nothing for weekdays and busy only on Fri, Sat and Sundays

Cashier is tedious and shit, but do this with a lot of young people just a meter across the table and it is super duper fun. HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. To have many people do cashier together side by side, is super fun.

Trainer or Training assistant

Like conference assistants, you just help up with events. Doing nothing much. :D


Arbitrage / deal-making

As Chase noted, you have to be smart. Things i know people sell that earn.

1)Artwork
2)Battery (Galaxy S5, note 3, etc)
3)Pool table, Arcade machine, etc (You need capital for this but i learn of someone who makes 6 to 7k just importing this machines and sell it to a few rich clients per month. Your job is to sell to a few rich clients per month and you set. However, You need to be smart in your marketing too to find rich clients)


So i hope i help out with things.

Zac
 

Chase

Chieftan
Staff member
tribal-elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
5,481
All great points, Zac. I saw "Events" in your post, and another one popped into mind:

Here's an add-on for "Get a Job": hit your local Chamber of Commerce meetings.

I met a guy on a flight from North America to Asia once, and found out he'd been a public school teacher and an ambulance driver in the U.S., and now, a few years later in Asia, he was the director of marketing and the director of business development for a large French architecture firm's Asia operations. And I said, "How'd you go from ambulance driver to director of business development and marketing?"

And he said well, what I did was when I got to Asia, I didn't have any set plan. So I just started going to Chamber of Commerce meetings and talking to people. Any meeting that looked good and spoke English: the American Chamber of Commerce, Australian Chamber of Commerce, British Chamber of Commerce. He said they usually spoke English at the German Chamber of Commerce and had great wurst there too, so he'd always go to those. And once he was there, he'd start talking to people. He was a pretty quiet guy and he said he'd have to push himself for the first few approaches, but once he was warmed up he found it pretty easy to circulate around and introduce himself to others.

His trick was that he focused on speaking to the older folks, because the young folks mostly talked to young folks and the old folks mostly talked to old folks, but he figured the old folks would be the ones in positions to hire, or with networks connected to other older folks who'd be in a position to hire. So he just went and talked to the older folks at Chamber of Commerce meetings. Said he met all kinds of higher ups this way; met the CEO of Intel and a bunch of other Fortune 500 companies. Eventually he talked to a guy from the French architecture firm, and the guy liked him; asked him what his skill sets were, and he said well, my father was an architect and he taught me drafting, and they brought him on for a position and he ended up staying and moving up.

I tried this once just as an experiment, and came away from the first Chamber of Commerce meeting I did with a lead on a promising-sounding job in a venture-funded renewable energy startup launched by a couple of guys from the same company I previously worked for. I got that lead after talking to one of the older guys there, guy in his 60s. As soon as I chatted him up and told him my background, he said, "Ah! I know some guys who'd probably be looking for someone just like you." Never followed up because I was working on starting my own businesses at the time, it was nice to know if things didn't work out, all I had to do was hit a couple of those meetings and I'd probably have a stack of leads to follow up.

So: if you need a job, find your local Chambers of Commerce online, figure out when their events are, pay the fees, and start going. Warm up, and talk to the older folks - they're the ones with power, and the ones with the broadest, deepest networks. And thank me and that ambulance driver later ;)

Chase
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
Chase, everyone,

Chase said:
Here's an add-on for "Get a Job": hit your local Chamber of Commerce meetings.

To nail this in, network enough and you have even 'normal' people you meet, who will recommend you to organizations. This is how i went to perform with other people at dance events of different schools and perform infront of then President of my country. It was an invitation to me and the group to do a pre-opening. Not bad for a new guy who only had 1.5 years of experience.

Anything can happen but i must remind everyone that people can link you up but you must do the work. Easy said than done. :)

So what do you do? Go to events.

Community Centers
Dance events
Meet n Greet session with local Youtubers
Government conferences
Internet marketing talks

and more...

Obviously, one has to always be careful because most of them have their own interest to promote. Some of them are government driven. So you be somewhat political in certain environments. Most of them also keep you in contact to upsell their stuff or recruit for their network marketing company.


Zac
 

Rage

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Oct 23, 2013
Messages
474
Cool point about the chamber of commerce chase; I recall Brian Tracy discussing in the luck factor something similar himself about his experiences with the chamber of commerce and volunteering/making connections through it.

He mentions getting a job down the road through his networking there, that doubled his salary and gave him stock options as well.
 

lux7

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
880
On arbitrage, I was doing it successfully around 2007-2008 as a student and making nice side income for a student.

It was a great period, before the iPods and iPhones -at the beginning of the Apple revolution guys who were early moves were making great money selling bulk china fakes to those who wanted the brand but didn't or couldn't spend enough, knew a guy doing it-

The juicy part:
The biggest sellers and what was getting met biggest bucks were gold-plated super expensive phones which looked and worked EXACTLY like the originals -and even had the same software, don't ask how they did it- paying them a tenth in China and reselling them at a third of the original price in Europe.

Everyone was honestly happy about those products, not a single negative feedback (I'd test the seller myself before reselling and buying more).
Sometimes did it dropshopping saving postage money, some other times the "normal" way depending on what worked best for the occasion.

Then I ventured a bit on more "fully legal" different products making some money there too, ON AVERAGE, but it wasn't uncommon to break even or lose, especially when trying new products (thought nazi-looking stuff would sell big as it'd appeal to a strong niche, but I still have a bunch of useless cigarette holder cases at home lol).
It was good fun and great income for a student, but it wasn't was at a scale you could live off well with it at an older age and in the western world.

To make a quality jump I'd have needed more time, resources and balls, but then I got dragged by the wild life of the exchange student abroad: I tried to sell my knowledge on how to run such a business but not much success there: people want the shiny product at a third of the price, not many wanted to work to make the money selling them.

Then I ventured doing the same with the Vertu phones in the smartphone era -dumb super expensive phones-, and boys did I find some amazing products there too, however Vertu as a brand was much more watchful about their brands and they'd struck you out of any major online portals.


The major lesson learned from my experience here is: success on unbranded items is much rarer (that plain Zippo you pay half the price, or that Che Guevara on an anomyous vase are worthless).
Look for the shiny object which will make the boor feel like rich and important or for the big brand that will really appeal to the masses.
 

Mr.B

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Nov 24, 2014
Messages
49
I've been getting by lately with:

math tutoring
reading tutoring
massages
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
How you go by massages?

What's the process, ads on your local website or local craigslist? :)

Zac
 

Mr.B

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Nov 24, 2014
Messages
49
I hand out business cards to everyone I meet. A lot of people instantly think of a family member to gift the massage for.


Not sure about where you're at but out here on CL there are massage rooms for rent.

Thinking about giving massages?
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
Mr B,

Mr.B said:
Thinking about giving massages?

I thought of doing ASMR massage. There's a market for it. People just don't know.

Zac
 

BetaBoy

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Dec 21, 2017
Messages
85
Chase said:
I've been getting this question a lot in the comments section of my articles. I'm not an authority on making money... I'm sure there are plenty of guys who know better than I do. However, since I'm getting asked, I figured I'd just get up a post with everything I know on it to refer guys to in the future.

If you want to make money in the short-term, with a limited skill set, there three (3) ways I know:

  • Freelance
  • Get a job
  • Arbitrage / deal-making


FREELANCE

If you have a skill of some sort, even just a little bit, you can freelance. Here are some sites you can freelance on:

  • UpWork (arguably the best one as of 2016)
  • eLance
  • Guru
  • Freelancer
  • Fiverr

To do this, first decide what you're there to do. Your headline should be based around this. If you do what most people do and give yourself a headline like

  • "Serious Professional Experienced at Marketing and Programming"

... no one will pay attention. It's vague.

Give yourself a headline instead like:

  • "PHP Whiz w/ 5 Years Exp - Nothing I Can't Do"

or

  • "Hungry Copywriter: My Copy Will Always Be Closing!"

... folks start to notice you and get intrigued.

Profile design's important too: focus on numbers and achievements. Leave out the vague generalities and business codespeak. xx% income boost from the copy I've written, modules that do xyz written, bug-tested, and launched to production in 7 days, 400 emails / day handled as a virtual assistant (and I could've done twice that!), etc. Use numbers and talk achievements: what you have done. Not what you "could" do. No one trusts could, not when he's hiring.

If you go the Fiverr route, study the folks who are good and have lots of reviews. They focus on upsells. They offer a small part of their services for $5, and to get more (often to get the real package), you pay more. Often substantially more.

Things you can do as a freelancer:

  • Graphic design
  • Video work
  • Audio work
  • Proofreading and editing
  • Writing (creative writing, blog writing, copywriting, technical writing)
  • Research (web research, contact research)
  • Programming (PHP, WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Python, you name it)
  • Customer service (answering phone calls, email)
  • Management roles, often managing teams of virtual assistants
  • All manner of odd jobs you couldn't possibly guess at until you start surfing these sites and seeing what people are selling

Neat thing about freelancing is you can start off with just a basic skill set, and if you bid low and look for jobs that don't need a huge amount of skill you can learn on the job and get paid to do it. You may even find you have people recruit you specifically to train you, which is always fun.

When you're starting off, you won't have ratings, so bite the bullet and be the low bidder (only on short-term / fixed price deals. Don't take a $2 / hour job for the next 6 months for Christ's sake). You'll have crap assignments with lots of work and little pay at the start, but do a good job, get your 5-star ratings or "Job completed successfully" reviews and then you can start ramping up your asking price.


GET A JOB

Easier said than done?

Check out this post on building a résumé that gets past online recruiters' digital guardians and gets you tons of interviews:

http://imgur.com/gallery/N4746

On preparing for the interview: go to Hoovers.com, research the company you're interviewing with, and learn as much as you can about these areas:

  • Its company values
  • Its history
  • Its growth markets

Plan, at some point in the interview, to discuss how you want to work at the company because its values are a good fit with your own, then discuss examples of your own work experience that are examples of that value. For instance, if one of the values is "Technology that serves people", discuss how you were working at a company with a customer support system that wasn't really serving your customers and you were able to get changes made that made the system more customer friendly.

Then plan, at the end, when they ask you any questions you have, to bring up one of the growth markets for the company, and express your interest in that area and ask if there are opportunities at some point to get involved with that aspects of the business. For instance, if they're growing their consumer products business in South America, let them know you speak Spanish and have been to Chile and Bolivia and you'd love to help grow their Latin America consumer products division at some point down the line.

If you need help with interviewing, sign up at Big Interview for 25 bucks a month, and take the training there - the videos interviews are expertly and realistically done, and they hit you with all the standard questions you'll face in an actual interview, plus guides on how to answer them.


ARBITRAGE / DEAL-MAKING

This is the one everyone who's desperate for cash wants to do, and the hardest one to do effectively unless you've got unusual amounts of pluck or an uncommonly good network.

Arbitrage is buying something low to sell it high. Buying cheap goods in bulk from a supplier and selling them piecemeal on eBay, for instance. I had a buddy who made a bundle selling iPhone cases like this in 2008; when he tried doing it in 2010 though, he really struggled to sell off his inventory and ended up getting rid of the cases at cost, because eBay'd been flooded by vendors at that point and the opportunity to make any real money in arbitrage had vanished.

To make money in arbitrage, you've got to 1) identify an opportunity to buy something cheap and sell it higher, and 2) make sure you're one of the few folks who've identified it, like my pal in 2008, and aren't walking into a saturated market where arbitrage no longer exists, like my pal in 2010. The guys who are successful at this are either really lucky, or have excellent instincts (and do lots of homework). Most folks who try arbitrage just bleed money.

Day-trading (or any kind of short-term trading) is something I'd lump into the arbitrage category. You're buying something you think is undervalued, to sell it later when it is (hopefully) more valuable... or overvalued. Again, most of the folks I've met who've tried day-trading are breaking even at best, even if they've worked places like Goldman Sachs. Read some Nassim Taleb before you do any of this.

Deal-making I also lump into the same category. It's another middle man role, where your value is to spot the opportunity and connect the parties. Real estate agents, M&A specialists, the "money guy" who's good at hooking up investors with investment vehicles, all these are deal-makers. The problem with being the deal-maker is everyone wants to cut you out, so you've got to have pluck and know your way around social situations (especially social situations where folks are trying to screw you out of your commission - when they start saying, "Hey, wait a minute; John's got the oil field, Frank's got the mining equipment - what do you do, Ben? You just introduced us! You don't get 8% for that..."). If you want to be a deal-maker, read Robert Ringer's book To Be or Not to Be Intimidated?: That is the Question.


IT'S ALL WORK, AIN'T IT?

I feel like half the time I get asked this question, the guy wants me to tell him where he needs to go to scratch off that winning lottery ticket or where he needs to swing his pick axe to get black gold shooting out of the ground and into his face. But chances are as you read this post you're thinking, "Damn, that takes a lot of work. And THAT takes a lot of work. It ALL takes a lot of work!"

Well, sure. If you didn't want an income source that was going to take a lot of work to get, you could just go work for Starbucks or McDonald's.

This is for how you can make SERIOUS money, in the not-too-distant future.

If you just need ANY kind of money, right now, go work retail. Someone will hire you so long as you wear a button-down, speak articulately, and make sure to shower before your interview.

Otherwise, if you want something that's going to pay you well, and have the perks of flexibility (like freelancing), the appeal of stability + decent pay (like the job), or the promise of a high payout (like arbitrage), you'll have to do some work to get there.

Just like picking up girls, eh?

Chase
brothers friend makes 200k annually reselling steel to scrap yards and didn’t go to college.
 

Mr.B

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Nov 24, 2014
Messages
49
Who knows, it's so casual that I think I'm okay.

It's literally like, "I have a great understanding of the body, have received 50-80 massages myself, studied anatomy on my free time for 2 years, here is my card, want a massage sometime?"
 

readjusting

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Dec 25, 2016
Messages
619
My idea: Gay for pay

I know it’s controversial, but the option is there, if you ever get into a really desperate situation.
The only requirement is a muscular body.
 

nolimits

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
111
Hey Chase,

You mentioned a few times that if you had to go back to girlschase beginning you wouldn't blog anymore, but focus on online marketing instead.

What do you mean?

Does that statement apply to most businesses?

Let's say you choose to start a web marketing agency; what would you do instead of blogging?

Simple email marketing, attracting potential clients on the website with SEO and Paid Ads? Is that what you mean by internet marketing rather than blogging?

For instance, in the case of girlschase, what could be possibly better than blogging - especially back in 2008, at the time you started it?

I'm thinking about starting a blog because that could give me visibility in the eyes of potential clients, and also make for a chance to practice SEO and the content marketing fundamentals, BUT I'm not sure it's the best thing I could do with my time - and if you have better alternatives to that, I'd be more than willing to give them a go.

It's just, no matter where you look online, all advice in regards to internet marketing seems to involve doing content marketing (which is generally blogging)

Could you expand on this?

Thanks
 

Alchemist

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
May 22, 2016
Messages
86
nolimits said:
Hey Chase,

You mentioned a few times that if you had to go back to girlschase beginning you wouldn't blog anymore, but focus on online marketing instead.

What do you mean?

Does that statement apply to most businesses?

Let's say you choose to start a web marketing agency; what would you do instead of blogging?

Simple email marketing, attracting potential clients on the website with SEO and Paid Ads? Is that what you mean by internet marketing rather than blogging?

For instance, in the case of girlschase, what could be possibly better than blogging - especially back in 2008, at the time you started it?

I'm thinking about starting a blog because that could give me visibility in the eyes of potential clients, and also make for a chance to practice SEO and the content marketing fundamentals, BUT I'm not sure it's the best thing I could do with my time - and if you have better alternatives to that, I'd be more than willing to give them a go.

It's just, no matter where you look online, all advice in regards to internet marketing seems to involve doing content marketing (which is generally blogging)

Could you expand on this?

Thanks

Could you please answer this Chase when you have time?

It's *exactly* the question I've been meaning to ask you. As I also remember you saying that both blogging and marketing to men who want to get good with women aren't the most lucrative businesses and that your business acquaintances in other fields/markets have grown much faster financially.
 
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