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April 16, 2019

Key Lessons In Buying And Selling Websites With Michael Bereslavsky

Building up a business from scratch it’s not an easy feat. Although most people don’t know otherwise, there is another fleet of business people out there that have mastered the art of buying and selling other businesses.

Not only buying an existing business might give you a head start, but it might also allow you to scale the operations quicker, as most of the initial reisk and investment has been taken over by someone else.

Michael Bereslavsky is the founder of Domain Magnate. That is a company which sells and acquires e-commerce, affiliate and content businesses, primarily.

Michael is very active on Flippa, one of the most important marketplaces for selling and buying websites. He has a track record in buying and selling businesses online, that is why I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions so that if you want to get this business model going you know where to start!

What drove you toward the trade of buying and selling websites?

I started my first online business back in 2004-2005 and I quickly learned about SEO (back then it was much easier!), building sites, writing content and finding affiliate programs to promote. After a lot of trial and error I started making a good income from my websites and was looking for opportunities to invest the extra funds, to help grow the business.

Since building new websites, adding content, and promoting to get traffic was time consuming, the next logical step was to buy established sites. I started by buying several small sites for about $100 each, growing them further. At the time my plan was just to increase cash flow and maintain a growing portfolio of websites.

Later I also discovered the potential in selling sites. An established online gambling company contacted me about a site I bought for $130 in 2005, and they offered $2500 for it. The site was only making a few dollars per month, so it was a great deal.

After many similar deals a profitable business was born. Another site I bought for $650, managed to grow, monetize better, and resold for $20K a year later – over a decade ago.

Since then I’ve continued buying, managing and selling websites, transitioning to bigger deals and also acquiring more established online businesses.

More than a decade and a half later, I still love looking at and evaluating different online businesses, learning new skills, making deals and helping people quickly and safely exist their online businesses.

What key aspects do you look for when buying a website?

Every deal starts and ends with numbers! It’s all about revenues, expenses, and price. Additionally I pay extra attention to trends, risk profile of the business and key opportunities for improvement.

What suggestions do you have for those looking to sell their website?

Prepare upfront, decide on a timeline. How fast do you intend to sell your business? Keep in mind – it always takes a lot longer than you expect.
Get your finances in order. Make sure you have the exact revenues, expenses month by month for the past 12 (or at least 6) months.
Based on your timeline decide on a strategy. If you’re not in a hurry to sell – focus on increasing value first. Look into optimizing the numbers. Can you reduce expenses? Can you monetize the business better? Make sure the business is completely managed for easy transition, hire freelancers/employees, create SOPs to standardize the operations and remove yourself from the equation – if you were doing much of the work until now. Buyers want to see a business that is easy to manage!
If you are looking to sell quickly go with a professional direct buyer, like us, or check if you know anyone buying similar websites within your network. You can also list in marketplaces and with brokers depending on the type of business and range.
Use a secure, reputable escrow service
Have a sales agreement in place, and make sure all aspects of the deal are clearly outlined and discussed prior.
Provide good after sale support!

What methodologies are most used to determine the valuation of a website?

We mostly look at profits and risks. Websites are typically values as a multiple of current profits. However, there can be a wide ranging depending on many factors, such as:

age,
traffic sources,
revenue sources,
quality of backlinks and content,
product,
social following,
email list,
competition,
niche
and many more.

For anyone wanting to start to buy and sell websites what’s your advice?

Start small and learn! I’ve seen a lot of people entering the market, spending most of the funds on a website, only to realize later on that they don’t know how to manage it efficiently, haven’t done proper due diligence, or worse yet, were scammed by an unscrupulous seller.

If you start by buying a few small websites and see it as a learning experience, to see if you can grow and improve them, you’ll be able to acquire the skills and expertise required to be successful in the market before you make any bigger decisions.

What business book or books, if any, would you suggest to the community?

I love books, last year have read close to 50 books. My recent favourites were:

The E-Myth Revisited,
Never Split the Difference,
Life 3.0.

(Editor’s note: You can also consult the FourWeekMBA business books list.)

What business person do you follow the most?

I don’t follow any business personalities closely, but if I had to pick one that would be Warren Buffett, as I’ve tried to learn from his investing style, and used a similar value based approach in investments in businesses, real estate, startups and domain names.

I also listen to a lot of podcasts, my favourites are currently Tim Ferriss and The Kevin Rose show.

What’s the best way to get in touch with you?

If you’re considering to sell your business contact us via https://www.domainmagnate.com/sell/. Also feel free to follow me on facebook https://www.facebook.com/DomainMagnate and other social media.

Other interviews:

Inside The Creative Curve With Allen Gannett [Interview]
Hacking Value Proposition Design With The Value Mix [Interview]

Other resources:

What Is a Business Model? 30 Successful Types of Business Models You Need to Know
Business Strategy: Definition, Examples, And Case Studies
What Is a Business Model Canvas? Business Model Canvas Explained
Blitzscaling Business Model Innovation Canvas In A Nutshell
What Is a Value Proposition? Value Proposition Canvas Explained
What Is a Lean Startup Canvas? Lean Startup Canvas Explained
What Is Market Segmentation? the Ultimate Guide to Market Segmentation
Marketing Strategy: Definition, Types, And Examples
Marketing vs. Sales: How to Use Sales Processes to Grow Your Business

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Published on April 16, 2019 10:59

April 13, 2019

The Ultimate Guide for Creating Your Content Workflow

Whether you run your own business or manage a specific sector in one, there is nothing more important than making sure that everything is being done on time. Managing different projects and trying to achieve various goals at once will require a lot of planning for everything to run smoothly.

Creating your content management workflow will seriously help you organize and prioritize specific tasks so that you don’t come across chaotic situations regarding your teams and their tasks. Here are some tips to help you achieve the perfect workflow management.

What exactly is a workflow?

Starting anything with the proper organization is an essential step to succeeding in a project. A workflow is a summary of all the tasks that need to be organized and completed in a particular order so that the natural flow of events is established until a goal is reached. It is based on logical, pre-meditated steps which aim towards helping your company run in a more organized way.

You content management workflow will help you decide quite a few things, like the type of content you wish to create, the frequency you need to post, the different niches you want to cover and many other similar issues. Something important to also keep in mind through this process is the meaning of your content’s lifecycle.

The content lifecycle is a plan that you need to follow to make sure that you are creating and correctly sharing your content. The workflow in this process has many different steps which you can follow, and these are the following:

Coming up with the right strategy

For you to be able to start creating content consistently and for a long time, you will need to develop a strategy which will cover a variety of points. You will have to know precisely the reason why you are creating said content and the goals you wish to achieve through it.

Another thing that’s very important and will help you gain a clearer view of the goals you need to set for your content is your target audience. Apart from trying to come up with content that they will find interesting and enjoyable, you will also need to be thinking about the way through which you will reach out to them.

For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience, you will be able to reach out to them through various social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. For the older generations, you might have to invest in a traditional email marketing campaign to spread the word about your new content.

Creating your content

After you have sorter those basic things out, it is time to start creating your content. For your workflow to be successful, you will need to make sure that every person working in this “production line” will know exactly what their part in this process is.

You will need to make sure that you are providing everyone with the right supplies, tools, and content that they will be able to have access to at any time. Your creative team will need supplies, but they will also need the right rules and guidance to excel.

Another important thing you should never forget is deadlines. To make sure that everyone is doing their part correctly, you will need to keep them working and active under strict deadlines. The pressure of needing to finish a task on time will help everyone in your team stay more focused and productive.

Checking your content’s quality

Even though you might have just finished with the creation process, you should make sure that you do not forget a critical step in this process. That step is reviewing your content.

You might think that there’s nothing wrong with the way your creative team wrote about a specific topic, but the truth is that there is always room for improvement. One of the most common errors that occur in content creation is grammar and spelling mistakes.

There is nothing that can make your content look less professional than simple mistakes which could have been avoided through a proofreading and editing check. Even if you haven’t thought of hiring such a professional for your team, the good news is that there are plenty of professional editors and writing services who work with independent companies and help them out with their editing and proofreading needs.

Making sure that your content is of the best quality and meets all the standards you have set to reach your target audience will help you move on to the very next step of this process.

Distributing your content

As it was mentioned previously, it is a good idea to know how you would like to distribute the content you have created in advance. This will truly help you speed up the whole process, as you will not have to start setting up a social media account or an email list at the very last minute.

You can use your current audience’s help to create hype on your social media pages, blog or website and have them share your content with their friends and peers as soon as it is published.

Collecting feedback and improving your strategy

Last but not least, it is also important to always leave room for improvement. No strategy will be perfect, but if you follow your content management workflow steps correctly, you will be able to fix any issues that might come up and improve the way you work.

Feedback is a very important part of this process and can help you see what you need to work harder to achieve your goals.

Making everything work like a clock

Having to work with many people as a part of a team and organize them all accordingly definitely isn’t an easy thing to do. All of these steps will become a big help in your content management workflow and will help you keep a consistent schedule of creating, sharing and improving your content without any long-term issues.

So, the next time you wish to create some fresh content, you might want to think in advance and plan everything from the beginning. Your workflow will become much more stable and effective, and you will finally start seeing the results you always wished for.

Guest contribution by Diana Nadim. She is a writer and editor who has a Master degree in Marketing. She combines her passion for writing with her interest in research and creates thought-provoking content in various fields. Diana also runs her 3to5Marketing blog. She also collaborates with TrustMyPaper.

Other resources:

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Published on April 13, 2019 13:40

Who’s Winning The Voice Search War? Smart Speakers Market Share In 2019

For those who don’t have realized, there is a bloody war being fought right now in the business world. It is the domination of voice search market. This war is getting fought by tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple.

The voice search war is essential as it might define in part, who of the tech players will be able to take dominate the next wave of the web. That is why companies like Amazon and Google are pouring in billions of dollars in distribution to dominate the market.

In this war, the main two winning players are Amazon and Google. Many believe that Google might have a head start, over other players as it mastered the search world in the last two decades with its search engine.

However, my argument is that not only the voice search war will be played on a different playground. If Google (now Alphabet) won’t be able to leave behind some of the old assumptions it won’t win this war.

Indeed, while Google still dominates traditional search. As search moved toward mobile devices, and different kinds of consumption of information became available, that also required the ability of Google to transform more and more in an answer engine, able to capture and give as many answers to its users.

Therefore, if Google is willing to win this war, it has to get out of the “ten blue links” logic. This drastic change might be great for users. Yet it will have a massive impact on the distribution of content online.

Each day billions of people jump on Google to find relevant information. And if Google is changing the way it serves information, it will also affect more traditional industries like publishing, traveling, and commerce in general.

In this scenario, understanding how those players are placing their bets it is critical to gain insights on what to do next to make sure your content gets adequately distributed, and you gain access to the next wave of the web.

For such reason in this article, I’m summarizing the analysis provided by Voicebot.ai to answer three key questions.

Who is winning the Smart Speaker war so far?

Smart Speaker Market Share in 2019

Amazon61.1%

Google (Alphabet)23.9%

Other15%

What are the most popular voice devices in 2019?

Smart Speakers Market Share by Device in the US - January 2019

Amazon Echo Dot

31.4%

Echo or Plus

23.2%

Echo Spot

3.5%

Amazon Echo Show

3%

Google Home

11.2%

Home Mini

11.2%

Home Hub

1.2%

Home Max

0.2%

Other

10%

Apple HomePod2.7%

SonosOne2%

What are the top seven ways people are using smart speakers?

Top Seven Daily Uses by Frequency In The US - January 2019

Ask a question36.9%

Listen to streaming music services38.2%

Check the weather35.6%

Set an alarm23.5%

Set a timer22.9%

Listen to radio21.2%

Use a favorite Alexa Skill / Google Action18.3%

Reference for the data: SMART SPEAKER CONSUMER ADOPTION REPORT MARCH 2019 – U.S. by Voicebot.Ai

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Published on April 13, 2019 09:13

April 12, 2019

Inside The Creative Curve With Allen Gannett [Interview]

Today we have here, Allen Gannett. He’s the Chief Strategy Officer of Skyword, founder of TrackMaven, which is a big data analytics company; and he’s also the author of “The Creative Curve“. A book that I loved and I suggest everyone reading it.

And today we’re actually going to explore with Allen, the insights about creativity, how it works. And also the misconceptions we all have about how creativity works. So thank you for being with us today Allen.

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Allen Gannett, author of The Creative Curve

Allen: Thanks for having me man, and there’s a lot of misconceptions, so we have a lot to talk about.

Gennaro: I had a lot of misconceptions about creativity before reading your book as well. So probably would be nice to start from there.

What’s really creativity? What have you been finding from your research?

Allen: the funniest thing to me about creativity is how much the definition has changed over time. One of the things I talk about in the book is this sort of idea of the artist over time and how they were seen in the ancient era. Artists were viewed as people who just sort of imitated God.

And then in modern-day creativity, a new concept emerged. It was during the Golden Age, which was also Golden Age from the capitalist perspective. There was an influx of money, people could afford art, they wanted more art, supply and demand kicked in. And artist started being able to command more respect.

There started to be for the first time, this celebrity artist and this notion of the creative as this sort of masterful persons would emerge.

You know we also sort of developed over time these other notions around creativity of, it was people are sort of semi-divine or they’re weird, or they’re odd and heroic, but at the same time they’re sort of wonderful.

And what’s interesting is when you look at the science around creativity, there’s actually a lot of consensus about how it works. So, the short version is that creativity is the ability to create things that are both novel and valuable.

It’s not just about novelty, which is just creativity, really. It’s not just about value. It’s about creating things that are both novel and valuable. That’s because our brain relies on the right hemisphere, which is very good at connecting new and different ideas together. Therefore, it’s not some magical force.

It is a pretty normal biological process. We’ve studied it, we’ve observed an MRI scan. And it’s something that’s actually quite explainable.

Gennaro: probably that’s the first misconception. That creativity is something that comes out of the blue. That actually not anyone can master it, but you’re born with it. But in the book, you actually have a process in place and actually, I think it’s very interesting to look at the framework that you put together which is “The Creative Curve.”

How does The Creative Curve work?

Allen: when it comes to creativity, there’s sort of three elements that I think are important. So, one is technical skill, so having the technical skill in your field. Two is the marketing distribution.

So being able to actually get your ideas out there. And the third is the timing. And I spend a lot of the book, around timing, and I call it the Creative Curve as sort of the framework that I use. The Creative Curve isn’t new, it’s a pop-psychology version of a pretty serious academic concept. That is called the Inverted U-shaped relationship.

This theory finds that a rate of exposure to something, how familiar we are with something, it has a pretty big influence on our perception of it. And the relationship between familiarity and preference is an upside down U.

And that’s the creative curve. Where when something very new, when something very unfamiliar, we don’t like it that much. But then as we’re exposed to something more, like think about the first time you hear a new song; you’re like “oh, this is actually pretty good, I kinda like this.” And then you hear over and over again and it becomes familiar.

That’s because we don’t actually like things that are erratically new. Think about if you watch a movie that is nine hours with no protagonist like you’d be terribly bored. Like, Star Wars was a western in space. It’s actually, it turns out the ideas that tend to the best are the ideas that are familiar enough to be comfortable but yet still novel enough to be interesting.

And so the creative curve is this relationship between familiarity and preference which basically shows this, this sort of increase where the ideas that tend to take out and quickly jump into popularity are the ideas that have a blend of the familiarity and novelty.

Now eventually, all ideas reach a point of overexposure where they become cliché and they start to lose popularity and that’s sort of the downfall. And so, when you talk about creative genius, we’re really talking about is the fact that there are some people out there who have this really artful ability to create things that are in that sweet spot of the creative curve, where they’re familiar enough to be safe to approach but novel enough to be interesting.

Where at a population level, you know, there are ideas that are comfortable enough that people want to check it out; as more people get exposed to it, they’re more interested and they can quickly build in popularity. That’s what creative genius really is; it’s not, you know, divinity, it’s just sort of timing.

Gennaro: Right. It’s very interesting. And as you mentioned in the book, there is a so-called point of cliché. Today, with social media the belief that the more you appear, and the more you get exposure the better it is for your brand, be it personal or professional. However, as you explain there is a point of cliché from which overexposure is not a good thing. Its actually, diluting your brand; I don’t know is that’s the proper way to say it…

How does The Pointe of Cliché work?

Allen: Yes! What’s interesting is also, you’re basically this creative curve, you should look at the rate of exposure which affects peoples perception of it. Indeed, the frequency of exposure obviously sets the rate at which things move through the curve.

So social media is really interesting because since the unit of content is very small, people rate of exposure is quite high. For instance, memes on Twitter, literally change within hours or days and brands get in trouble because, you know, there’s some meme and a week later they create some rift on the meme but by then it’s actually too late.

One of the things you’re seeing I think is interesting for entrepreneurs and for marketers is, you’re starting to see this pivot away from such short-form of social media to more long-form, experiences and contents. You see brands, for example, starting to create mini-documentaries or movies, or TV shows because of this arms race within social media to stay relevant because your acting is going through that creative curve so quickly.

So a lot of people are saying “you know, screw it I’m gonna stop playing that game!”

Gennaro: Yes! There was actually an interesting Tweet from LUSH to quit its social media accounts, because, they’re going to manage the interactions with their community on the channels they have control over.

That was very interesting also from my perspective, I mean, I’m more on the content writing side as my main channel of communication is blogging. To be successful in blogging as well, you need to create great content, which is highly researched, and curated, and this requires a massive investment. The creative process is not easy at all. I mean, it’s really something that you need to master overtime!

Let me get back to you, what drove you to study creativity? I mean, what I like about you is that you are a practitioner, you have been CMO, founder of a company, and now you’re a chief strategy officer. So I guess it’s really interesting in seeing your works in the real world.

What drove you to study creativity in the first place?

Allen: Yeah, I was running my company, which in October, we merged with another company. My company worked with a lot of big brands. Those comprised names like GE, Dollar Shave Club, and the NBA. And all these sorts of iconic, you know, and modern brands. And what was interesting is that even at those brands and even more so in smaller brands, you hear people say things like, “I’m not that creative.” And I have always been a big believer in human potential and a big believer that you know, a lot of life is about nurture; not about nature.

And that was just from how I was raised. I think just, I was conditioned that way.

And so I would get really frustrated when I would hear this from people. And I Heard a lot of negative self-talk. And I started digging into it and I started, reading about it, and I found there was a lot of academic consensuses that creativity can be earned.

So I started giving a speech that was sort of the microcosm of the book. All about the myths of creative genius and how if you look at stories of people like Mozart, for example, it’s not actually the story of someone who woke up playing the piano, it’s actually the story of a little kid who had a father who applied conditional love, and made him practice three hours a day from the age of three, seven days a week. Right?

And so I started giving this speech and it really resonated and it sort of snowballed into the book where I just realized that it was a lot to unpack here and I think they’re so much potential that is limited by the things people told themselves about creativity. Like, “oh, like, you know, I’m too old to learn that skill.” I mean all this crazy stuff and the reality is we’re entering an age where creativity is the most future proof skill.

I saw something the other day, that says The number one skill employers are looking for because of age in machines…

Gennaro: Its the only thing that cannot be automated (yet)!

Allen: Yeah, exactly. And they do these experiments in AI and they’re trying to make AI make art and its kinda crappy.

Gennaro: interesting point. For someone that has read another book, which is “Crossing The Chasm,” which is a classic book for high-tech marketing. It might be easy to confuse the creative curve with the technology adoption curve. But those are two different concepts right?

What’s the main difference between the Creative Curve and the Technology Adoption Curve?

Allen: So the technology adoption curve is basically showing how something goes from 0% usage to 100% over time. And that’s especially relevant for things that are commodities or utilities, right? So think about a hard drive processor.

What I’m talking about, anything that has an element of preference. Things that rely on preferences come in and out of preference. And so the thing that’s interesting is that things go in maybe 0% popularity up to let’s call it 80%, and then go back down to zero or close enough to zero! Versus with commodities and utilities, things go to 100% and often stay at 100% until something completely replaces it.

And so that’s the big nuance or difference.

Gennaro: Nice, so there is also another misconception business which is about the first mover advantage. In your boo,k there’s an interesting case that you mentioned which is about the first mover in the social media space. Which was not Facebook, even though many people think it was Facebook and actually how they disappeared. And you have a sort of theory?

Why did Facebook succeed even though it was not the first mover?

Allen: So, I think this is so important. I think entrepreneurs make this mistake, all the time. And that’s the mistake of thinking that the best features win. Or the highest quality features or the most advanced features win. That’s not true. The companies that win, have the right features at the right time.

Let me explain what I mean. In the book, I give you an example of CampusNetwork versus Facebook. So CampusNetwork was a social media network that launched a month before Facebook at Colombia University, another Ivy League school. It also went viral on campus, became hugely popular.

The founders also took off from school to try and scale, and they were very smart and capable. And for a while, you look back at the articles from 2004, it was sort of framed as this war on campuses between CampusNetwork and Facebook (you can read the article here: “is there room for more than one?”) on who would have won each campus.

That was the big thing. And what interesting is that CampusNetwork was actually more advanced. It actually had more features; it had things like photos, activity feed, news feed, groups. All these things that would come into Facebook much, much later, Campus Network had. But, here’s what’s interesting, the audience wasn’t ready for that.

Part of why Facebook won is that Facebook was simpler. So, in 2004 we were just making this transition from using screen names and pseudonyms online, this idea of using your first name, which at the time was crazy, right? That was the jump people were making, that was the jump people were comfortable with.

They weren’t yet comfortable with the idea of broadcasting all of their activity with everyone constantly. Like, now, we sort of assume that’s like it has always been. And so Facebook was the right idea at the right time. It was the right features for the right audience.

So often times entrepreneurs, because we’re early adopters because we’re product obsessed, we sort of say, this is the product with the best features, this is what people want. And often, people actually just want simpler features. Features that are familiar enough to be safe and approachable, but yet have a novel twist and have something intriguing that they want to check out and explore more.

Gennaro: I know this process because I also work in a tech company and its very easy to get in love with features or products rather than understanding what features people are used to or actually are using within your product. Also, when it comes to business modeling, creativity is very important because you need to be able to mix all the pieces together with the right timing.

Do you have any kind of preference when it comes to business modeling?

Allen: Yes, one of the things that I like to focus a lot on is the interactive aspect of creativity, and we have this image of creativity as a writer goes to the writing cabin, six weeks later comes out, a finished novel, boom. In reality, the majority of highly successful creatives are very, very interactive. And that’s because they realize that their job is to create an experience for the audience, they don’t actually create for themselves.

That’s something that people who are not that successful at creativity say. Actually, if you look at Andy Warhol’s interviews or all this stuff they’re created for an audience, that interaction, that audience-artist interaction, that’s what’s really interesting to them. And so as a result, they know that, and they try and get feedback from their audience early and often in the process. Right, so that could be an example.

Think about a standup comedian, you know standup comedians, by the time that they are doing their Comedy Central special, or whatever, they have for years been working out those jokes and mic nights and open mic nights at small clubs. This is why big comedians go to small comedy clubs to try out jokes because there’s this sort of iterative element of working through the joke, getting it to that perfect place where the audience likes it, right? It’s not about you the creator, it’s about the audience.

So I think when it comes to business models, the thing I’d say is how can you incorporate audience feedback, early and often. Cause otherwise, you’re just creating for an audience of one and that not a good market.

Gennaro: absolutely I totally agree. In order for a product to work, even months before the product is ready, you need to gather your audience feedback.

Who is your favorite business person?

Allen: my favorite business book is, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz. He does the best job I think of talking about entrepreneurs in a very practical way. He has a chapter on how do you fire your friends. Like, which is a real problem when you’re running a startup. I’d say, he’s definitely probably, the most influential business person for me right now. I reread his book every six months. And I think it just should be mandatory reading for anyone who’s trying to build a company.

Gennaro:

Do you have any other suggested reading?

Allen: a great compliment to my book is Ed Canellas book, “Creativity Ink” which is all about Pixar, and so there’s a chapter in my book about Ben and Jerry’s, and there’s a lot of parallels to what Ben and Jerry’s does in innovation cycle and what Pixar does and I think if you read both books, you have sort of a framework. You know the short version of what Pixar does is so interesting is their product is not actually movies. Their product is their creative process, that’s the thing they iterate. That’s the thing they innovate on and that sort of mindset. I think it is interesting and so that’s definitely a good pick up if you’re interested in space.

Gennaro: interesting! Thank you very much. Anyone should be reading your book, The Creative Curve, as it makes you understand the real nature of creativity.

So thank you for having joined us, Allen!

You can connect with Allen on LinkedIn.

Allen: Thanks for having me!

Suggested reading: The Creative Curve by Allen Gannett

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Other suggested business readings by Allen Gannett:

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace

Additional curated business resources from the blog:

The post Inside The Creative Curve With Allen Gannett [Interview] appeared first on FourWeekMBA.

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Published on April 12, 2019 13:56

April 9, 2019

The Economics Of The Amazon Seller Business In A Nutshell

Amazon Marketplace is the world’s biggest online retailer, with sales greater than the eCommerce sales of entire countries. Marketplace Pulse estimates that there are over five million sellers on the Amazon marketplace, with over two million on Amazon.com alone.

Amazon had enviable sales of over $232.8 bn in 2018 just from its product sales, with over 50% of sales coming from third-party vendors.

The Amazon-Seller ecosystem:

SimilarWeb states that Amazon currently sees monthly traffic upwards of 2.5 billion visits, mainly due to the broad variety of products on offer.

With multiple products being offered under all categories by different vendors at a range of price points, the customer can research products, compare prices, read reviews and purchase from a single platform.

Hence, it is critical for Amazon to have an exhaustive list of categories and vendors to bring in this variety.

On the other hand, it is very beneficial for sellers to list their products on Amazon. With customers using Amazon as the default ‘product search engine’, it gets sellers heightened visibility and access to a large customer base.

Listing on Amazon involves lower overhead costs than one’s own platform since Amazon takes care of traffic, order management, payment, and customer support.

Sellers can participate in the ‘Fulfilled By Amazon’ program, store their products at Amazon’s fulfillment centers and Amazon additionally manages logistics, shipping and returns on behalf of the seller.

This gives the added advantage of demand shaping since products from FBA sellers qualify for Two Day and Free Shipping for Prime customers, who on average spend twice as much as non-Prime customers, at no additional cost to the seller.

In exchange for services offered, Amazon charges a commission on each sale, called referral fee. The commission varies from 6% to 20%, depending on the category, with the average vendor paying around 15% referral fee on each sale.

If the product falls under the media category (books, music, software, etc.), there is an additional closing fee to be paid on top of the referral fee.

High volume sellers (>40 products sold/ month) on Amazon must pay a monthly fee to qualify as a Pro Merchant account and unlock further benefits. For FBA sellers, Amazon charges the cost of storage and shipping on products sold.

Risks with the Amazon Seller model:

There are a few cons to selling exclusively on Amazon:

High competition:

With a vast number of sellers selling the same product, there is very low differentiation in some categories, and hence, the order in which products are listed on a page becomes a significant driver of sales.

Amazon uses its proprietary A9 algorithm to come up with the ranking order to provide the most relevant, optimized listings to customers at the top.

While there are some obvious variables like number and kind of reviews, average rating, product description and quality of images that can influence the rank order, most of this algorithm is still a black box to sellers. Hence, a drop in listing position can lead to a sudden decline in order volumes.

Demand forecasting:

With FBA sellers getting an edge over others, it becomes imperative for them to do accurate demand forecasting and stock the right number of units at fulfillment centers.

If demand is under-projected, sellers lose potential sales and may also lose money by advertising and paying for the Buy Box on Amazon for a stocked-out product.

If demand is over-projected, the seller not only loses money on unsold inventory but also must pay Amazon for storage and shipping charges for getting the products returned.

Hence, it is best to list only products with predictable, long term demand and returning customers on Amazon. Seasonal products, have a short shelf life or are short-term fads like the fidget spinner would require accurate demand projections.

Good products to list are ones with consistent demand, large target customer base and reflective of market trends.

A backlash from new features:

To improve customer-centricity, Amazon keeps introducing new features, which can sometimes have negative consequences for smaller sellers.

One such example is Project Zero, which aims to root out counterfeit products on Amazon. This allows brands to directly remove counterfeit items from their stores without going through Amazon. Using this data in machine learning.

Amazon then auto-flags and removes any item that its algorithm identifies as counterfeit. With only big brands being given access to such new features.

There is a high likelihood of legitimate products from smaller vendors getting erroneously flagged as counterfeit and dropped from the platform. Such issues can result in enormous losses for sellers.

Price parity:

Lower prices tend to drive higher sales, and products/ sellers with higher sales rank higher on the listing. However, with eCommerce retail being a low-margin business, there is little scope for a price reduction.

This makes it especially difficult for small sellers with an undifferentiated product to compete with institutional sellers.

To counteract pricing pressure, sellers may make use of the following strategies:

Branding:

Instead of being exclusively available on Amazon, sellers should invest in their own websites and create a brand presence outside as well. This will help create higher brand recall, and customers on Amazon will search not just for the product category but for the brand-category combination.

Such high intent customers are also less price sensitive, leading to good returns for the seller.

Customer Relationship Management:

Every brand should invest in increasing the average LifeTime Value (LTV) of its customers. LTV is the overall value that a customer brings to a seller over an extended period.

There are simple ways to .

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Published on April 09, 2019 11:11

April 8, 2019

Apple Value Proposition In A Nutshell

Apple is a tech giant, and as such, it encompasses a set of value propositions that make Apple‘s brand recognized, among consumers. The three fundamental value propositions of Apple‘s brand leverages on the “Think Different” motto; reliable tech devices for mass markets; and in 2019, Apple also started to emphasize more and more about privacy to differentiate from other tech giants.

Background story

Interesting question:

What is Apple’s value proposition? What do they really sell?

Apple is maybe the brand that is the most frequently mentioned by marketers. For many, it is a live case study.

And the truth is that Apple’s value proposition has changed a lot over the last few years.

As the author of the recently-published innovation book, The Value Mix, I’ve designed and gathered a range of tools that product managers and entrepreneurs can use to create new products and services.

In this article, I want to focus on the value proposition of Apple and how it has changed over time.

Many people see Apple as being the inventor of the iPhone. But the brand has more to offer.

Value Proposition n°1: “Think different”

Apple started to build a name for itself when Steve Jobs released one of the most famous TV ads, Apple’s Think different.

At the time, Apple was selling the MacIntosh, a simple personal computer.

It positioned itself as the alternative to the status quo led by IBM.

The ad itself was a response to IBM’s slogan: “Think.”

Apple was speaking to creatives–the people who want to think differently. For years, the brand followed through. It gained traction among professional designers and movie makers. Every advertising agency was equipped with Apple products.

Obviously, the tech and its software were good. But it wasn’t just about the technology.

Apple was selling something else:

A signal that if you were using Apple products, you were part of the cool kids. This is why every advertising agency had to have an Apple computer. It was a signal they were sending to their clients (we’re creatives and have cool ideas) as well as their employees (here’s a cool place for work).

In many cases, it’s also interesting to define your audience by who you aren’t targeting. In the case of Apple, they weren’t interested in the laggards.

At this time you would never see an Apple product in an investment bank or a law firm. These people stand for serious and old-fashion. IBM was perfect for them.

Value Proposition n°2: Tech that works

The releases of the iPod and iPhone were a tipping point for Apple.

The brand moved from appealing to Early Adopters to addressing the mass market. At this time, we started seeing more and more people adopting Apple products. And in many cases, the iPod and iPhone became entry products to sell more laptops.

Apple started standing for something else.

It wasn’t about being and thinking different. It became about choosing technology that would just work.

Apple was just a better alternative to Microsoft + Intel (for laptops) and Samsung or HTC (for smartphones).

Yes. By choosing Apple, you chose less customization. But what you were saying about yourself was that you didn’t care about the freedom to set up your phone or laptop. You just wanted something that worked.

This really fits with Apple’s recent release of its mission statement:

The Company is committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software and services.

It’s all about providing a seamless experience, i.e., a technology that works.

Value Proposition n°3: Your privacy is safe with us

Over the last couple of years, we’ve become more knowledgeable about what happens to our data.

Many consumers are now worried about the amount of data that Facebook, Amazon, and Google have about them.

And Apple now aspires to be a safer alternative.

They demonstrated that during the CES 2019 with a massive ad displayed in Las Vegas and the apple.com/privacy webpage.

[image error]

As Ben Evans put it:

“The old Apple promise was that you don’t have to worry if the tech works. The new promise is you don’t have to worry if the tech is scamming you.”

Apple’s main products today are the iPhone and iPad.

They make most of their money when you subscribe to one of their services (such as iCloud or the new Apple News), buy a new piece of hardware, or download a paid app.

They want to create a safe, reassuring ecosystem that makes users want to remain part of it. Now that Apple has a more significant market share, they focus on growing their customer share.

So today, Apple’s most recent value proposition seemed to be geared towards privacy protection and being part of a safe ecosystem.

Recommended reading:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The Value Mix: Create Meaningful Products and Services for Your Audience by Guerric de Ternay
Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level by Leander Kahney
Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products by Leander Kahney

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Published on April 08, 2019 11:33

What Is Influencer Marketing And Why It Matters

Influencer marketing is a tactic that allows companies to leverage industry influencers to amplify their brands primarily through social media channels.

A glance at the influencer marketing landscape

The landscape of digital marketing is ever changing. One cannot solely rely upon the typical marketing tactics and hope for inflated brand visibility online. It’s not like they are not working anymore. They work but to cut the clutter of growing competition; you need something with a little extra power.

When marketers are executing a new procedure every day, you need a rock-solid hack that can skyrocket your business sales in the shortest period.

Chances are, Influencer marketing can be your next growth strategy. In a study by Tomoson, influencer marketing is ranked first as the most promising customer acquisition method leaving behind everything from organic search, paid search to email marketing.

So if this is something you’ve never heard before (which we suppose is very rare), then sit tight, you are about to explore a very effective marketing strategy here. Let’s get started.

What is Influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is for sure one of those terms where the name explains itself. So to understand this, let’s break the term first and define “influencers.”

Influencers are no one but the people with a vast online audience. They have the power to convince their followers, subscribers, fans, customers, etc. into purchasing or learning more about a specific product or service.

So “Influencer marketing is getting in touch with your industry influencers to amplify your brand’s message and project it to your targeted audience.”

Your audience might be following these influencers over social media or on Youtube. They look for their reviews, tips, and trends to make a purchase decision.

So you can see, it’s working. Influence marketing is most effective when brands want to target genuine customers. Influencer marketing currently amounts to anywhere between $10-15 million in the market value.

Wondering, how can you get it on the trend of influencer marketing?

The first step towards a successful influencer marketing campaign is to approach the right influencer of the industry. That means finding the one who has a good reputation in your niche along with having a huge audience base.

Obviously, you don’t want to work with an influencer for your financial business who always promotes beauty products. Relevancy is key everywhere.

So who are these influencers?

For most people, influencers directly refer to some top celebrity figures. But influencers don’t necessarily need to be celebrities. They can be anyone- a lifestyle follower, a comedian, a blogger or even an industry expert.

But before beginning your search for influencers, you need to make sure what end motives you want to perform from your influencer marketing campaign. For example, an influencer who is having a highly engaged audience on his blog won’t benefit you if you want an active audience on Instagram(just an example).

There are mainly five types of influencers:

Blogging Influencers:

Social Media Influencers

Media Influencers

Event Influencers

Discussion Influencers

Now let’s see what can you ask these influencers to do for your branding.

How can influencers help you increase your brand visibility?

The sky is the only limit when it comes to any vertical of marketing. This is also true in the case of influencer marketing. You can ask your influencers to market your products in a variety of ways depending upon your end goals.

The most common means by which an influencer can help your marketing campaigns are:

You can ask an influencer to add a link of your product, service or offer on their website. It can be in any form. They can add a text link in their blog post or can add an image link on their website as a banner on the sidebar.
You can ask influencers to promote your product at an event they are going to attend. Of course, how they do it totally depends upon the type of event. They can give a short intro about your service in their speaking sessions, can wear your brand logo in the form of caps, T-shirts, etc., or can speak to your potential customers face to face.
You can ask influencers to mention your brand in their videos or podcasts in a way that people want to explore more.
The influencer can create a social media post and share it on their official platforms. The type of post can vary depending upon the channel. For example, they can tweet about their experience with your service, they can provide a review of your product on Youtube, and if nothing justifies your service, they can simply share an image on Facebook or Instagram.
You can ask them to promote you in their marketplace.

In short, there are plenty of ways an influencer can benefit your business. Ultimately, it all boils down to three prime motives a business might have. That is:

Boosts sales
Solidifies Brand Awareness
Saves Money

Probably the last thing that you might want to know in this guide is how to connect with these influencers?

How to connect with influencers?

Once you have an active list of influencers in your hand, the next thing that comes is to approach and connect them. Here are some of the simplest ways you can opt for, let’s have a look:

Do your research

Influencers are always interacting with their audience. They keep sharing the updates about their recent collaborations and the type of partnerships they are particularly interested in. So keep a hawk eye on their daily updates and dig around the people who are in general contacts with them.

Prepare a clear pitch

You have to make them fall for your products so that they can stand behind it and promote it. That means you need a clear pitch which should be convincing enough. Make up your mind for what you want in return for a collaboration.

Do you want them to write a review, to make a video, to create a social media post or to mention your product in something they are already doing? Have your ideas prepared but be open to their suggestions as well.

Align it with your other marketing programs

When you are ready to run an influencer marketing campaign, it is always better to offer something more with it. You can align your discount or sale offers in your influencer marketing plan and entice your targeted audience.

Marketing is all about collaboration these days, and Influencer marketing is an effective way of doing it right.

Other resources

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Published on April 08, 2019 04:58

April 5, 2019

Step-by-Step Guide On How to Start a Business

I’ve devoted years of my life putting together all the materials and resources that have helped me along the way of becoming a digital entrepreneur and head of business development for a tech startup.

I thought it just made sense to document those things along the way so that I could form a more in-depth understanding by writing about it, and you, my reader, could gain insights and expertise, without spending hours and hours of research.

In this post, I’m assembling all the resources you need to get going with a business if you’re ready to leap becoming a digital entrepreneur. I suggest there are four key areas when starting your business, which we’ll group under the acronym of MOVE, standing for:

Mindset
Operations
Velocity (momentum)
and Execution

Each of those areas needs to be mastered to design, launch, and iterate a successful business. This isn’t a size fits all model, neither the only one possible. But it is a model that can help you.

Let’s look at each of them.

Mindset

When starting a business, in particular, a digital business, you should have a 10X mindset. The reason is you might be starting a venture in a competitive space; none knows your brand, you might be missing the budget to grow it steadily.

Thus, you need to think and act smart. You can’t rely on conventional wisdom, or already walked paths. While business best practices will be your baseline, you will need to have a growth mindset, where each action you take needs to be measured and deemed successful if it gives you massive traction.

Therefore, you’ll only select those strategies and tactics that will give you a competitive edge, and that enable fast pace growth. For that matter, you need to consult the resource below:

Moonshot Thinking: When Growth Marketing Becomes All About The 10X Rule

Operations

In a digital business, setting up the operations doesn’t necessarily mean to build up physical facilities. Instead, that is about drafting a business model that will allow you to be competitive in the marketplace.

This process isn’t a one-time thing. Indeed, before your business model would take off, you’ll need to iterate it over and over again.

When will your business model be competitive? Primarily when it has reached:

Recurring income
Flywheel effects
And fat margins

In short, the right business model will be able to have a built-in monetization strategy that generates income, based on repeatable processes, that are sustainable in the long run.

Also, your business model will need to leverage on a flywheel effect, where monetization powers up your brand, rather than diluting it. In other words, when you start making money, that monetization needs to reinforce your brand, so that more people will want to deal with your company.

As your brand gains momentum, you can leverage it to enjoy higher and higher margins. When you enjoy fat margins (there isn’t a fixed percentage, but it depends on the industry and competition), that’s when you’ve mastered the operational part.

In general, the more the gap between revenues and costs increases (revenues grow faster than costs), the more you’re on the right path to building a long-term competitive advantage.

For that matter, you’ll need a few resources. First of all, you can start from a simple one-page business plan:

How to Write a One-Page Business Plan

This business plan will help you to come up with a business model to test in the marketplace:

30 Successful Types of Business Models You Need to Know

You can use several tools to draft your business model:

Value proposition canvas
Business model canvas
Lean startup canvas
Blitzscaling canvas
Business model navigator
FourWeekMBA business model framework
Value Mix

You can use any of those tools, or combine the approaches from each of them to draft and thinker on your business model.

In this phase, what matters is to come up with a business and marketing strategy that allows you to test and iterate your business model, quickly. For that matter you can refer to the resource below:

Business Strategy Guide

It is important to remark that strategy isn’t about getting bogged down in theories and dozens of pages of plans. You need a simple checklist of what to do next.

If you’re spending more than 10-20% of your time, in general, theorizing, you might be wasting your time. Indeed, a good chunk of it will be spent in executing, gathering feedback, seeing what works and what doesn’t and go back to tweaking your business model, until it starts to fit the market.

Tools like the bullseye framework used by DuckDuckGo founder and the lean startup methodology are great companions in this phase. The most important thing is that you need to gain velocity and momentum!

Velocity and Momentum

At this stage, before you go to the execution stage, it is crucial you know what distribution channels you can tap into. For that matter, you need to prioritize on the acquisition or growth channel that might work best, based on the strategy you picked.

Instead of trying to tap into all the possible distribution channels, mastering one, in the short run is probably the most effective strategy in many cases.

For that matter you need to understand whether you might want to leverage on business development, growth marketing, traditional sales, and marketing or else:

The Complete Guide To Business Development

SEO Hacking Guide

Growth Marketing Guide

Marketing vs. Sales

Execution

When you start executing, that is when you will be able to gather critical feedback to understand whether or not you’re moving in the right direction. This is the most essential part of the MOVE model.

In this phase, you need to gather feedback on several areas:

Is my business gaining momentum? Remember, momentum will be judged on unconventional, two-fold, or 10X growth basis
Does the market like my business model? You can decide that by growth or profitability or both
How effective is my strategy? Is the real world validating it or do I need to go back and tweak my business model?
What distribution channel is the most effective one? You need to double down on what’s working
Am I spending too much time theorizing? If so, go back to the execution phase to gather more feedback from the marketplace!

Key takeaway

When you start moving, you also need to make sure you’re going in the right direction. That is why, in the execution phase, you need to reconsider whether what you’re doing is helping you achieve the 10X growth you were looking for at the beginning of the MOVE model.

Or whether your business model generates growing margins. Or yet, whether you need to leverage network effects to enhance growth. Moving back and forth in the MOVE model might help you gain traction to generate a long-term competitive advantage!

Key resources:

Moonshot Thinking: When Growth Marketing Becomes All About The 10X Rule
How to Write a One-Page Business Plan
30 Successful Types of Business Models You Need to Know
Value proposition canvas
Business model canvas
Lean startup canvas
Blitzscaling canvas
Business model navigator
FourWeekMBA business model framework
Value Mix
The Complete Guide To Business Development
SEO Hacking Guide
Growth Marketing Guide
Marketing vs. Sales
Business Strategy Guide

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Published on April 05, 2019 17:23

April 4, 2019

What Is The AIDA Model And Why It Matters

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. This is a model which is used in marketing to describe the potential journey a customer might go through, before purchasing a product or service.

The background story of the AIDA model
In the late 1800s, an advertising man, E. St. Elmo Lewis explained:

The mission of an advertisement is to attract a reader, so that he will look at the advertisement and start to read it; then to interest him, so that he will continue to read it; then to convince him, so that when he has read it he will believe it. If an advertisement contains these three qualities of success, it is a successful
advertisement.

From this first draft, other advertising pioneers, from Joseph Addison Richards to Fred Macey, Frank Hutchinson Dukesmith and others.

Indeed if today in sales we like to call it a funnel, and it looks something like that:
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Back then it was called a scale, and it seemed something like that:
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Source: dragon360.com

Until the acronym AIDA was finally used in 1921, in a publication called Printers Ink, wherein “How to Write a Sales-Making Letter” by C.P. Russell explained:

An easy way to remember this formula is to call in the “law of association,” which is the old reliable among memory aids. It is to be noted that, reading downward, the first letters of these words spell the opera “Aida.” When you start a letter, then, say “Aida” to yourself and you won’t go far wrong, at least as far as the form of your letter is concerned.

The message was clear. For an advertising message to work out, it had to “lift” a certain weight of the potential customer’s attention and interest before it could become a sale.
Therefore, the AIDA model was supposed to give a clear framework to advertisers on how to carry the interest of a potential customer to become a sale.
Thus, the AIDA model was the progenitor of the sales funnel.
What makes up a basic AIDA model? Primarily four phases:

Attention
Interest
Desire
Action

Let’s look at each of them.

Attention

Since the dome of mass media, advertisers have fought for the conquest of a scarce asset: people’s attention. Any good salesperson knows this is the first step to take before it would be even possible to introduce the perspective of a sale.

Advertisers first, and marketers, later on, have learned how to grab the attention of potential customers, before they could be presented with the option of completing a sale.

Interest

In the AIDA model, the second step or phase is interest. A salesperson knows that before a sale could be closed, attention must be kept, by understanding what motivates the other part. Maintaining the level of interest in the prospect is another critical step in the AIDA model.

Desire

Once attention is captured, and interest is maintained, the salesperson has to generate excitement. This phase is critical, as the salesperson has to be able to bridge the gap between action and interest before it could close a deal.

Action

That is when the transaction gets completed, and the sale happens. The sales people can trigger action by using several psychological levers, like scarcity, price or else.

Does AIDA still make sense today?

The problem with the AIDA model is that it assumes we live in a linear world, where people take deliberate steps before completing a transaction.

This is true for all types of models that academic or practitioners use. However, the world is way more unpredictable, and the path people take before they become customers is hard to define in most cases.

On the other hand, a model should have a specific function – I argue – which is allowing focus to whoever is using it. In short, practitioners should never fool himself to believe that the world follows the model she uses.

But, she should use an AIDA model, to focus the effort on specific actions, to improve efficacy. In addition, the AIDA model might be not only unrealistic in many circumstances but also not appropriate for certain forms of selling.

For instance, if you take a business model like SaaS or software as a service or a subscription-based model, those need to leverage on a continuous engagement of its customers or users, which implies a virtuous cycle or flywheel.

This brings us to the post-AIDA models.

The post-AIDA models

To overcome some of the significant drawbacks of the AIDA model (such as not taking into account what happens after the sale) a few variations of the AIDA model have sprouted up.

Some of them are the AIDCAS (where satisfaction and confidence are added to the AIDA MODEL); or the CAB (cognition, affect and behavior) Model which is the psychological equivalent of the AIDA model.

Whatever sales model you decide to pick, it is essential to remark that they help salespeople and marketers to focus their effort!

Other resources:

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Published on April 04, 2019 12:17

April 3, 2019

Online MBA Courses For 2019

An MBA can still be a valuable program for people that want to progress their business career. And for aspiring entrepreneurs. However, there are some fundamental aspects of MBA programs that make them too risky for today’s standards.

As the business world changes at a faster and faster pace, the opportunity cost associated with enrolling in an MBA program has become too high for many people to bear.

That is also why there seems to be a sharp decline in interests for this program:

[image error]

MBA Program Interest Over Time According to Google Trends

By looking at the data related to MBA enrollments, it seems that in 2018, most top business schools experienced a sharp decline:

[image error]

What’s happening?

A good chunk of this sharp decline seems to be related to a drop in international applications. As reported on Poets & Quants part of the fall is due to less friendly immigration policies and the political rhetoric of the Trump administration.

However, this is only part of the story – I argue. Indeed, today MBA programs have become too risky for a few reasons:

Length: being out of the job market for over two years has become a time range no longer acceptable in today’s fast-moving job market
Cost: fewer and fewer people can afford dozens of thousands of dollars to enroll in an MBA program
Outdated business education: as the business world moves faster, business schools might fall behind and teach things that have become pretty much worthless in the real business world

The rise of e-learning platforms

As those issues have become more and more incumbent, we have also assisted in the last two decades to the increase of e-learning platforms that provide quality business content, that before could be hardly found.

For instance, a company like Lynda, founded in 1995, managed to put together a rich library of business educational content.

To have a bit of context on the market value of those platforms, Lynda.com was acquired by LinkedIn, back in 2015, for $1.5 billion. LinkedIn itself was acquired by Microsoft, in 2016, for $26.2 billion.

Part of that valuation was undoubtedly driven by the presence of this e-learning platform, which made it LinkedIn overall business model way more valuable to Microsoft.

[image error]

Another e-learning platform, Udemy, received over $173 million in funding, which is competing with other e-learning platforms, like Coursera, which secured over $210 million in funding. And Udacity, which received over $160 million.

Opposite to the traditional MBA program, those platforms attract practitioners, as well as academics willing to make an extra buck while providing education, with a practical approach. In other words, those platforms are more focused on offering content that is highly tied to the real business world.

Indeed, on a platform like Udemy, promising topics are usually tied to programming languages, for which it is straightforward to find professional career opportunities:

[image error]

Data from Udemy Marketplace Insights (March 2019)

Has the way people conceive business education changed?

There is no doubt that we’ve assisted to a massive switch to the way that business education is conceived. That hasn’t happened overnight. However, it has changed quickly in the last two decades, with the rise of digital businesses.

Indeed, where a business education in the 1980-90s was the key to be trained to become a “corporate person.” However, while back then being a corporate person made sense as the career switch weren’t so frequent.

Nowadays people change jobs more and more frequently. And phenomena like “Job-hopping” (spending less than two years in a position) are on the rise. There also seems to be a belief that changing jobs might affect positively how much money people are making:

In your experience, is switching jobs. rather than staying put, a better way to make more money? https://t.co/NeXwHAt9IC

— NBCNewsBETTER (@NBCNewsBETTER) April 24, 2018

Whether this is true or not, as people follow the money, or at least they think, this sudden career changes might also lead to a lack of leadership in the business field. Indeed, trust and leadership are two critical elements of the business world.

And apparently according to a survey conducted in 2017 there is mismatch and communication breakdown, between managers and employees.

Where 80% of managers claim to be transparent in their direct reports. Where employees instead only 55% of employees perceive that managers have been transparent in their reporting.

New digital companies and Startups require years before they could build a brand, or before they could really find a product-market fit. This requires strong leadership among business people.

Is an MBA still worth the investment?

According to the Financial Times, an MBA program still gives a substantial uplift in the base salary of people attending it. At the same time, tuition costs have also increased substantially. Financial Times reports that “in 2018, almost two-thirds of alumni cohorts more than doubled their salaries.”

However, if this is true for top schools, can we say the same for other, less prestigious schools? Yes and no. Thus, you want to make sure that for your business education you either prioritize on networking, or you go all in with education and knowledge.

If you’re looking for the latter, then an online MBA might be the most viable option!

We’ve put together a list, which will be updated by time to time comprising institutions that might offer the online MBA as an option. This list is not definitive, it will be updated constantly, so feel free to send us your suggestion if you want us to enrich it.

SchoolTuitionLenghtAverage base salary
UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA WARRINGTON COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$30,000 and $49,999two-year program$100,863UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST ISENBERG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT$30,000-$49,99939-credit hour$78,300INDIANA UNIVERSITY KELLEY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$50,000 and $99,99951-credit hour$100,874NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY POOLE COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT30,000 and $49,99921 months$80,368NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY D'AMORE-MCKIM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$50,000 and $99,99950-credit$87,773ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY W.P. CAREY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$50,000 and $99,99960-credit hour, 21-month program$98,633UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS NAVEEN JINDAL SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT$30,000 to $49,99953-credit hour$87,522UNIVERSITY OF UTAH DAVID ECCLES SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$50,000 to $99,99948-credit$88,143LEHIGH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS$30,000 to $49,999 36-credit hour , 24 and 72 months$95,333SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY MARTIN J. WHITMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT$50,000 and $99,99954-credit hour$67,589UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ALFRED LERNER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS & ECONOMICS$30,000 and $49,99944-credit hour$92,000FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$30,000 to $49,99942-credit hour$55,000COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$30,000 and $49,99921 months, 42-credit hour $49,942UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ELLER COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT$30,000 to $49,99914 months-up to five years, 45-credit hour$82,315DREXEL UNIVERSITY BENNETT S. LEBOW COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$50,000 and $99,999four 10-week quarters each year$65,625UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI CARL H. LINDNER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$30,000-$49,99938-credit hourUNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA-LINCOLN COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$30,000 and $49,99948-credit hourUNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA MARSHALL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$50,000 and $99,99951-credit hour$118,110BABSON COLLEGE F.W. OLIN GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$50,000 and $99,999$78,123GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$100000+55.5-credit hour$87,548UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA BEACOM SCHOOL OF BUSINESS$14,99933-credit hour,$45,550AUBURN UNIVERSITY RAYMOND J. HARBERT COLLEGE OF BUSINESS$30,000 and $49,99939-credit hour$61,675

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Published on April 03, 2019 10:44

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