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How Journalism, Poetry and BJJ can make you a Successful Content Marketer with Cameron Conaway

I met Cameron Conaway at the TNW conference in Amsterdam back in May 2017. I was there with the WordLift team and when I saw Cameron showing up at the booth I was glad as I had been following him for more than a year. In fact, Cameron is among the most influential people in content marketing. Yet before being a Content Marketer, Camerons is a poet, BJJ/MMA fighter and a journalist.

Those things are what I believe made Cameron a successful Content Marketer. That is why I wanted to hear from him how those things affected his career and life.

How did BJJ, poetry, and journalism shape your mindset?
On BJJ:

The historic beauty of BJJ rests not with its ability to allow a smaller man to maim a larger man, but with its ability to allow any man of any size to survive.

I was a small boy growing up in an abusive household, wanting but unable to protect myself, my mother, and my sister. So I often quietly but desperately wrestled with concepts of power and powerlessness. Why do some use their power to push others down, while others use it to empower others? How could I get it or, better yet, take it away from my father?

BJJ, which I first began studying 20 years ago, taught me that power can be gentle, beautiful, a force for good. It gave me a confidence in my small body and fear-driven mind that I’d never known. But what it also gave me was a sense of community. BJJ, perhaps more than any martial art, is about community.

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Cameron with BJJ legend Renzo Gracie

The BJJ mindset is one of continuous learning, of openness and trust in others even when it means being vulnerable, and of understanding how most lessons arise in the infinite space between winning and losing.

On Poetry:

Poetry taught me to observe rather than see, to listen rather than hear. This seems a minor difference in words, but the intentional living of these differences over the last 15 years has impacted my life in ways I understand and will never be able to.

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Conaway speaking about poetry at Penn State Altoona

My first poetry teacher was Lee Peterson. One particular exercise of hers that helped me understand perspective was when she asked our class to go outside, find a tree, and write for 60 seconds about it. Then she asked us to take three steps closer to the tree and repeat the exercise. Then three more and write again. Eventually, I’d gone from writing about a towering tree to writing about the ants crawling up the bark—something I wouldn’t have been able to observe at first.

It blew my mind and forced me to confront the fact that I lacked that kind of perspective in every aspect of my life. I’ve radically pursued multiple perspectives ever since.

On Journalism:

Journalism has fused many of my learnings from BJJ and poetry. BJJ’s lesson about power being a force for good became real and global in my work as a journalist. And my work as a journalist simply couldn’t have existed without those observation and listening skills that I picked up in poetry.

 

My focus as a journalist has been on issues of human rights and social justice—from covering the Rohingya genocide in Burma and the sex trafficking of boys in Thailand to inspiring new education models in Ethiopia and a promising but relatively unknown malaria vaccine here in the U.S. Each experience sunk the lessons of BJJ and poetry deeper into my bones.

How is BJJ useful for content marketing?

BJJ and content marketing are aligned, in my eyes, because they’re both about giving to others.

When I stepped onto the mat it wasn’t just about the Gatorade cliche of “just do it.” It was about bringing my best because I deserved to learn and because my sparring partner deserved to learn. It’s a difficult concept for non-BJJ players to grasp—they see what looks to be violent and thinks it’s a dog-eat-dog free-for-all.

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Conaway’s photoshoot for The Penn Stater Magazine

BJJ is a dance where every move made by your partner is their lesson to you and vice versa.

Content marketers too often forget that giving to others is the essential component. And I don’t just mean giving to potential consumers of your content. A big part of content marketing is giving to your team by unleashing the buried brilliance of your teammates. When I look back on my content marketing career, I’m most proud of those times when I helped my teammates shine.

Has poetry improved your content marketing?

For sure. Especially in copywriting.

Very few of today’s content marketers get to focus purely on one thing. Most are part of lean and scrappy teams, and they need to pitch in on all aspects of copy—from landing pages and emails to brochures and company swag. All of this, done right, demands lyrical concision and a sensitivity to words, both of which poetry helped me to develop over the years.

Right now I’m actually wearing a shirt from Klipfolio, a previous employer of mine, that has a copy I came up with across the back: “Data loved, loves back.”

Cameron’s online poetry class has nearly 1,000 students
How does your journalism background impact your content marketing work?

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Conaway at the Rohingya camps in Sittwe, Myanmar

At its core, I believe journalism is about providing societal value. Yes, the best of it is about speaking truth to power and uncovering truths, but fundamentally journalism is about creating a more informed citizenry.

Content marketing is the practice and process of consistently creating, distributing, analyzing, and optimizing valuable content for an audience defined by its potential to become a customer or otherwise engage in actions beneficial to a company.

So while content marketing’s end goal may not be to create a more informed citizenry, the best leaders in content marketing are guided by that same principle.

If your mindset is primary to get leads, you’re far more likely to hear crickets. You’ll have a far better chance of reaching those who have “potential to become a customer or otherwise engage in actions beneficial to a company” if your mindset is to create something of value for people—something that answers their questions and alleviates some of their pain points.

What makes a successful content marketer?

A successful content marketer can:

Assesses a company’s marketing needs;
Understand a potential customer’s challenges; and,
Create content solutions tailor-made to help both.

Because the solutions will always be different, and because this approach demands finding product/content fit, I believe content marketers should be T-shaped marketers, as Andy Crestodina put it.

This means they’re masters at one particular facet of content marketing but have a broad content marketing skill set so they have the versatility to contribute in multiple ways.

What advice would you give to an aspiring content marketer?

Create a content marketing curriculum and carve out dedicated periods of time to learn.

I’ve been part of the higher education system for many years and, for all of its flaws, I do believe in the process of dedicating time and attention to disciplined study.

The vast majority of content marketers are trying to educate you about content marketing, so if you only learn when you stumble on their advice you’ll miss the best of what’s out there and you’ll likely forget what you learned.

I once spent an entire month reading and listening to (almost) everything that content marketing mastermind Mark Schaefer ever wrote. I’d listen to his audiobooks during every minute of a commute or flight, and I’d wind each night down by reading his books and articles—yes, I printed them out!

It was a complete crash course in content marketing. And because the learning was so concentrated, the lessons stuck and I discovered the transferable skills from my journalism and poetry backgrounds.

I’m looking to do something similar in 2018 with the work of Vishal Khanna and Ardath Albee. The Content Marketing Institute named Vishal the 2015 content marketer of the year and, like me, he has an MFA in Creative Writing. And there’s a kind of practical immediacy in the wisdom of Ardath that makes me feel like she understands marketing’s evolution far more than most. I have plenty to learn from them both.

Business operations and consumer expectations are evolving rapidly, which means the content marketing industry is as well. It’s important to step back from time-to-time to not only honestly assess your skills but also to see what new skills might be required for tomorrow.

by Cameron Conaway, Director of Content Marketing at Solace

The post How Journalism, Poetry and BJJ can make you a Successful Content Marketer with Cameron Conaway appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

DuckDuckGo vs Google: Who’s the winner?

In the last months, I’ve been using both DuckDuckGo and Google as leading search engines. Which one is the best?

If you’re not familiar with DuckDuckGo, that is a search engine that focuses on privacy. In other words, while Google follows you around the web and passes the information that leaks through your IP, DuckDuckGo doesn’t.

Below you can learn more about DuckDuckGo and its story:

DuckDuckGo: The [Former] Solopreneur That Is Beating Google at Its Game

For how much I love what DuckDuckGo stands for. I’m also a daily user of both. And as such I want to compare three aspects which I believe are critical to picking the one or the other.

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Privacy vs. Tracking

The first questions that might pop to mind is: “what’s the difference between DuckDuckGo and Google in Incognito mode? “The difference is that while in Incognito Mode you will in some way avoid the so-called filter bubble, you will still be tracked by Google. Therefore, the main differentiator between DuckDuckGo vs. Google is privacy. Indeed, ever since its launch, DuckDuckGo‘s founder was looking for three things:

offer a private navigation experience
less spammy (Google ads follow you anywhere)
give more answers (at the time Google featured snippet didn’t exist yet)

In other words, if you’re looking for private navigation, DuckDuckGo is a no-brainer. Thousands of people are switching toward DuckDuckGo for that reason alone. It seems that the more people learn about how Google works and the more they look for alternatives that respect privacy. This trend can be expected to continue over time. Who’s the winner here?

DuckDuckGo 1 – Google 0 

Filter Bubble vs. Tailored Search

Another main differentiator between DuckDuckGo and Google is the navigation experience. In fact, since DuckDuckGo doesn’t track you, it can’t offer a “tailored search.” In other words, the only customization you can set up is based on localization. However, one may argue whether a tailored search is useful for the users. In fact, the sort of filter that Google applies to the search is also based on what Google thinks its right for you. On the one hand, this can lead to finding information that you will likely agree on with.

On another hand, this raises another question, “is this kind of information good for you?”In short, many believe that the web has been one of the most significant technological achievement because people can see beyond the end of their nose. Yet that is not what happens when you surf the web through Google. In fact, when you fall into Google’s filter bubble (most people aren’t even aware of that) your vision of the world instead of widening, it narrows down.It is true that from the practical standpoint what you have been looking for in the past might work as a good predictor of what you will like in the future. However, we can argue whether that is good or not.

I don’t think there is a winner here. In fact, for how much people might recognize the need to have a search engine that gives them diverse results, many in reality will opt for the one that keeps confirming what they think is right. We look for similar people and similar ideas to ours that is homophily in action.

Who’s the winner here?

DuckDuckGo 0 – Google 0 

Ideally, I’d love DuckDuckGo to win. But in reality – while I believe privacy is a good reason for people to switch – I don’t think that is the case for the filter bubble.

Localization vs Cookies

Most people believe that what’s genial about Google is the algorithm put together by its engineers. Of course, that is an incredible technological marvel. However, what I think is ingenious about Google is the business model. In fact, Google had created the most profitable advertising network ever existed. Google has an advertising network called AdWords. Businesses that enroll in AdWords bid on keywords; The bidder that pays a higher price per click will also be the one featured on that specific keyword.

On the other hand, there is another network, called AdSense that allows publishers to monetize their content. In fact, the websites that enroll in AdSense can monetize their content by showing advertising from business enrolled in AdWords based on the number of impressions on each banner. This business model is so smart that as of today it still what makes most of Google’s revenue.

Even though Google is the most successful ad network on earth, it is also a search engine that works quite well. In short, many people don’t even realize that Google is an ad network because its results are incredibly accurate. Therefore, Google managed to balance between its business model and the quality of results for its users.

That is why – I argue – the search engine from Mountain View was so wildly successful.This business model has become the so widely accepted that is hard to think of an alternative. DuckDuckGo instead, argues that what users care about isn’t a localized search.

Who’s the winner?

DuckDuckGo 0 – Google 1 

Summary and Conclusion

Google is the most used search engine in the world. It’s no surprise. In fact, besides Google‘s quality of results what makes it so unique is the business model it created. Google managed to create a win-win-win situation. Businesses win because they can bid on keywords and track their results. In the past, companies would spend tons of money on advertising that probably didn’t make them a dime.

Now they know exactly how much they make with their ads. Publishers win because they can quickly monetize their content. Of course, they get quite a little money. Yet for now, a little money seems better than nothing. Last but not least, users win because they get quality results based on the questions they input into Google’s search box.The business model worked so far.

Yet something might be disrupting the win-win-win model that Google created. First, it is true that Google ads are still convenient for businesses. Second, publishers realized that the business model based on Google ads isn’t sustainable. Third, users are getting more aware of privacy issues.

In conclusion, even if from the match DuckDuckGo vs. Google ended with a draw.

That might soon change in favor of DuckDuckGo!

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How to Use Google’s Big Data for Journalism

Big data is anywhere; you just have to know where to look. In the book “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” the author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz makes that clear.

One incredible source of big data is a website that billions of people use each day: Google. In fact, when typing something into Google’s search bar that “keyword” gets tracked. That big data is then available with a set of tools that anyone can use, to find out interesting facts.

If you’re a journalist that big data can be crucial to understanding human phenomena. Throughout this article, I’m going to answer three sociological questions by looking at the big data coming from three tools provided by Google and how you can use them to do the same.

When pizza wasn’t that popular

Among US favorite food pizza seems to one of the most loved ones. Although it’s hard to imagine one’s life without pizza, there was a time in which American people didn’t even know of the existence of that food. How do I know that?

I looked at how three favorite foods (pizza, hot dog and hamburger) evolved throughout American history through Google Ngram Viewer. That is a database of millions of books scanned by Google from 1800 up to 2008. By typing a word or phrase into Google Ngram Viewer, we can have a clue about anything.

For instance, by typing in “hot dog, hamburger, pizza” I saw how those terms were mentioned throughout the years, which also gives us a clue about their popularity. It also tells us when those words started to be mentioned, which in turn can help us assess in which decade those foods became popular, so here’s the graph with the results:

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As you can see there was a time – around the 50s – when hamburger and hot dog were more popular than pizza. Then for some reason, pizza started to become very popular.

What did happen? During the 60s much new food chains were born. Among those, Domino’s Pizza (1960), Pizza Hut (1958) and Little Caesars (1959). Is that casual all those chains were born during those years? Probably not. In fact, during the period 1890-1917 millions of Italians emigrated to the US. Also, during the 80s pizza itself became a sensation featured in Hollywood movies like when John Travolta gulps down two slices of pizza in Saturday Night Fever.

When the Facebook feed makes you unhappy turn to Google autocomplete

Social media like Facebook are powerful tools which work as amplifiers. The most powerful features of Facebook is the newsfeed. Although people seemed not to like it initially and many still criticize it, millions of people each day spend a considerable amount of time. Some estimates tell us that as of 2016 each day we spend as much as fifty minutes of our time on Facebook.

Those numbers are quite staggering. In fact, although fifty minutes might not seem that much, compared say to watch TV. It is also true that those fifty minutes might be spread across the day, and through activities with a consequent disruption in attention and focus.

However, what is most striking about the Facebook feed is the number of happy people you see there. Most pictures show how cool their last trip, adventure, and relationship are. Yet that data is worthless. Now we can prove it by looking at Google big data.

How? On Facebook you barely see people saying their relationship is unhappy, but on Google, we get an entirely different story. You can test this right now by opening Google in incognito mode and typing “my husband” or “my wife” and let Google autocomplete the search. Those suggested searches are the most frequent ones typed by people in their anonymity.

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What does this tell us? Even though people on Facebook look happy, when they turn to Google, real issues come to surface.

Therefore, if on Facebook we only see the bright side, on Google, we tell our most intimate secrets (also that a husband or wife might be cheating). Therefore, if you had doubt now big data confirms that. Facebook newsfeed is our daily dose of dopamine and Google our psychologist. What do we trust? Facebook can’t be trusted to see how people really feel and what they think. Google, in this case, can give us a better insight.

Are you the only one that thinks your life sucks?

In some way or another, you feel unique and different from any other person. That makes perfect sense. At the end of that day, you’re the one in your head. Thus, you can see what you think but not what is in others’ people head. Even though knowing what others think is not the cure for unhappiness. At times it can be useful to know you’re not the only one feeling in a certain way. In fact, some days life sucks and you might be so overwhelmed to think if there’s no hope to make it better.

You feel so sad that you don’t feel comfortable sharing it either with your dearest friends as they might judge you. Who could you trust them? The answer is in front of you on that blank page with a small search box. In fact, data from Google shows that those queries are popular.

For instance, I did quick research into Google Keyword Planner and looked at the keyword “my life is perfect” which as of November 2017 was searched 270 times. However, I also looked at “my life sucks” as of November 2017 it was searches 12,100 times: a ratio of 46 to 1 in favor of the latter (my life sucks)!

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What does this tell us? On the one hand, the social feed isn’t reliable at all as a source of understanding people’s lives. Second, we hardly manage to admit to ourselves when we’re sad and angry at life, why would we show it on Facebook? However, as soon as we know we’re doing things anonymously that is when we show how we feel about something.

Tools like the keyword planner help you find business opportunity and keywords on which to invest on. But also to understand how people think and feel. In fact, on Google, we’re incentivized, to tell the truth (at least when we search for something) because we know that none is looking at us. Those facts can be useful to dissect social phenomena, but also to drive business decisions.

Conclusion

Today big data can be used to find out what people think and feel beyond what they say they believe and feel. In other words, instead of looking at words we can look at data to see how people behave when none is looking. Rather than being something for nerds, big data is now accessible to anyone with tools like Google autocomplete, Ngram Viewer and the Keyword Planner. The limit is your creativity and what kind of questions you’re trying to answer. If you are a journalist that data can be a golden source for your next piece!

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Strtupper Lingo: The Jargon I Wish Someone Taught Me When I Joined a Startup

In any field, there is a vocabulary used by “experts” that makes them feel they belong to the same tribe. That applies, with no exception, to the startup world. In fact, startuppers have a jargon of their own which can make it very hard to keep up. That lingo rather than being something unique is just a set of terms borrowed from several disciplines. Why do experts tend to use a jargon of their own? I believe there are a few reasons for that:

the sense of belonging to the same tribe
easier to understand each other
more efficient
create hype, buzz and a set of myths that make the tribe stick together

Yes true, having a jargon I believe is useful and at times efficient. However, other times that is only a way to create hype and buzz. Compare two myths:

In the 1950s being trendy meant to be like James Dean riding his brand new bike. Today that myth has been supplanted by Mark Zuckerberg taking a Q&A with his brand new Mac Air:

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There isn’t a story better than the other. That is storytelling created ad hoc by companies (in the first case by Hollywood’s production corporations, in the latter a tech company) around an industry, which also contributes to their financial success. It is important not to forget that.

I want to show you the key concepts you have to get familiar with to avoid getting caught in the trap of believing startuppers are too smart to be understood.

Hope you enjoy it!



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Business Model

Today scaling up a startup isn’t just about the product but primarily about the Business Model. In short, a business model is a way a company monetizes over time.

How many Business Model exist? Think about two simple examples. A startup has created a software. That software can be sold for a monthly fee. This kind of business model is called “subscription-based” because to make it work you have to have customers willing to renew the subscription each month. Therefore, you have to find ways for your customers to keep their interest in the product high.

Another example is the “Freemium” business model. In other words, some companies have two versions of a product: free and paid. They use the free product as a hook to get new potential customers. Once those customers get used to the product, they make money by convincing users to become paying customers.

Why is the business model relevant at all? First, based on the business model a company will “behave in a certain way.” From the previous example, a subscription-based company with no Freemium will find right away strategies to get paying customers. Instead, a Freemium based company will focus more on funnel optimization to convert users into customers.

Second, it tells you what metrics to look at. For instance, if you have a software service with a monthly subscription, metrics as CAC, LTV, ARR are crucial.

How many business models can you find in the entrepreneurial world?

The answer should be: your creativity is the limit.

However, the most used are:

Bricks and clicks business model
Collective business models
Cutting out the middleman model
Direct sales model
Distribution business models, various
Fee in, free out
Franchise
Sourcing business model
Freemium business model
Pay what you can (PWYC)
Value-added reseller model
Auction business model
All-in-one business model
Chemical leasing
Low-cost carrier business model
Loyalty business models
Monopolistic business model
Multi-level marketing business model
Network effects business model
Online auction business model
Online content business model
Online media cooperative
Premium business model
Professional open-source model
Pyramid scheme business model
Razor and blades model
Servitization of products business model
Subscription business model

Short Definition: figure out how to make money, now!

KPI

As we’ve seen a business model is a way for a startup to create value. Once you’ve defined the business model, you need a set of metrics to measure how’s the startup doing overtime. That is called a key performance indicator (or KPI). It is a key term in the jargon of the startupper and one of the first terms you’ll hear in the startup world.

Short Definition: can you just tell me if we’re making money?

MVP

This is short for a minimum viable product. That is a product that is good enough to satisfy early customers. The real aim of this phase is to start getting feedback from the first users and understand how to improve the product to get it to the next phase. 

As Techopedia explains the MVP has to have the following characteristics:

It has enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initially.
It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters.
It provides a feedback loop to guide future development.

This is crucial because the MVP isn’t intended as a way to reach out a predetermined audience. Quite the opposite, the MVP is supposed to give you the right amount of feedback that allows you to create a scalable version of that product. Once you get there it means you have entered the process for long enough to have reached the so-called “Product-Market Fit.”

Short Definition: Hey, would you be willing to give me a dime for this stuff?

Product-Market Fit

How do you know the MVP you’ve put together is ready to scale up? Venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, and Growth Hacking founding father, Sean Ellis help us assess that.

Marc Andreessen says:

There is an incredibly wide divergence of caliber and quality for the three core elements of each startup — team, product, and market.

By analyzing the patterns that we’ve been observing in his experience as a venture capitalist, the third aspect, the market is the most important.

In fact, Marc Andreessen refers to it as Rachleff’s Law of Startup Success (formulated by Andy Rachleff):

The #1 company-killer is lack of market.

Andy puts it this way:

When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins
When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.

You can obviously screw up a great market — and that has been done, and not infrequently — but assuming the team is baseline competent and the product is fundamentally acceptable, a great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.

And he concludes:

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit.

Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

Source: stanford.edu

Sean Ellis, one of the founding fathers of a relatively new discipline, “Growth Hacking” which helps startups to scale up faster with a low budget and a rigorous “scientific process,” to test as many strategies as possible to figure out what work and what doesn’t.

Sean Ellis offers a simple metric to determine whether your startup is close enough to the product-market fit: the 40% rule. In other words, at least 40% of your customers must consider the product a must-have. They must be disappointed to know you’re withdrawing the product from the market.

Short Definition: Hey, would you keep paying for this stuff?

LTV

Short for Customer Lifetime Value, that is one of the KPI used by startups to assess whether or not they’re using the right strategy to scale up. In fact, the customer lifetime value tells you how much; on average, a single customer is paying for a product or service before he leaves. For instance, let’s say you sell software for a $10 per month fee. If customers on average keep paying the monthly fee for about six months, then your LTV is $60.

This number is significant because it also tells you how much can you spend on marketing budget to acquire new customers. For example, if you’re spending $100 on Facebook ads to get one customer that has an LTV of $60, then you’re on the right path to kill your startup. That is why once you’ve figured your LTV you can assess the right CAC.

Source: How To Calculate Lifetime Value

Short Definition: Are you doing enough to keep me onboard?

CAC

Short, for customer acquisition cost, that is tied to the lifetime value of a customer. In short, those two metrics have to be used in conjunction. Customer acquisition costs can take into account variable and fixed costs. For instance, for a SaaS (Software as a Service) the support is also a vital aspect of retaining a customer. Think of a customer that has activated a trial of a software. During that trial, the customer has activated the service, but the startup didn’t earn any revenue yet. The support, training and other costs associated with retaining the customer until he/she pays the service are all costs that need to be taken into account.

Case study: Imagine this scenario, a SaaS business often starts with a free trial. Let’s say advertised with a Facebook ad. The startup has spent $50 on ads to get a user onboard. The user has activated the trial, which will last fourteen days. Before the fifteenth day, the startup won’t make any revenue. Additional costs, such as training and support might be also incurred, for a total of $40. How much did the startup pay to acquire the customer and make a revenue?

You have to take into account the Facebook ad ($50), the training cost ($20) and the support cost ($20). Therefore, the startup has spent $90 just to get a single paying customer. Computing the CAC is vital to make sure the startup business model is sustainable in the long term. In fact, often startups neglect hidden costs of acquiring customers.

Take content marketing. It is a great way to get new customers. In fact, this strategy can be effective for the whole sales funnel: from awareness to acquisition retention. However, to produce great content, it takes quite some time. If you’ve spent two days drafting a how-to that will convert two customers, you have to compute those two days as a CAC. Thus, if two days of your work are worth, let’s say $200, that is your CAC.

Short Definition: How much are you spending to get someone onboard?

Sales Funnel

That is a fictional and ideal process through which a potential customer goes through before he becomes a loyal customer that hustle your product or a brand ambassador.

In short, according to the sales funnel before someone becomes a customer, there are several steps involved. Just to mention a few steps to take:

Initial contact – 0 %
Qualification – 10 %
Meeting – 30 %
Proposal – 60 %
Close – 100 %

When you first contact someone out of the blue. That person doesn’t know you, neither trusts you. Why then would buy anything for you? Therefore, selling something is out of the question, unless you get very lucky. Also, asking for someone to buy right away it is almost like asking the person to marry you at the first date, nuts! In addition, it also shows that you don’t care enough to have spent some time researching what that person might be looking for. In short, you’re not creating value first!

Thus, in that stage rather than thinking about closing, you have to start building trust and get to a second date. Once the person agrees you’re improving your chances of success. The main point here is that the sales funnel helps you think in steps, rather than “I sell you this.” Instead, going through the whole funnel is like going from a coffee with a potential romantic partner, to finally getting married.

How do sales funnel look like?

Here’s a classic example from mailmunch.co:

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Before you get too in love with the sales funnel, keep in mind that is only an abstraction to help you out create a sales process. Therefore, that is a mean to an end, which is to understand you can’t get out and give a shout to anyone to buy your product. First, you might want to bring a potential customer through the steps necessary to build enough trust to start a business relationship. In fact, for many salespeople, the sales funnel becomes a sort of religious thing to follow with orthodoxy. In reality, potential customers might take unpredictable journeys. However, it is good to start with a model that helps you being consistent.

Short Definition: Would you marry me, but first let’s have a coffee?

Churn Rate

There’s one thing that makes startuppers – especially those working in SaaS B2B – have nightmares during their dreams: the churn rate. That is a ratio that tells you how many customers are leaving.

The formula to compute the churn is the following:

(Customers beginning of month – Customers end of month) / Customers beginning of month

For instance, if you had ten customers at the beginning of January, and seven at the end of the month, your churn is 30% (10 – 7 / 10).

The churn rate is one of the KPI to look at on a daily and weekly basis to make sure the business is sustainable in the long run.

Why do customers churn? Here a few ideas from saasmetrics.co:

Your customer is simply out of budget and can’t afford the subscription fee;
Your customer can’t see/get the value proposition of your product anymore;
Your product or service doesn’t meet the expectation or lacks quality/features;
Your product is good, but customer service is not;
Your customer has chosen to change your product to a competitor’s product;
Your B2B customer is bankrupted, and the company doesn’t exist anymore;
Your B2B customer has been acquired, and the buyer uses a different service.

Short Definition: Please, don’t leave me! I promise this time it’ll be different!

Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is another obsession of startuppers, marketers, and anyone that is trying to build a business online and offline. There’s merely the number of people that take a specific action which can benefit your business in some way. Therefore, when people behave by following the intended goal you set that is how you convert.

There isn’t a single conversion rate or metric but as many of what you’re trying to measure. For instance, if you have a blog, which makes money with affiliate marketing, then you might want to estimate how many visitors on a page click on the affiliate link. If you get 1,000 visitors and 100 clicks on the affiliate link, the click-through rate is 10%.

What is a reasonable conversion rate?

That highly depends upon the kind of conversion, industry, and call to action you’re trying to measure. For example, wordstream.com shows an average conversion rate for Google AdWords across all industries of 2.70%:

[image error]

What can you do to improve the conversion rate?

A/B testing CTAa
Blogging
Pay per click campaigns
social media campaigns
landing pages
email marketing
up-sell or cross-sell

Short Definition: Measure everything!

Angel Investor

In the Theatre world, a “Theatre Angel” is someone that takes the risk to put money to produce a show. Making a hit in a Theatre show is quite unpredictable and risky. That is why the same term was borrowed by the Silicon Valley throughout the 1970s to call early-stage investors in startups “Angel Investors.” In fact,  an angel investor invests in a startup when it isn’t even making a dime, and it might never make a buck. Yet, if you get lucky enough to make a hit as an angel investor, you might earn as much as 280x your initial investment.

How do you become a successful angel investor?

There isn’t a framework for that. At times a successful angel investment might be due to you liking someone, rather than understanding a business. For instance, Jeff Bezos was one of the first to invest in Google, back in 1998, as an angel investor. He bought Google’s company’s stock at four cents a share. When Google went public, with an IPO in 2004, Jeff Bezos had as much as 3.3 million stocks. We don’t know how much of those stocks he still holds. Yet at the time those stocks would be worth at least $280 million. Based on the initial investment of $1 million that is a 280x!

How did Jeff Bezos decide to invest in Google?

According to Auletta’s book – Googled, the end of the world as we know it – Bezos said in an interview: 

I just fell in love with Larry and Sergey

Therefore, “love” might be as much of a factor to make you a successful angel investor, together with a lot of liquidity and a good amount of luck.

Short definition: It’s all about love!

VC

Born in Paris in 1899, George Doriot moved to Boston where he after getting an MBA, he also became an investment banker and professor at Harvard Business School. When the World War II erupted, George Doriot was called in the rank of lieutenant colonel as R&D for the military planning division. Once he returned from the WWII, in 1946, he founded American Research and Development Corporation, the first publicly owned venture capital firm.

The firm was founded with the primary aim of allowing soldiers back from WWII to invest part of their money in private ventures. George Doriot with his company was among the first to accept money from private investors other than wealthy families. That is how the phenomenon of venture capital was born! 

In short, venture capital is a form of private investing where the “venture capitalist” rarely invests in an early stage startup and more often in a “growth business” that in some ways has already shown some growth potential. The angel investor is often a private individual placing a small stake in a highly risky and very early stage startup. The venture capitalist is often part of a firm and puts his money in a company that has already been growing in the past.

[image error]Source: cbinsights.com

According to CB Insights in 2017, there were 11,042 deals and $164.4bln invested globally. The most significant piece of the pie comes from the US, with a $74.5bln and Asia follows with half of the deals but almost as much invested venture capital ($70.8bln). Europe is much smaller with $17.6bln. 

Among the top twenty venture capitalist worldwide The New York Times lists:

1. Bill Gurley (invested in GrubHub, OpenTable, Zillow)

2. Chris Sacca (invested in Twilio, Twitter)

3. Jeff Jordan (invested in Tilt)

4. Alfred Lin (invested in FutureAdvisor)

5. Brian Singerman (invested in Stemcentrx)

Keep reading here.

Short Definition: Growth is all that matters!

Seed Capital 
That is the currency of the Angel Investor. In fact, when the Angel Investor agrees to put money into a venture that isn’t making a buck, in exchange for that he/she will ask for equity in return. Often seed capital might also be money coming from the same founders’ assets until they’re not attractive enough to get additional funding from angel investors.

Incubator 

If you’re thinking about that device used to cure premature babies in the hospital that is not too far from what that is in the startup world. In fact, in some cases, new wannabe startuppers don’t trust themselves enough to be ready to challenge the furious Mr. Market on their own. That is why they go to a place, called incubator, which main aim is to bring the startup from zero to whatever objective they had set up.

In short, the incubator offers a set of services, that comprises small office space, mentoring and free services in exchange for an equity stake. For instance, if you take the Incubation Program, from Y Combinator (one of the top startup incubators in the world) it consists of the following:

Twice a year we invest a small amount of money ($120k) in a large number of startups.

The startups move to Silicon Valley for 3 months, during which we work intensively with them to get the company into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day, when the startups present their companies to a carefully selected, invite-only audience.

But YC doesn’t end on Demo Day. We and the YC alumni network continue to help founders for the life of their company, and beyond.

Source: ycombinator.com

Short Definition: I’ll give you a candy, you give me equity in return!

IPO

When a private company becomes available to the public through stock markets, that is called Initial Public Offering. In short, anyone from the public – average Joe included – can buy a stock of your startup for the price the startup gets listed on the day of the IPO. That is the dream of many startups. In fact, the stories of startup founders that make a successful exist (meant they monetize through an IPO) have inspired many wannabe startuppers. One of the most recurring dreams for startuppers is to imagine one day to ring the bell at the NASDAQ’s opening just like Mark Zuckerberg did back in 2012!

ICO

An ICO or Initial Coin Offering has the same purpose of the Initial Public Offering: find capital for the startup. In other words, in exchange for cryptocurrencies startups give part of their equity to the market. The ICO is different from the IPO because cryptocurrencies right now are underregulated. Therefore, this kind of process allows a startup to get financing way faster. As you can imagine this process bypasses the regulation also makes it a riskier business.

In fact, a startup getting ready for an ICO will issue its coin by using the Blockchain technology. Those coins will be given to the investors, while the startup gets the financing. What’s next? Either those coins could be used as real money, buy goods, or just as a speculative medium based on “wait and see.” If that startup becomes successful, then the coin might be worth much more than the initial investment.

NDA

When you break an NDA things can get ugly! In fact, NDA stands short for a non-disclosure agreement.

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information.

Traction

One common belief among wannabe startuppers is “make a great product and customers will come!” This belief is flawed. In fact, often it isn’t the best product to win, but the one that has better distribution.

That is why distribution matters so much. In short, product development and distribution have to walk hand in hand to allow your startup to gain “traction” or speed up the growth process. Also, for each growth stage, you have to figure out the strategies that work and the ones that don’t. In fact, while some approaches might work in an initial growth stage, they might stop working in the next phase of growth.

According to Gabriel Weinberg, CEO, and founder of DuckDuckGo (a search engine that focuses on privacy), there are 19 channels to focus on to gain traction:

DuckDuckGo: The [Former] Solopreneur That Is Beating Google at Its Game

Freemium

This is one of the most popular business models used by startups to get traction. On the one hand, the basic product is offered for free. Instead, a more advanced version of the same product will be instead offered at a premium. That is how the freemium business model works.

Although it makes sense to use the freemium business model to grow a business, it isn’t always that easy to implement it the right way. In fact, assuming you have plenty of free users, it is not guaranteed a profit from the paying ones. One example of Freemium model that works is MailChimp, an email marketing software that allows you to build a mail list and automate part of your email marketing effort.

MailChimp’s story is a bit different from the Silicon Valley stereotype. In fact, MailChimp was founded by Mr. Chestnut, which interviewed by NY Times: 

If you want to run a successful tech company, you don’t have to follow the path of “Silicon Valley.” You can simply start a business, run it to serve your customers, and forget about outside investors and growth at any cost.

As reported in the same article, MailChimp had 12 million customers back in 2016 and $280 million in revenue in 2015 and it was about to reach $400 million in 2016.

MailChimp makes it very easy to use its service for free for the first 2,000 mail subscribers. The service works quite well and once you get to the point of reaching the subscribers limit it’s very hard to switch. Of course, this is based on my personal experience as MailChimp hasn’t made its metrics publicly available. 

Short Definition: Users are all that matters!

A/B Tests

Imagine you’re setting up a clothing shop window on a busy street of Manhattan. The way you set that up will depend whether people will buy more or less from the store. How do you make sure that windows shop is effective? There’s one thing you can set up another windows shop on the same street. You make that window shop identical but for one variant (for instance, you place a pair of red shoes, instead of a pair of blue ones). The one that brings more customers will be also the one to pick. That would be a real-life A/B test. In other words, that is a control experiment (where you only change a variable and keep the rest unchanged, to “control the experiment’s environment”).

Running an A/B test in real life would be too expensive, if at times not impossible. However, digital data allows companies to run any kind of A/B test experiments way faster. In fact, today companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook run thousands of A/B test experiments each day.

One example is comScore which increased the conversion rate of its product pages by 69% compared to the original version by running several variations:

[image error]

Source: blog.hubspot.com

Short Definition: Data-driven experiments for business

Gamification

That is a process that borrows elements used in gaming and brings it to the startup world. One example of frameworks borrowed from the gameplay industry and brought to the startup world is the “Hook Model” by Nir Eyal in his book Hooked.

[image error]Source: nirandfar.com

I covered this topic on the blog, I suggest you read this:

DuckDuckGo: When privacy becomes a trigger for growth

Growth-hacking

As explained on Wikipedia:

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing channels and product development to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business.

The key terms in the definition above are “rapid, experimentation and growth.” In fact, Growth Hacking is supposed to use a rigorous – not in a scientific manner –  but rapid process of experimentation, to test ideas rapidly and keep going with the ones that speed up the growth process of a business.

For an in-depth understanding of Growth Hacking read this:

How to Grow Your Business with Growth Hacking

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is a marketing strategy based on using a set of tactics and best practices to rank higher in search engines page results. Why does it matter at all? When you publish content on the web, that is when things start getting complicated. In fact, billions of people each day get online. It is also true that almost as much content gets created.

In the noise, it’s easy for your content to be forgotten. One way to avoid that is to make sure your content follows a set of guidelines which makes it easier for search engines to find it, and rank it. In fact, search engines like Google have billions of little crawlers (a software that looks at web pages) that at each time go through the web pages comprising the visible web. Those crawlers main aim is to form an index of web pages. Once formed this index, Google then has to rank those pages. It does so through a set of signals. One, of course, is content quality, based on how users behave when consuming it. SEO helps you do just that.

In this article from SEO Hacker I explain how to use SEO for your online marketing strategy:

Three Powerful Strategies to Hack On-Page SEO [Case Study]

Short Definition: Hey Google, get me leads!

Handpicked related articles: 

How to Learn SEO Copywriting Basics Quickly
How to Use Interactive Data Visualization Techniques to Make Your Blog Post Rock
Advanced Social Selling: How to Use LinkedIn to Hack the Growth of Your Business
Udemy Insights: How to Find Profitable Online Course Niches to Make Money Online
Editorial Calendar: How to Use Google Trends for Your Content Strategy

The post Strtupper Lingo: The Jargon I Wish Someone Taught Me When I Joined a Startup appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

DuckDuckGo: Gabriel Weinberg on the Future of the Search Engine That Doesn’t Track You

In this blog, you will find anything you need to know about DuckDuckGo as I’ve been spending quite some time researching this topic. Two things fascinate me about DuckDuckGo. First, the ability of DuckDuckGo’s CEO and founder Gabriel Weinberg to compete in a market, like that of search, which is mainly dominated by a few players (Google, Yahoo, Yandex and Bing just to mention a few). Of those players though, Google has the monopoly.

I know it might sound counterintuitive to talk about a monopoly, yet if we take the data from GS stat counter for good, Google – as of December 2017 – has a mobile search engine market share of 94.96%. With Google wild dominance it is also hard to imagine a different business model from the one that Google itself has created.

In fact, the search engine from Mountain View has been so good in making sure to give us the best search results, that most people don’t picture Google as the most profitable ad network in the world!

That opens up another crucial aspect. DuckDuckGo’s story tells us that another business model for search is possible. In fact, DuckDuckGo does monetize through advertising. However, this is only based on keywords that have a certain intent. For instance, if I search “car insurance” chances are I’m looking to purchase one. That is how DuckDuckGo will show an advertising. In addition and that is the critical point, it will do so without tracking me.

On occasion of the launch of DuckDuckGo Mobile App, Gabriel Weinberg took the chance to answer questions on Quora. I’m going to analyze a few of those answers to understand also how the future will unfold for DuckDuckGo:

What’s the next big thing that you think will happen to DuckDuckGo in the near future?

After ten years of search, we just expanded beyond the search box to help people protect their privacy no matter where they go on the Internet. More details here

By Gabriel Weinberg on Quora

It seems clear that privacy is the primary mission of the company also for the near future. What does this imply? No doubt DuckDuckGo has had privacy as a primary concern since the start. It is also true that at this stage privacy is also the main propeller for its business growth as I explain more in detail below:

DuckDuckGo: When privacy becomes a trigger for growth

I also took the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions:

In the future where voice search is taking off. How will DDG evolve?

While voice search is taking off, mobile search and desktop search are still actually increasing (see Lindy effect, mental model). Nevertheless, we would like to find a way to help people search privately on voice search platforms.

By Gabriel Weinberg on Quora

What does it all mean?

The Lindy Effect: Why in technology old is bold!

Is an interesting concept. Based on an idea of the American author and academic Albert Goldman. The Lindy Effect expresses a simple yet powerful principle. In fact, it introduces the distinction between the way perishable and non-perishable things evolve. On the one hand, perishable things life expectancy decreases over time. On the other hand, for non-perishable things life expectancy increases the older they get. For instance, if you take two people, a young man in his 30s and an old fellow in his 80s, there’s no doubt that the former has more chances to outlive the latter. Instead, when it comes to technology, the opposite is true. Therefore, since desktop and mobile have existed for way longer than voice search, they will also be with us for at least another decade or two. Therefore, before you go all in with voice search, make sure you keep in mind what the Lindy Effect tells you.

What growth strategy will DDG use to further expand its user base?

Our biggest challenge by far in terms of adoption is cost-effectively getting the word about what we are doing. Our research shows that a large percentage of people are seeking solutions to protect their privacy online, and yet most of these people unfortunately still don’t know we exist.

By Gabriel Weinberg on Quora

DuckDuckGo is growing at faster and faster pace. In fact, just in the last months, it has surpassed record after record as you can see from its traffic daily average estimates:

[image error]

Just in the month if January DuckDuckGo has consistently surpassed twenty million daily direct average queries. Yet if we compare it with over five billion search queries going through Google, the ratio is of 1 to 234. In short, for each question on DuckDuckGo, there are at least 234 going through Google.

However, as reported by DuckDuckGo Blog among U.S. adults, 24% of the population takes significant actions to protect their privacy. Thus, there is a reason to believe that those people would be willing to become consistent DuckDuckGo users. In fact, one of the hardest factors for a new player coming into a market dominated by others is to convince regular users of their service to switch. Apparently, privacy seems an excellent reason to switch as showed by DuckDuckGo survey below:

[image error]

Source: spreadprivacy.com


That is also confirmed by the fact that DuckDuckGo traffic appears to swing upward when people’s concern for privacy raises. In other words, the more people learn about online tracking and how it works and the more they might become concerned about it. In fact, if in the past most users wouldn’t know how search engines like Google worked, now people are becoming more aware, and this opens up new growth opportunities for DuckDuckGo.

I’d like to close the article on a personal note from Gabriel Weinberg:

What do you do for yourself to be happy?

Outside of DuckDuckGo, I like to read, write, discuss policy, and spend time with family.

By Gabriel Weinberg on Quora

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Why DuckDuckGo Is the Future of Search

The post DuckDuckGo: Gabriel Weinberg on the Future of the Search Engine That Doesn’t Track You appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

How to Grow Your Business with Growth Hacking

January 2015 Sean and his team at GrowthHackers.com were experiencing a stagnating growth. Although they grew at about 90,000 unique monthly visitors in a year, they were mainly growing on the back of Twitter. Time to change strategy. They decided to implement a High Tempo Testing Program. That is how growth picked up and accelerated,

[image error]

Source: GrowthHachers.com 

Growth Hacking is one of the most exciting subjects today. Not only in the marketing arena but in any other conceivable area. I’m not trying to emphasize when I tell you that growth hacking can make you become the next President of France. If you don’t believe me probably you didn’t notice that hacking growth has become the secret weapon of one of the screwiest politician alive, the new elected France’s President Macron, which used Growth Hacking to win the election (Growth Hacker Raffaele Gaito passed me this news).

What is Growth Hacking and what is not

As the story went in 2007, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia couldn’t afford the rent on their San Francisco apartment that is why they decided to transform their loft in a lodging space. Yet instead of relying on Craiglist, they built their site, which they called Airbed & Breakfast and hacked Craigslist to drive users back to their website,

[image error]

Source: GrowthHachers.com 

Long story short that is how they grew from a loft to a company worth $30billion, which we all know by the name of Airbnb. Yet that is only part of the story. In fact, Airbnb didn’t grow in a multi-billion business from a day to the next with a single magic trick. Instead, they had to undertake several experiments before seeing their listings grow.

In fact, experimentation is the critical ingredient of growth hacking. For it to work, you have to experiment through a rigorous process that mixes rapid and cross-functional testing. That is what Sean Ellis called growth hacking.

In short, growth hacking overturned the traditional founders’ myth. In which, one brilliant individual has a genial idea that makes the company go from a garage to a palace. Therefore, it isn’t anymore about a person but the team. It isn’t anymore about one genial idea but a process generating ideas. There’s no such thing as a growth hacker, but only a growth hacking team driven by the same mindset.

The Growth Hacking Mindset

The first step in hacking growth is to acquire the growth mindset. In fact, there is no tool, skill or strategy you can use, master or implement if you don’t develop the right mindset first. That mindset starts with the way you learn.

From Personal to Incremental: Two Approaches to Learning

The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity.

By Josh Waitzkin from The Art of Learning

In a world that becomes increasingly competitive the most essential skill to master is “The Art of Learning.” In his homonymous book, chess player, martial arts competitor and author Josh Waitzkin explain the two modes of learning: entity vs. incremental theories of learning. 

The entity theory treats intelligence as fixed and stable. The incremental theory of intelligence instead thinks of it as something malleable, fluid and changeable. In other words, if you believe in the former you will identify yourself with the activity/experiment you’re undertaking. Therefore each failure will be unbearable and a demonstration of your lack of intelligence and skills. Instead, with the latter approach, you will stop identifying with the learning process and start to see each failure as an opportunity to learn something new.

In short, to develop a successful growth hacking mindset, you must remove your ego from the learning process and use an incremental learning approach. That is how you develop a growth mindset.

The Power of Yet: The Growth Mindset

Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. When people…change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth take plenty of time, effort, and mutual support. 

by Carol S. Dweck from Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

If the growth mindset is not about you; it is about the process. How can you make sure to change the way you learn, while also making sure your team is on the same page? Use the power of yet:

praise the process and make sure your team knows the process is what matters
reward effort, strategy, and process not individual intelligence
learn and teach to push outside the comfort-zone so that failure becomes a normal aspect of the growth process

Once acquired the incremental learning method and the growth mindset, there’s a third non-trivial aspect of growth hacking, the scientific mindset.

It Got to Be Data-Driven: The Feynman Approach

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.

by Richard Feynman

If you want to build a growth hacking team, you got to have a scientific mindset. The method to follow is pretty simple. Identify a problem, do some research, form a hypothesis, do an experiment, analyze your data, and draw conclusions.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is if it doesn’t match the data then it is wrong! In short, every decision has to be data-driven and based on the actions of the users rather than on the beliefs of the founders.

The Method

Sean Ellis in Hacking Growth shows the how as it follows,

[image error]

The process is simple yet powerful. From data analysis to testing and back to that analysis, the loop of growth must be followed consistently.

The Skills: Multidisciplinarity is the rule of thumb

As Davis Jones, author of the Udemy Bestselling course Growth Hacking Masterclass in Digital Marketing multidisciplinarity is the norm. SEO, email marketing, social media, copywriting and online advertising are the necessary skills to acquire to thrive in the digital marketing world.

Growth Hacking is about the whole funnel

Growth hacking isn’t anymore about MRR or acquisition, but it involves the entire funnel. From awareness to purchase the funnel accelerates at the speed of light,

[image error]

Source: tomtunguz.com

In this scenario, there are a plethora of tools out there yet quite a few able to help you achieve success. Let’s see some of them.

The Top 20 Tools

Now that you got the right mindset it is time to start using some tools. GrowHack.com drafted an incredible spreadsheet about all the tools used by the greatest growth hackers for each funnel stage, which you can get from here.

Below I analyzed the data and extracted a list of the top 20 software used by top growth hackers independently from the funnel stage,

[image error]

You can find a more comprehensive analysis done by GrowHack.com on the SaaS marketing stack per funnel stage.

Suggested Reading

[image error]

Online Course

[image error]

Websites to read

startup-marketing.com

growthack.com

growthachers.com

quicksprout.com

okdork.com

neilpatel.com

andrewchen.co

People to Follow on Twitter (source stuck study from GrowHack.com)

Amber Van Moessner

Anand Sanwal

Aubrey Arcangel

Cezary Pietrzak

Conrad Wadowski

Dave Gerhardt

Guillaume Cabane

Jamie Quint

Kevan Lee

Massimo Chieruzzi

Matthew Barby

Michael Taylor

Morgan Brown

Nick Christman

Noah Kagan

Peter Borden

Ryan Deiss

Sean Ellis

Zach Grove

Zack Onisko

Case studies

Growthackers

LinkedIn

Slack

 

The post How to Grow Your Business with Growth Hacking appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin Plus Infographic with 67 Insane Facts

What is a Bitcoin?

According to dbpedia.org:

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency based on an open-source, peer-to-peer internet protocol. It was introduced by a pseudonymous developer named Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Bitcoins can be exchanged through a computer or smartphone locally or internationally without an intermediate financial institution. In trade, one bitcoin is subdivided into 100 million smaller units called satoshis, defined by eight decimal points.

No doubt Bitcoin has been the thing of 2017. Many call it the second most important technological advancement of the last century after the internet. Many others instead, label it as the next Tulip Bubble, ready to bust anytime soon.

Whether or not Bitcoin will take over the financial world we don’t know. However, Bitcoin made one thing clear; there is an alternative to the traditional financial system we’ve been used to. Besides, Bitcoin raises another critical point. What the heck is money? For centuries we’ve believed that money is something that has a real value. In short, based on the old assumption, money, like gold is worth something besides the value we attribute to them. However, this assumption might turn out to be wrong. In other words, money might be just an accounting method. That is the fascinating thesis of the book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, which I suggest you read if you want to understand what Bitcoin stands for deeply: 

[image error]

In this post, I will show you a few questions a few people dared to ask about Bitcoin, which also explains why that story is so incredible.

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Back in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto sent the first email to Hal Finney, his identity was private. He was trying to explain how to get Bitcoin up and running. That is the first email ever between Satoshi Nakatomo and Bitcoin first user, Hal Finney:

Normally I would keep the symbols in, but they increased the size of the EXE from 6.5MB to 50MB so I just couldn’t justify not stripping them. I guess I made the wrong decision, at least for this early version. I’m kind of surprised there was a crash, I’ve tested heavily and haven’t had an outright exception for a while. Come to think of it, there isn’t even an exception print at the end of debug.log. I’ve been testing on XP SP2, maybe SP3 is something.

I’ve attached bitcoin.exe with symbols. (gcc symbols for gdb, if you’re using MSVC I can send you an MSVC build with symbols)

Thanks for your help!

The communication among the people part of the Bitcoin community was private, and many of them didn’t meet in person for a few years. Yet none ever met Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, on April 23rd, 2011, he left anyone baffled with this short and concise message:

I’ve moved on to other things. It’s in good hands with Gavin and everyone.

None heard from him anymore. Until…

On January 2018, thesun.co.uk spread the news that Satoshi Nakamoto is the real name of a Japanese man living in Temple City, California. Of course, that is speculation, and none knows whether he is the same person or it was just a pseudonym used by Bitcoin’s creator.

Did you know Satoshi Nakamoto was nominated for the Nobel Price in economics in 2015?

That’s right; Satoshi Nakamoto might be the first fictional character to go close to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. 

The Prize was proposed by Bhagwan Chowdhry as explained in this tweet:

Why I am nominating Satoshi Nakamoto for the #NobelPrize in Economics https://t.co/iEYdyRslJp #bitcoin @StellarOrg @ethereumproject

— Bhagwan Chowdhry (@bhagwanUCLA) November 6, 2015

Bitcoin is decentralized, what does it all mean?

That means that none controls, neither guarantees for the system. In a traditional financial order, a central authority, like a bank or a government are necessary to make the system work. Instead, with the Bitcoin, the central authority isn’t needed, because the whole system relies on a technology called Blockchain.

In short, that is a distributed ledger made of millions of computers, each of which plays a role in ensuring that the ledger’s transactions are approved in block (that is why Block-chain). In fact, for each block of operations, a lottery gets to run among a set of machines that have to solve for math problems to approve those transactions. Once the computers in the chain approve the transactions, the block gets recorded in the Blockchain forever. To pass a block of transactions the majority principles applies. If 50% + 1 of computers approve a transaction, while the remaining do not, the majority wins.

What is the Blockchain foundation? That is a function, called SHA256.

What is SHA256?

SHA256 is a particular type of algorithm, a Cryptographic Hash Algorithm. In short, you input value and the algorithm spits out a 256-bit code, which can’t be reversed. Therefore, you cannot get the initial input. In this way, none knows who this code belongs to. That is how privacy is insured.

For instance, let’s say I input into SHA256 “Gennaro” and I get back the following code:

5b77b0b0984e51447faac5ab0dd46491501d73a8e985d12f2a7159ef3bddd854

Thi code cannot be decrypted back to find out my name. In short, it works only in one-way!

Is Bitcoin really redistributing wealth?

As anything that starts with a visionary attempt to change the world might become just another way to create a cluster of wealth, that might be true for Bitcoin as well. It is true that a few new millionaires came up from Bitcoin. However, of the current, almost two hundred billion dollars market cap of Bitcoin, 40% of that wealth is in the hands of 1000 people.

As reported on Bloomberg:

About 40 percent of bitcoin is held by perhaps 1,000 users; at current prices, each may want to sell about half of his or her holdings, says Aaron Brown, former managing director and head of financial markets research at AQR Capital Management. (Brown is a contributor to the Bloomberg Prophets online column.) What’s more, the whales can coordinate their moves or preview them to a select few. Many of the large owners have known one another for years and stuck by bitcoin through the early days when it was derided, and they can potentially band together to tank or prop up the market.

Therefore, rather than creating distributed wealth for millions of people, the Bitcoin so far has created a new financial elite.

What is the Market Cap of Bitcoin?

As of today (January 20th, 2018), the Market Cap for Bitcoin is two hundred billion dollars. The price of Bitcoin is quite volatile. Just in the last few months, it swung back and forth. That is why the Market Cap can change quite fast as well.

How much can a Bitcoin be Worth?

Wences Casares, CEO of bitcoin wallet Xapo and member of PayPal’s board of directors, was one of the first Silicon Valley investors to believe in the potential of Bitcoin. As reported by the book Digital Gold, Bitcoin could be worth as much as a half million dollars. This computation was based on a simple assumption. Given all the value of gold in the world at around 7 trillion dollars. Like gold needed to be mined, so Bitcoin does. In fact, to create new Bitcoins, computers dedicated to mining, must solve for complex math calculations. The more the mining gets closer to the limit of Bitcoin that can be mined (set at 21 million), the more it gets hard to mine new Bitcoins.

What is going to happen next? In theory, the limit should be kept to guarantee Bitcoin value stays stable. In practice, that limit might be changed as well. Like money back in the 60s was supposed to be tied to the reserve of gold. On August 15, 1971, President Nixon announced the end of the so-called Gold Standard. The US currency, the dollar, was finally free to be printed, without the need to have a correspondent reserve of gold. The Federal Reserve together with the US government became the guarantors of the system.

Could the same happen to Bitcoin?  

Who controls the mining of Bitcoins?

Mining requires complex math calculations that can only be handled by machines. The more the mining gets closer to the limit of 21 million Bitcoins available on the market the more it gets hard for those devices to mine new Bitcoins. What that means is that those machines now need to be more and more efficient in solving calculations. It also means that they need way more electricity to be run properly.

Not that surprisingly China controls the mining of Bitcoins. In fact, as reported by Quartz, one of the largest Bitcoin mining facilities is in Mongolia. The electricity bill can be as high as $39,000 on a given day. And those facilities compete for a piece of the pie that according to Quartz is about 7 million dollar on any given day!

How long it takes before a new block of Bitcoins is solved?

There is a time limit for each block of coins to be solved, that is ten minutes. Why?

As reported on a bitcoin.stackexchange.com discussion:

Ten minutes was specifically chosen by Satoshi as a tradeoff between first confirmation time and the amount of work wasted due to chain splits. After a block is mined, it takes time for other miners to find out about it, and until then they are actually competing against the new block instead of adding to it. If someone mines another new block based on the old block chain, the network can only accept one of the two, and all the work that went into the other block gets wasted. For example, if it takes miners 1 minute on average to learn about new blocks, and new blocks come every 10 minutes, then the overall network is wasting about 10% of its work. Lengthening the time between blocks reduces this waste.

As a thought experiment, what if the Bitcoin network grew to include Mars? From the farthest points in their orbits, it takes about 20 minutes for a signal to travel from Earth to Mars. With only 10 minutes between new blocks, miners on Mars would always be 2 blocks behind the miners on Earth. It would be almost impossible for them to contribute to the block chain. If we wanted collaborate with those kinds of delays, we would need at least a few hours between new blocks.

In short, to make the Blockchain efficient, ten minutes seemed to be the right timing to allow all the machines in a blockchain align without wasting too much work.

Can you live On Bitcoin for a week?

Handpicked Related Articles: 

Top Three Great Alternative Search Engines to Google

The Ripple Effect: How Cryptocurrencies Are Changing the Global Balance of Power

Blockchain: Why Distributed Search Engines Can End Google Supremacy

The History of the Web in a Nutshell: From the First Computer to the Deep Web

Check out 67 insane facts about Bitcoin offered by BitcoinPlay:

 

The post Everything You Need to Know About Bitcoin Plus Infographic with 67 Insane Facts appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

How to Grow a Passive Income Business à La Pat Flynn

There are a few ways to monetize an online business and affiliate marketing if done well can make you wealthy enough to give you the freedom to do what you like without worrying too much about the future. Today I want to show you the most exciting case of affiliate marketing: smartpassiveincome.com. 

Created by digital entrepreneur Pat Flynn, a former architect in San Diego, his story is incredible as he started from scratch. Now his main website generates anything from a hundred up to over three hundred thousand dollars on a monthly basis. How did he do that? Let’s dive into Pat Flynn’s story. 

That is Smart Passive Income today:

[image error]

How did he get there?

Your best email below to get great content straight to your inbox!






The beginnings of smartpassiveincome.com

Back in October 2008, Pat Flynn. An architect from San Diego, laid off by his employer decided to build an online business. After a few successful attempts he put together Smart Passive Income, a website focused on how to make money online. Ever since Pat Flynn shared his income report and how he went from $7,906.55 in revenue back then to hundreds of thousand dollars a month. How did he start to make money? 

[image error]

Pat Flynn started from the launch of an ebook about the LEED exam (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). As Pat Flynn himself would share later, he wasn’t putting that together as a business. Instead, when he was laid off he thought to put together the notes he had when studied for the exam to create his first niche website: greenexamacademy.com.

That is how Pat Flynn described first online business:

My passive income story begins in 2007, when I was employed in an architectural firm. I enjoyed my career and, in an effort to both improve my skills and my position in the company, I began studying for the LEED exam.

I needed an easy way to organize my study notes, so I bought the domain intheleed.com and started a blog. Each entry I made explored a topic that was likely to come up on the exam. 

and he continued:

In October 2008, I published The LEED AP Exam Walkthrough, an 89-page study guide available for $19.95.

The book sold 309 copies within the first month! Combined with advertising earnings on the website, the business earned a total of $7.906.55 in October 2008, and my life was forever changed.

The idea of creating a passive income business frees you up from the venture. In short, conventional wisdom wants you to be tied to your business. Instead, a passive income business is meant to set up in a way that you can almost walk away from it, and it will still generate a consistent stream of revenues. That is how Pat Flynn described this process:

Sales hit their peak in March 2009. Here’s the incredible part: by that point, I only needed to spend a few hours each month to keep the business running. I had purposely automated nearly every part of the business; and while I can’t completely walk away from it, I’m darn close. I spend 2–4 hours each month split-testing my conversion points, keeping up with the industry, and making sure that nothing on the site is broken.

That is what passive income is about. In fact, a passive income business might take a great effort and investment of time and resources. Yet once it takes off, you need to be automating it at the point that the business can generate a stream of income with minimum effort and time. In other words, when Pat Flynn set up his first ebook for the LEED exam, he still had to make sure everything ran smoothly. However, 2-4 hours a month is nothing compared to a 9 to 5 job, which barely pays the bills.

Going back to Pat Flynn story how did he go from $7.906.55 in October 2008 to $213.212.63 and over? 

Smartpassiveincome.com gets traction

Ever since the LEED exam, Pat Flynn’s online business grew steadily. There have been a few months where the growth picked up and accelerated. I looked at those months to see what projects fueled Smart Passive Income growth.

January 2009: Boost your sales with content upgrading

[image error]

As Pat Flynn explained:

 The launch of my audio guide is what definitely boosted the numbers, and I did strike a few more private advertising deals on my website as well. 

What takeaways did he learn?

To Increase Sales, Add a New Product.
Have Someone Else Make The New Product For You.
If You Sell Something To Someone, Make Sure You Can Contact Them Later On. 
Starting a Company and my CPA. 

Found out more here.

In other words, once your online business starts to grow in revenue expand that content to other formats. Don’t invest your time to build the new product but outsource part of the work. Also make sure to start building an email list, so that one sale isn’t just that but it can become more than that. Another aspect is about making your business financially effective by consulting a CPA.

August 2010: Create a win-win for everyone!

[image error]

In August 2010, Smart Passive Income revenues went above the $20K mark mainly thanks to affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate earnings totaled $11.914.30 (a 110% increase compared to the previous year).

As Pay Flynn put it at the time:

I recommend products that I’m using and trust. That’s it! I go above and beyond to show how I use the products, and if people are interested in it, more than likely they will use my affiliate link to purchase that product too. I don’t force it on people, and simply offer it as a recommendation. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Here’s the breakdown of the first affiliate earnings from smartpassiveincome.com:

[image error]

January 2011: The riches is in the niches

[image error]

What made a significant difference that month was the first group coaching Pat Flynn put together:

The most important thing that happened in January (and the thing I’m most proud of too) is the Niche Site Coaching course that Tyrone and I began.

[image error]

Affiliate earnings kept growing steadily as well. As Pat Flynn put it back then, he had learned three lessons:

LESSON 1: ALWAYS TRY SOMETHING NEW.
LESSON 2: WORK ON WHAT MATTERS.
LESSON 3: THE MORE YOU GIVE, THE MORE YOU GET BACK IN RETURN.

January 2012: Affiliate Marketing Mastering

[image error]

As Pat Flynn explained:

The affiliate earnings (most of which come from SPI, but some come from specialized niche sites as well), are through the roof, but what I like the most is that my non-SPI earnings total over $13,000 (not including the client check), which is up from about $10k last month.

What is Pat Flynn secret in generating all this revenue from affiliate marketing, even though he never used a sales lingo or tried to push anyone to buy anything?

Here are the secrets:

Provide massive value.
Earn massive trust.
Learn and understand the needs and wants of your followers.
Lead and teach by example.

And he continued:

My most important rule for affiliate marketing is this: I only recommend products as an affiliate that I’m extremely very familiar with, and preferably products that I’ve used and have helped me achieve something. If I’m not confident in the product and I don’t feel it will positively help people, I will not promote it.

That is the first rule. The second rule says:

I never directly tell anyone to buy a product. I always recommend products based on my experience and in the context of what I’ve done or what I’m doing.

In this case, the way you use language can make or break your online affiliate business. In fact, Pat Flynn says:

There’s a huge difference (on several levels) between:

“Buy [product] now because you need it to grow your online business. . . “

and

“This is how I used [Product] to help me achieve. . . “

In fact, the first approach is based on benefits, but it isn’t personal. The second method is transparent, personal and meaningful. That is how you start building a successful affiliate marketing business.

What page does Pat Flynn use the most to make affiliate earnings?

My Resources Page: 20 referrals. Like I said, this is one of the most visited pages on my site. If you’re not utilizing a resource page for your niche on your site, I recommend that you do! It’s the ultimate non-aggressive way to earn money, leaving all parties happy in the end.

Of course, an affiliate marketing business is possible if you have a right amount of traffic on your website and your resource page gets enough visits to make passive income. Just a quick example. Let’s say your site has 10.000 visitors per month. Only 1.000 visit the resource page, while 10 of them buy one of the affiliate products. Assuming you make $100 on each affiliate; you can make as much as $1.000 monthly from affiliate marketing income.

In short, before it makes sense even to set up a resource page you want to make sure you have enough traffic and the right affiliations in place that can guarantee you a decent stream of income.

July 2013: Build your products

[image error]

For the first time, the earnings of Smart Passive Income go well above $100k per month! That is a million dollar yearly business! What did happen back then with that 79.35% growth?

Even though affiliate earnings slightly slew down, there was a new business venture.

This is definitely, by far, my best month ever! Breaking 6-figures in a month in gross revenue is incredible and something I never thought was possible. Of course, a major chunk of this income is a result of the launch of Breakthrough Blogging, but since enrollment is closed for now the numbers for next month should be back to normal.

Says Pat Flynn in July 2013. In fact, back when he had launched Breakthrough Blogging which generated over $50K!

Here are the three most significant lessons learned in July 2013:

You cannot please everybody. 
You have to grow a thick skin.
You must not forget about those who ARE pleased. They should be your primary focus. 

March 2015: Mix affiliate marketing with your offerings

As we saw in July 2013, for the first time Smart Passive Income earnings went over 100k per month. However, that was due to a course he had launched which made Pat Flynn over $50K. It was only in March 2015 that Smart Passive Income organically reached, and passed the $100K mark.

[image error]

In that previous month affiliate earnings skyrocketed mainly thanks to the income from the following affiliates:

[image error]

Also, the podcast sponsorship revenues grew:

[image error]

As Pat Flynn specified:

It was a record month! This is largely due to a special promotion I ran with Bluehost, and a couple of webinars I did with David Siteman Garland from SPI Podcast Session #136.

What key lessons did he learn?

Scarcity and the fear of missing out plays a huge role in your marketing success.

January 2016: From solopreneur to CEO

[image error]

What played a crucial role in January 2016 was the growth of affiliate earnings:

[image error]

Once again a few affiliations made a huge difference:

[image error]

What key lessons? In his January 2016 income report Pat Flynn said:

During these past six months, however, I have made a mindset shift to start thinking of myself as more of a CEO of my company. Not CEO in the sense that I’ll be putting on a suit every day, inaccessible to my team, and above everyone else, but CEO in the sense that I need to start treating my business like a real business.

and he continued:

I’ll be making a shift over the next two years from an affiliate-based income to one that is more diverse with my own products and courses.

March 2017: It all starts with believing in what you do!

[image error]

Pat Flynn back in January 2016 mentioned how he would have focused more on products he creates, like online courses, and ebooks. In fact, in March 2017 a good chunk of income came from that:

[image error]

What key lessons learned in March 2017?

if you have something of value to offer, and you truly believe in it, it’s your duty to sell so that people can understand that value and benefit from what you’ve created.

July 2017: Now that you have trust establish your brand

[image error]

The sales coming from online courses kept growing substantially:

[image error]

That is where Pat Flynn journey reached the top at $321,642.86. Today Smart Passive Income isn’t any more a blog with affiliate links but an enterprise with a CEO, which focuses on creating info-products that create value for its audience. Smart Passive Income, in short, is a brand.

Summary and Conclusion

Making money online isn’t easy. That might sound trivial. Yet it is not. Many new wannabe “digitalpreneurs” are fascinated by this shiny world. Pat Flynn’s story is compelling for a few reasons.

First, building a real business takes time and a lot of effort. It shows that if you want to build an online business fast, you have to look at a real need people have. In fact, even before Pat Flynn was able to make money from affiliate marketing it took more than a year.

Second, Pat Flynn started from an expertise he had. Since he was studying for the LEED exam, he used the materials he had put together to create a niche site to address precisely that audience. That is when he moved on and expanded in other areas.

Third, it is about experimentation. From App development to WordPress plugins, online courses, public speaking, coaching and so on. Before you find your muse you might have to experiment quite a bit. That is what Pat Flynn has been doing, and that is why – I believe – he was so successful.

Fourth, to make sales you don’t have to sell. As Pat Flynn’s and Smart Passive Income story showed, business is about trust. And you don’t get any if you don’t believe in what you’re doing. Also, when you’re the first who uses the product or service just showing how you benefited from them sell.

Fifth, you don’t need a complicated sales scheme, but just a community that trusts you and a resource page. In fact, as Pat Flynn showed that is how he generates most of the earnings from affiliate products. That resource page is the central page of the site where most traffic lands.

Sixth, what starts as a solo-project then naturally unfolds in an enterprise. After the first income report in October 2006, Pat Flynn in 2015/2016 shifted his mindset from a sort of solopreneur to the CEO of an organization. That might seem of no importance but it is a vital change.

If you didn’t get it yet: the riches is in the niches! 

Suggested resources by Pat:

Smart Passive Income Podcast

[image error]

[image error]

Handpicked related articles:

How to Learn SEO Copywriting Basics Quickly
How to Use Interactive Data Visualization Techniques to Make Your Blog Post Rock
Advanced Social Selling: How to Use LinkedIn to Hack the Growth of Your Business
Udemy Insights: How to Find Profitable Online Course Niches to Make Money Online
Editorial Calendar: How to Use Google Trends for Your Content Strategy

The post How to Grow a Passive Income Business à La Pat Flynn appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

How to Grow a Passive Income Business à La Pat Flynn

There are a few ways to monetize an online business and affiliate marketing if done well can make you wealthy enough to give you the freedom to do what you like without worrying too much about the future. Today I want to show you the most exciting case of affiliate marketing: smartpassiveincome.com. 

Created by digital entrepreneur Pat Flynn, a former architect in San Diego, his story is incredible as he started from scratch. Now his main website generates anything from a hundred up to over three hundred thousand dollars on a monthly basis. How did he do that? Let’s dive into Pat Flynn’s story. 

That is Smart Passive Income today:

[image error]

How did he get there?

Your best email below to get great content straight to your inbox!






The beginnings of smartpassiveincome.com

Back in October 2008, Pat Flynn. An architect from San Diego, laid off by his employer decided to build an online business. After a few successful attempts he put together Smart Passive Income, a website focused on how to make money online. Ever since Pat Flynn shared his income report and how he went from $7,906.55 in revenue back then to hundreds of thousand dollars a month. How did he start to make money? 

[image error]

Pat Flynn started from the launch of an ebook about the LEED exam (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). As Pat Flynn himself would share later, he wasn’t putting that together as a business. Instead, when he was laid off he thought to put together the notes he had when studied for the exam to create his first niche website: greenexamacademy.com.

That is how Pat Flynn described first online business:

My passive income story begins in 2007, when I was employed in an architectural firm. I enjoyed my career and, in an effort to both improve my skills and my position in the company, I began studying for the LEED exam.

I needed an easy way to organize my study notes, so I bought the domain intheleed.com and started a blog. Each entry I made explored a topic that was likely to come up on the exam. 

and he continued:

In October 2008, I published The LEED AP Exam Walkthrough, an 89-page study guide available for $19.95.

The book sold 309 copies within the first month! Combined with advertising earnings on the website, the business earned a total of $7.906.55 in October 2008, and my life was forever changed.

The idea of creating a passive income business frees you up from the venture. In short, conventional wisdom wants you to be tied to your business. Instead, a passive income business is meant to set up in a way that you can almost walk away from it, and it will still generate a consistent stream of revenues. That is how Pat Flynn described this process:

Sales hit their peak in March 2009. Here’s the incredible part: by that point, I only needed to spend a few hours each month to keep the business running. I had purposely automated nearly every part of the business; and while I can’t completely walk away from it, I’m darn close. I spend 2–4 hours each month split-testing my conversion points, keeping up with the industry, and making sure that nothing on the site is broken.

That is what passive income is about. In fact, a passive income business might take a great effort and investment of time and resources. Yet once it takes off, you need to be automating it at the point that the business can generate a stream of income with minimum effort and time. In other words, when Pat Flynn set up his first ebook for the LEED exam, he still had to make sure everything ran smoothly. However, 2-4 hours a month is nothing compared to a 9 to 5 job, which barely pays the bills.

Going back to Pat Flynn story how did he go from $7.906.55 in October 2008 to $213.212.63 and over? 

Smartpassiveincome.com gets traction

Ever since the LEED exam, Pat Flynn’s online business grew steadily. There have been a few months where the growth picked up and accelerated. I looked at those months to see what projects fueled Smart Passive Income growth.

January 2009: Boost your sales with content upgrading

[image error]

As Pat Flynn explained:

 The launch of my audio guide is what definitely boosted the numbers, and I did strike a few more private advertising deals on my website as well. 

What takeaways did he learn?

To Increase Sales, Add a New Product.
Have Someone Else Make The New Product For You.
If You Sell Something To Someone, Make Sure You Can Contact Them Later On. 
Starting a Company and my CPA. 

Found out more here.

In other words, once your online business starts to grow in revenue expand that content to other formats. Don’t invest your time to build the new product but outsource part of the work. Also make sure to start building an email list, so that one sale isn’t just that but it can become more than that. Another aspect is about making your business financially effective by consulting a CPA.

August 2010: Create a win-win for everyone!

[image error]

In August 2010, Smart Passive Income revenues went above the $20K mark mainly thanks to affiliate marketing. In fact, affiliate earnings totaled $11.914.30 (a 110% increase compared to the previous year).

As Pay Flynn put it at the time:

I recommend products that I’m using and trust. That’s it! I go above and beyond to show how I use the products, and if people are interested in it, more than likely they will use my affiliate link to purchase that product too. I don’t force it on people, and simply offer it as a recommendation. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Here’s the breakdown of the first affiliate earnings from smartpassiveincome.com:

[image error]

January 2011: The riches is in the niches

[image error]

What made a significant difference that month was the first group coaching Pat Flynn put together:

The most important thing that happened in January (and the thing I’m most proud of too) is the Niche Site Coaching course that Tyrone and I began.

[image error]

Affiliate earnings kept growing steadily as well. As Pat Flynn put it back then, he had learned three lessons:

LESSON 1: ALWAYS TRY SOMETHING NEW.
LESSON 2: WORK ON WHAT MATTERS.
LESSON 3: THE MORE YOU GIVE, THE MORE YOU GET BACK IN RETURN.

January 2012: Affiliate Marketing Mastering

[image error]

As Pat Flynn explained:

The affiliate earnings (most of which come from SPI, but some come from specialized niche sites as well), are through the roof, but what I like the most is that my non-SPI earnings total over $13,000 (not including the client check), which is up from about $10k last month.

What is Pat Flynn secret in generating all this revenue from affiliate marketing, even though he never used a sales lingo or tried to push anyone to buy anything?

Here are the secrets:

Provide massive value.
Earn massive trust.
Learn and understand the needs and wants of your followers.
Lead and teach by example.

And he continued:

My most important rule for affiliate marketing is this: I only recommend products as an affiliate that I’m extremely very familiar with, and preferably products that I’ve used and have helped me achieve something. If I’m not confident in the product and I don’t feel it will positively help people, I will not promote it.

That is the first rule. The second rule says:

I never directly tell anyone to buy a product. I always recommend products based on my experience and in the context of what I’ve done or what I’m doing.

In this case, the way you use language can make or break your online affiliate business. In fact, Pat Flynn says:

There’s a huge difference (on several levels) between:

“Buy [product] now because you need it to grow your online business. . . “

and

“This is how I used [Product] to help me achieve. . . “

In fact, the first approach is based on benefits, but it isn’t personal. The second method is transparent, personal and meaningful. That is how you start building a successful affiliate marketing business.

What page does Pat Flynn use the most to make affiliate earnings?

My Resources Page: 20 referrals. Like I said, this is one of the most visited pages on my site. If you’re not utilizing a resource page for your niche on your site, I recommend that you do! It’s the ultimate non-aggressive way to earn money, leaving all parties happy in the end.

Of course, an affiliate marketing business is possible if you have a right amount of traffic on your website and your resource page gets enough visits to make passive income. Just a quick example. Let’s say your site has 10.000 visitors per month. Only 1.000 visit the resource page, while 10 of them buy one of the affiliate products. Assuming you make $100 on each affiliate; you can make as much as $1.000 monthly from affiliate marketing income.

In short, before it makes sense even to set up a resource page you want to make sure you have enough traffic and the right affiliations in place that can guarantee you a decent stream of income.

July 2013: Build your products

[image error]

For the first time, the earnings of Smart Passive Income go well above $100k per month! That is a million dollar yearly business! What did happen back then with that 79.35% growth?

Even though affiliate earnings slightly slew down, there was a new business venture.

This is definitely, by far, my best month ever! Breaking 6-figures in a month in gross revenue is incredible and something I never thought was possible. Of course, a major chunk of this income is a result of the launch of Breakthrough Blogging, but since enrollment is closed for now the numbers for next month should be back to normal.

Says Pat Flynn in July 2013. In fact, back when he had launched Breakthrough Blogging which generated over $50K!

Here are the three most significant lessons learned in July 2013:

You cannot please everybody. 
You have to grow a thick skin.
You must not forget about those who ARE pleased. They should be your primary focus. 

March 2015: Mix affiliate marketing with your offerings

As we saw in July 2013, for the first time Smart Passive Income earnings went over 100k per month. However, that was due to a course he had launched which made Pat Flynn over $50K. It was only in March 2015 that Smart Passive Income organically reached, and passed the $100K mark.

[image error]

In that previous month affiliate earnings skyrocketed mainly thanks to the income from the following affiliates:

[image error]

Also, the podcast sponsorship revenues grew:

[image error]

As Pat Flynn specified:

It was a record month! This is largely due to a special promotion I ran with Bluehost, and a couple of webinars I did with David Siteman Garland from SPI Podcast Session #136.

What key lessons did he learn?

Scarcity and the fear of missing out plays a huge role in your marketing success.

January 2016: From solopreneur to CEO

[image error]

What played a crucial role in January 2016 was the growth of affiliate earnings:

[image error]

Once again a few affiliations made a huge difference:

[image error]

What key lessons? In his January 2016 income report Pat Flynn said:

During these past six months, however, I have made a mindset shift to start thinking of myself as more of a CEO of my company. Not CEO in the sense that I’ll be putting on a suit every day, inaccessible to my team, and above everyone else, but CEO in the sense that I need to start treating my business like a real business.

and he continued:

I’ll be making a shift over the next two years from an affiliate-based income to one that is more diverse with my own products and courses.

March 2017: It all starts with believing in what you do!

[image error]

Pat Flynn back in January 2016 mentioned how he would have focused more on products he creates, like online courses, and ebooks. In fact, in March 2017 a good chunk of income came from that:

[image error]

What key lessons learned in March 2017?

if you have something of value to offer, and you truly believe in it, it’s your duty to sell so that people can understand that value and benefit from what you’ve created.

July 2017: Now that you have trust establish your brand

[image error]

The sales coming from online courses kept growing substantially:

[image error]

That is where Pat Flynn journey reached the top at $321,642.86. Today Smart Passive Income isn’t any more a blog with affiliate links but an enterprise with a CEO, which focuses on creating info-products that create value for its audience. Smart Passive Income, in short, is a brand.

Summary and Conclusion

Making money online isn’t easy. That might sound trivial. Yet it is not. Many new wannabe “digitalpreneurs” are fascinated by this shiny world. Pat Flynn’s story is compelling for a few reasons.

First, building a real business takes time and a lot of effort. It shows that if you want to build an online business fast, you have to look at a real need people have. In fact, even before Pat Flynn was able to make money from affiliate marketing it took more than a year.

Second, Pat Flynn started from an expertise he had. Since he was studying for the LEED exam, he used the materials he had put together to create a niche site to address precisely that audience. That is when he moved on and expanded in other areas.

Third, it is about experimentation. From App development to WordPress plugins, online courses, public speaking, coaching and so on. Before you find your muse you might have to experiment quite a bit. That is what Pat Flynn has been doing, and that is why – I believe – he was so successful.

Fourth, to make sales you don’t have to sell. As Pat Flynn’s and Smart Passive Income story showed, business is about trust. And you don’t get any if you don’t believe in what you’re doing. Also, when you’re the first who uses the product or service just showing how you benefited from them sell.

Fifth, you don’t need a complicated sales scheme, but just a community that trusts you and a resource page. In fact, as Pat Flynn showed that is how he generates most of the earnings from affiliate products. That resource page is the central page of the site where most traffic lands.

Sixth, what starts as a solo-project then naturally unfolds in an enterprise. After the first income report in October 2006, Pat Flynn in 2015/2016 shifted his mindset from a sort of solopreneur to the CEO of an organization. That might seem of no importance but it is a vital change.

If you didn’t get it yet: the riches is in the niches! 

Suggested resources by Pat:

Smart Passive Income Podcast

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The post How to Grow a Passive Income Business à La Pat Flynn appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.

How to Hack Your Personal Branding with SEO

Just a few months back I was curious to understand how Google algorithm was changing in light of the transition toward voice search. That is why together with WordLift Co-founder Andrea Volpini we undertook an experiment to see how I could use SEO for personal branding. In short, I wanted to know whether I could trigger a featured snippet based on the question “who is Gennaro Cuofano?”

For me, it was an experiment, but of course, now that it worked it is also a good business card to have. Why? First,  I was able to have it based on a web page of my site. That rarely happens. In fact, most times when it comes to people, Google only offers a featured snippet if you have a Wikipedia page or an authority website.

In short, Wikipedia has such an authority in Google‘s algorithm eyes that it will take it for good and offer it as a snippet. Even so, if you’re a person, unless you’re a public person there is no way Google is going to use that information in a featured snippet. At least that is what I thought before of this experiment!

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What’s the point of having a featured snippet?

Until I was able to trigger the featured snippet from a page of my website I didn’t think this would have been possible. There are three reasons why I believe having a featured snippet about you is important:

First, the featured snippet gets used by Google voice assistants to answer the questions of the users. Therefore, if you ask your personal assistant “Who is Gennaro Cuofano?” you will get an answer now. That means you can control your own or company branding also through Google. That is not trivial at all, especially now that we’re transitioning to voice search!

Second, the way Google is transitioning to voice search is changing too. Although the featured snippet is what gets you to the voice assistant, there is something more to take into account. 

Third, once you get your featured snippet why not use that as a business card?

Let me show you how to set up your featured snippet in a few steps.

The Featured Snippet Framework

You need a few steps to improve your chances of having the snippet:

set up a dedicated page
target a long tail keyword
transform that page into an entity
bring link juice to that page
bring authority to your featured page

Set up a short dedicated page

If you want to set up your page to make it to the featured snippet you want to make sure to have it set up as a biographical age. Ideally about 58-60 words and avoid storytelling. To have an idea on how to set it up you might want to look at Wikipedia pages for other people. For instance that is how I set that up:

Gennaro is a digital entrepreneur specialized in growing online businesses. He launched and created FourWeekMBA.com. He holds a Law Master’s Degree and an International MBA from LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego. In San Diego, he worked as a financial analyst for a real estate investment firm. Now Gennaro is a Business Developer for WordLift.

You might notice how I avoided story-telling, kept it short and biographical. That leads to the second point.

Target a specific long tail keyword

To make the page optimised for the featured snippet make sure to target a particular question. For instance, on my short page, I targeted the question: “who is Gennaro Cuofano?”

That will make it easier for Google to understand that you’re targeting that specific question, thus improving your chances to get the snippet.

Use structured data

Google Search works hard to understand the content of a page. You can help us by providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page. Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, and so on.

Source: developers.google.com

Although Google makes a case for using structured data for recipes, we now know that structured data is crucial also to rank any other kind of page. In other words, with structured data, you do Google‘s little crawlers job easier to index and rank the page easier.

How can you implement structured data? With a vocabulary called Schema.org.

What is Schema.org? As explained on their website:

Schema.org is a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet, on web pages, in email messages, and beyond.

and it continues:

Founded by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Yandex, Schema.org vocabularies are developed by an open community process, using the public-schemaorg@w3.org mailing list and through GitHub.

In short, Schema is the most efficient way to translate the content on that page as data that Google can quickly process. That is why I used WordLift to create a page and set that up as a schema type “person.” In fact, that is a particular property of Schema.org that allows Google to understand what the web page is about.

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I then used an additional field to link my page to all the other pages about me on the web.

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With this setting, you will create an entity, or a defined object now existing on the web. It is almost like Google finally knew I existed.

Bring link juice to that page

To make that page more relevant connect it to other key pages of your site. For instance, if you have a few articles that are ranking pretty well use them to create internal linking toward your page.

Bring authority to that page

To make sure that page becomes authoritative for Google you need a bit of backlink. How do you get them? One effective way is to use that page as a bio to link when writing guest posts for other sites.

Conclusion

Getting a featured snippet isn’t only about getting leads but also building your brand through Google. For how unconventional that might seem Google is the ultimate source of authority. Therefore, that is the best business card you could ever present to anyone.

Do you need help setting up your featured snippet? Ping me here.

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The post How to Hack Your Personal Branding with SEO appeared first on The Four-Week MBA.