WITH LINKEDIN, MICROSOFT LOOKS TO AVOID PAST ACQUISITION BUSTS

Satya Nadella, chief of Microsoft, at a shareholders meeting in Bellevue, Wash., last month. He has made a series of smaller deals that have shown positive results.

SEATTLE — Microsoft announced on Thursday that it had completed its $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals.

There are ample reasons to be skeptical that the deal, the biggest by far in Microsoft’s history, will pay off.

First, the company has not had a great track record with this sort of thing. Two of Microsoft’s largest acquisitions — the digital advertising firm aQuantive and the mobile unit of Nokia — were disappointments that eventually led to the company writing off nearly the entire value of the deals, more than $13 billion in all.


And Microsoft is not the only big company that has ended up wasting money on acquisitions. In fact, decades of research by academics and consulting firms have shown that from 60 to 80 percent of mergers and acquisitions end up destroying, rather than creating, shareholder value.

“Mergers go on anyway, even though there’s not much evidence they work out,” said Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Everybody believes they are going to be different.”

Still, the Microsoft of 2016 is different from the unfocused giant of the past that lurched from deal to deal with wild-eyed ambitions of catching rivals like Google and Apple. It has a new chief executive who has made a series of smaller deals that have shown positive results. The company’s stock is trading at record highs.

In a joint interview shortly before their deal closed, Satya Nadella and Jeff Weiner, the chiefs of Microsoft and LinkedIn, described how they intended to make the acquisition work, where many before had failed. “In this case, this is the most substantial, big M&A that Microsoft has done in its history,” Mr. Nadella said. “So the stakes are absolutely high.”

A key difference in the way Microsoft has approached the deal is the degree of independence it plans to give LinkedIn. It will not weave LinkedIn, which is based in Silicon Valley, into one of its existing product lines, nor will it treat it like a disconnected business. Mr. Weiner will remain LinkedIn’s chief executive.

“Neither one of us is a Pollyanna,” said Mr. Weiner. “We both know that acquisition integrations are challenging.”

A good model inside Microsoft is the company’s $2.5 billion purchase in 2014 of Mojang, the developer behind Minecraft, which has continued to grow under Microsoft’s ownership, retaining key employees along the way. Mr. Nadella and Mr. Weiner said they had also looked to Facebook’s success in acquiring companies like the photo-sharing service Instagram, while granting them autonomy.

“I absolutely think of LinkedIn as our Instagram,” Mr. Nadella said.

Both men said that expanding the business of LinkedIn, which has more 470 million members, was what they cared most about. Microsoft will use its sales and distribution muscle to do just that.

The company’s executives on Thursday will outline plans to integrate the professional identity people have on LinkedIn with Microsoft Outlook and the rest of the Office suite. LinkedIn members will be able to draft résumés in Word to update their LinkedIn profiles.

“Satya said starting literally on Day 1 the first priority is growing LinkedIn,” Mr. Weiner said. “That if LinkedIn continues to grow its membership, if it continues to realize its mission, its vision, if it continues to grow the business, that’s going to create value for Microsoft.”

So determined was Mr. Nadella to get off on the right foot that he emailed an unusual request to Mr. Weiner a few days after the announcement of their deal in June. He asked Mr. Weiner to take the lead on an integration team responsible for merging their two companies, a responsibility that normally falls to an executive at the acquiring company.

“I had to read it at least twice,” Mr. Weiner said. “I did a bit of a double take.”

Microsoft and LinkedIn have spent much of the last six months — as the proposed deal went through regulatory reviews — getting to know each other.

In a series of meetings the companies called “learning days,” teams of Microsoft employees from the Seattle area flew to LinkedIn’s headquarters in Silicon Valley to talk about what’s going on with Microsoft research, engineers, sales and other areas. LinkedIn employees flew to Microsoft to do the same.


A Microsoft rival, Salesforce.com, raised objections with European antitrust regulators, saying the deal would hurt competition. In the end, the Europeans greenlighted the deal after Microsoft made a series of minor concessions.

About 10,000 LinkedIn employees will join Microsoft. David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School who has done studies on LinkedIn and Microsoft, said one of the greatest challenges in making the deal work would be retaining talent.

“Critical in any merger of this type is, it’s made a lot of people very rich,” he said. “Will they stay?”

Mr. Weiner, for one, said he was committed to LinkedIn.

“I’m in my dream job, and the combination with Microsoft provides that much more opportunity to realize what it is we set out to do here,” he said. “So I’m not going anywhere.”

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UBER AND LYFT NEARBY, RENTALS CARS MY BE RIPE FOR A COMEUPPANCE

The day before Election Day, even the most frequent of travelers may have missed the bad news about Hertz. After a disappointing earnings release, its stock fell by 23 percent.

The trouble seemed to come mostly from too many of its cars losing value too quickly, but revenue fell, too. Which could not be less surprising, given the enormous user experience problem the car rental industry faces.

Every time I’ve traveled since Lyft and Uber achieved near ubiquity — whether for work or pleasure, trips long or short — I’ve tried my level best to avoid renting a car. And there’s no better way to explain why than to catalog every negative feeling the industry inspires on any given itinerary.

1. There is probably a bus at the airport to get to the line to get your keys, so you can get to the lot, so you can get to your car, so you can get going. You don’t know when the bus will come — your company’s bus will surely come last, and it is crowded and lurching and too cold or hot.


2. Or perhaps there is one train or bus to a central facility far from the terminals. Shorter wait for the transport. Longer ride.

3. The wait once there is also totally unpredictable, and when you get to the counter you will endure Faustian refueling options and a scary insurance upsell. That’s “hate-selling,” as the folks at the travel news and research company Skift have memorably termed it. If you are a loyalty program member and can go straight to your car, lucky you. But beware of confused drivers while you wander the lanes looking for your vehicle.

4. You will inspect the car’s exterior carefully, and it won’t be easy in the dark or the rain or the snow — or all three simultaneously. Don’t skip this step. If you do, you may spend months trying to keep the car company from charging you for damage you didn’t cause.

5. Perhaps now you will head back to the terminal to pick up your family and luggage and car seat, because who wants to move that whole scene via airport train or bus? You will install the car seat at the curb near arrivals, while cars inch around you, horns honking, and the toddler wails and the cops get irritated because you’re taking too long.

6. Or maybe you’re traveling solo. Much easier. Or so it seems until you get to the toll plaza, where there are no humans and you can’t use cash or credit cards. Did the car rental company tell you whether you have a transponder or how the system works? No. What does it cost? Hmm. Is it working? Later, you’ll find that if you used a toll transponder once, for a single $2 toll over a three-day rental at Hertz or Avis, you’ll be charged a usage fee for all three days on top of the toll. Oh, and you probably won’t get your toll bill for days or weeks afterward, because that comes separately, though you may be able to look up its status by typing a reservation number into a third-party website somewhere. So good luck getting your expenses done quickly.

7. You dodged the refuel upsell, so good for you. But now comes the range anxiety. Is there a gas station near the airport? Will I have time to find it at the crack of dawn and refuel? Will the rental company notice if I drove 12 miles after refueling? They might at Thrifty, where the company demands receipts.

8. Return the car. And read the receipt really, really carefully, since the insurance charges you declined loudly so as to avoid this very moment (because you’ve been to this rodeo before) will sometimes show up anyway. You will not be able to get them removed without waiting in a line somewhere else while the countdown clock to your flight ticks away and you worry about the length of the security line.

9. Repeat steps 1 through 3, except this time heading back to the terminal buildings.

Or here’s another alternative: You can press a button on your phone when you get off the plane, climb into a Lyft or Uber and go.

This won’t be a real choice on many trips. You don’t want to install that car seat in multiple Lyfts on a weeklong vacation. Plus, Uber is not helpful in most rural areas and can get expensive if you’re going long distances each day. And there can be less rental-car hassle at smaller airports.

But in an increasing number of areas and situations, the Lyft and Uber experience for both business and leisure travelers is simply worlds better than turning to a rental car. It’s superior to taxis, too, since they are generally harder to call or hail than a Lyft or Uber vehicle unless you’re at an airport. Plus, not having a rental car means no parking fees or tickets and no distracted driving while trying to hear Waze spit out directions in unfamiliar environments while you dodge trucks and watch for bikers darting about.

How do you figure out which ground transportation option will work best for you? It isn’t always easy, since you want to be sure you can hail Lyft or Uber wherever you are, in any random destination.

The companies are trying to reduce this range concern by allowing people to book rides in advance. That way, you won’t have to wonder whether a car will be near you 12 miles from the center of Orlando when you push a button at 6 p.m. on a Thursday. Lyft will give you a firm price quote, which may include a surge premium if it thinks one will be warranted based on historical data. Uber won’t lock the price in until right before your trip.

Given all this, I feel genuinely bad for rental car company executives. Airports and municipalities practically legislate pain into the process, since they generally decide where the companies can set up shop.


But the whole experience doesn’t have to be like this. Silvercar, a newer rental company with a fleet of Audi A4s, operates just outside many airport properties but will come pick you up and may even leave your car waiting in the airport short-term parking lot. There is no paper rental agreement, and you open the car with your phone. Toll transponders cost nothing, and fuel refills upon return are a flat $5 plus the (non-marked-up) market price of the gas.

For this, you might pay $65 or so a day, which most likely represents a premium over a generic midsize car from Enterprise (but could be comparable to what higher-priced operators like Hertz may charge). First-timers at Silvercar, however, qualify for a $39 daily rate if they are not renting in New York City. Silvercar’s chief executive, Luke Schneider, figures that there are plenty more people who will eventually throw up their hands at the alternatives and sample his offering.

“If I have to go through a whole lot of brain damage to get a rental car, maybe service is valuable to me,” he said.

I had hoped to inspire a vociferous response from the likes of Hertz (which also owns Dollar, Thrifty and Advantage) and Avis (which owns Budget). But Hertz wouldn’t talk when I shared my initial thoughts about this column, and Avis didn’t even reply to my messages. I was particularly pointed in my inquiries about charging a per-day fee for toll transponders on days when people aren’t even using them, but they did not bite. And really, how can you defend the indefensible?

Enterprise charges the fee only on days that you actually roll through a toll plaza. “It was a more customer-friendly approach,” said Lisa Martini, a spokeswoman.

Hertz is trying to up its game, adding digital booking agreements and electronic receipts in recent months. But then I got a recent hate-selling email urging me to avoid “worries” and “hassles” by letting an employee drive me back from the Hertz lot to the terminal for $34. “That’s gouging,” said Silvercar’s Mr. Schneider.

I take no special pleasure in pushing the Lyft or Uber button. These companies barreled into cities without regard for local regulations, made light of important insurance issues and have taken their cars offline or threatened to in places like Austin, Tex., when they don’t like the local rules.

But when they’re up against competitors that inspire only sweaty sighs of relief when you’re done with them, it’s not really a fair fight. “Rental car companies have such an aggressive, non-customer-friendly form of selling a product,” said Jason Clampet, Skift co-founder. “So it has a lot of people cheering for them to get their comeuppance.”

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MMM AS A WHOLE IS A PYRAMID THAT WILL SOON SCARTER - SENATE WARNS NIGERIANS

The Senate Committee on Banking, Insurance and other Financial Institutions has warned that the ponzi investment scheme, MMM, is a pyramid that would soon burst.

It then called on Nigerians to be wary of the investment model that originated from Russia. MMM involves directing clients to make money available for an anonymous person with a promise of 30 per cent return within a month.

But speaking in an interview with Saturday Vanguard, Chairman of the committee, Senator Rafiu Adebayo Ibrahim and other members of the committee alerted Nigerians to the dangers of investing in MMM.

“Any Financial institutions of any kind that is not under the regulation of a Regulator such as MMM is a pyramid that will soon burst. We engaged the CBN and they have issued a statement in the recent past. So Nigeria should be wise and know that there is no free money anywhere. One wonders which investment can yield 30% flat any where in the world,” he said.


For Senator Gbolahan Dada, APC, Ogun West, “It is important for members of the Public to know this fact. MMM was a Russian company founded in 1989. The company was established by Sergei Mavrodi, his brother named Vyacheslav Mavrodi, and Olga Melnikova. The name of the company was taken from the first letters of the three founders’ surnames. MMM could be called a wonder bank. Over 5 to 40 million people lost up to $10billion in the 90s when it was introduced. The company was shut down by Russian Police in 1994 and declared bankruptcy in 1997.

“It is unfortunate that some unscrupulous Nigerians are capitalizing on the current economic hardships to defraud unsuspecting Nigerians by encouraging them to part with their hard earned money with mouth-watering interest or returns.

“MMM does not contribute or add value to the economy because the records of such transactions are not kept and not made open to the public or regulatory authorities. It is a product of fraud and nothing good comes from fraud.

“The operator pays returns to the investors from new capital acquired from new investors and not from legitimately earned profits. The operators entice investors with mouth watering offers. The short term returns are abnormally high and unusually consistent. They may struggle to pay the first returns but would bolt away with subsequent capital or deposits made by investors.”

Speaking about the financial implications of investing in MMM, Dada said, “The money involved in MMM are usually spent by the promoters on frivolities. The promoters engage in ostentatious lifestyles. They hardly have concern for the unsuspecting investors. It is fool hardy for any members of the public to fall prey to the scheme despite warnings from stakeholders. Those patronizing MMM will have a tale of woes to tell after losing their deposits.”

On what can the Senate do to protect the interest of Nigerians, the lawmaker said, “The House of Representatives has taken a step to condemn the Scheme and also promised to investigate the scheme. Secondly, the CBN and majority of the Banks have warned members of the public from participating in the scheme.

“The EFCC also issued warnings to arrest perpetrators of that scheme. My take is simple. Any Nigerian who decides to participate in the scheme is on his own and should blame himself in the event of any loss. The only thing the Senate can do is to advise Nigerians to shun the temptation of getting rich quick so as not to lose their meager resources.”


In his contribution, another member of the committee, Senator Adesoji Akanbi, APC, Oyo South, who noted that the present economic situation in the country caused MMM to become popular, warned Nigerians to be careful, just as he said that those involved are civilized and educated people who actually know the consequences.

According to Akanbi, “first and foremost, every Nigerian has the right to embark on any investment, it is a choice of anyone. The question is, is MMM real, is it actually threatening the financial institutions in Nigeria; is it posing a security threat and is it capital flight? Those questions need to be looked into. I believe that it is the consequence of recession, it is not MMM, but about the desperation of Nigerians looking for survival and nobody needs to be blamed.

“If we see the kind of people that patronize MMM, they are civilized, educated people who actually know the consequences of failed investment, but they still take the risk and go into it. The only advise I can give them is to be careful, they have the right to go into it, it is their right, but they must be careful.”

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U.S SAYS, RUSSIAN HACKERS ACTED TO AID TRUMP IN ELECTION

President Obama giving a speech in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday. He has ordered a comprehensive report on the Russian efforts.

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded with “high confidence” that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump, according to senior administration officials.

They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.

In the months before the election, it was largely documents from Democratic Party systems that were leaked to the public. Intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russians gave the Democrats’ documents to WikiLeaks.


Republicans have a different explanation for why no documents from their networks were ever released. Over the past several months, officials from the Republican committee have consistently said that their networks were not compromised, asserting that only the accounts of individual Republicans were attacked. On Friday, a senior committee official said he had no comment.

Mr. Trump’s transition office issued a statement Friday evening reflecting the deep divisions that emerged between his campaign and the intelligence agencies over Russian meddling in the election. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” the statement said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’”

One senior government official, who had been briefed on an F.B.I. investigation into the matter, said that while there were attempts to penetrate the Republican committee’s systems, they were not successful.

But the intelligence agencies’ conclusions that the hacking efforts were successful, which have been presented to President Obama and other senior officials, add a complex wrinkle to the question of what the Kremlin’s evolving objectives were in intervening in the American presidential election.

“We now have high confidence that they hacked the D.N.C. and the R.N.C., and conspicuously released no documents” from the Republican organization, one senior administration official said, referring to the Russians.

It is unclear how many files were stolen from the Republican committee; in some cases, investigators never get a clear picture. It is also far from clear that Russia’s original intent was to support Mr. Trump, and many intelligence officials — and former officials in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign — believe that the primary motive of the Russians was to simply disrupt the campaign and undercut confidence in the integrity of the vote.

The Russians were as surprised as everyone else at Mr. Trump’s victory, intelligence officials said. Had Mrs. Clinton won, they believe, emails stolen from the Democratic committee and from senior members of her campaign could have been used to undercut her legitimacy. The intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to help Mr. Trump was first reported by The Washington Post.

In briefings to the White House and Congress, intelligence officials, including those from the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, have identified individual Russian officials they believe were responsible. But none have been publicly penalized.

It is possible that in hacking into the Republican committee, Russian agents were simply hedging their bets. The attack took place in the spring, the senior officials said, about the same time that a group of hackers believed to be linked to the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence agency, stole the emails of senior officials of the Democratic National Committee. Intelligence agencies believe that the Republican committee hack was carried out by the same Russians who penetrated the Democratic committee and other Democratic groups.

The finding about the Republican committee is expected to be included in a detailed report of “lessons learned” that Mr. Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to assemble before he leaves office on Jan. 20. That report is intended, in part, to create a comprehensive history of the Russian effort to influence the election, and to solidify the intelligence findings before Mr. Trump is sworn in.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt about any intelligence suggesting a Russian effort to influence the election. “I don’t believe they interfered,” he told Time magazine in an interview published this week. He suggested that hackers could come from China, or that “it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

Intelligence officials and private cybersecurity companies believe that the Democratic National Committee was hacked by two different Russian cyberunits. One, called “Cozy Bear” or “A.P.T. 29” by some Western security experts, is believed to have spent months inside the D.N.C. computer network, as well as other government and political institutions, but never made public any of the documents it took. (A.P.T. stands for “Advanced Persistent Threat,” which usually describes a sophisticated state-sponsored cyberintruder.)

The other, the G.R.U.-controlled unit known as “Fancy Bear,” or “A.P.T. 28,” is believed to have created two outlets on the internet, Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, to make Democratic documents public. Many of the documents were also provided to WikiLeaks, which released them over many weeks before the Nov. 8 election.

Representative Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on CNN in September that the R.N.C. had been hacked by Russia, but then quickly withdrew the claim.

Mr. McCaul, who was considered by Mr. Trump for secretary of Homeland Security, initially told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “It’s important to note, Wolf, that they have not only hacked into the D.N.C. but also into the R.N.C.” He added that “the Russians have basically hacked into both parties at the national level, and that gives us all concern about what their motivations are.”


Minutes later, the R.N.C. issued a statement denying that it had been hacked. Mr. McCaul subsequently said that he had misspoken, but that it was true that “Republican political operatives” had been the target of Russian hacking. So were establishment Republicans with no ties to the campaign, including former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Mr. McCaul may have had in mind a collection of more than 200 emails of Republican officials and activists that appeared this year on the website DCLeaks.com. That website got far more attention for the many Democratic Party documents it posted.

The messages stolen from Republicans have drawn little attention because most are routine business emails from local Republican Party officials in several states, congressional staff members and party activists.

Among those whose emails were posted was Peter W. Smith, who runs a venture capital firm in Chicago and has long been active in “opposition research” for the Republican Party. He said he was unaware that his emails had been hacked until he was called by a reporter on Thursday.

He said he believes that his material came from a hack of the Illinois Republican Party.

“I’m not upset at all,” he said. “I try in my communications, quite frankly, not to say anything that would be embarrassing if made public.”

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HOW TO BECOME GOOGLE "ADWORDS" DISPLAY CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL

To become Google AdWords Display Certified Professional you need pass exams conducted by Google on AdWords Fundamentals exam and Display Advertising exam.

Below image is my certificate, certified by Google after passing the AdWords Fundamentals exam and AdWords display exam; I have been awarded this certficate in the June month of 2016.

become AdWords display certified

About Google AdWords Display Advertising Exam:

Google AdWords Display Advertising exam covers the basic and advanced concepts, including best practices for creating, managing and optimizing display campaigns

It is good to study these modules before taking the display advertising exam.

Module 1: About the Google display network

About the Google Display network
Where ads might appear on the display network
About contextual targeting
About the display network ad auction
About “search network with display select”
Create an effective mobile site.
Module 2: Setting up a network campaign

About campaign settings
About the AdWords Ad gallery
Biding features on the display network
Choose a bid for your display network campaign
Bid on viewable impressions using viewable CPM
About enhanced cost-per-click (ECPC)
About bid adjustments
About automated bidding
Enhance your ad with extensions
Create dynamic display ads
Create a lightbox
Lightbox ads
Fix a disapproved ad
Module 3: Showing your ads on the display network campaign

Targeting settings on the display network
About managed placements
Target websites about specific topics
Add negative keywords to your campaign
How language targeting works
About custom ad scheduling
Advanced display mobile device
Display planner basis
The display networks tab
Module 4: Reaching tour audience on the display network

About targeting your bids by audience interest
Reach people similar to your existing audiences
Reach people of specific demographics
About re-marketing
Use dynamic re-marketing to show ads tailored to your site visitors
Created a feed for your dynamic display ads
Module 5: Measuring and optimizing performance on the display network

Drives sales and generate leads
Increase brand awareness
Measuring sales and conversions
Evaluate ad performance on the display network
Account, campaign and ad group performance
Explore your data on the campaign tab
Optimize display network ads and campaigns
Tips for creating effective display ads
About automatic targeting in display
You can learn these modules by visiting Google Partners Help page.

After learning search advertising exam modules read this pdf for quick revision before attempting the exam.

About AdWords Display Advertising exam:

Exam Duration: You will have 120 minutes to complete 100 multiple choice and true/false questions.
Exam Pass %: You need to get a score of 80% or higher to pass.
If you have got less  the qualifying marks (less than 80%) you need to wait for one week to reattempt the test.

You can take the Search Advertising exam by visiting this link.

If you clear this exam and AdWords Fundamentals exam, you will earn the certificate. The certificate will be valid for only 12 months from the date of examination.

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DISCOVER THIS $1.2 TRILLION DOLLAR NICHE THAT HAS OVER 4.2 PEOEPLE "DRESSING TO IMPRESS"

This should come to no surprise...

Millions of people are literally willing to shell out their cash so they can either look or feel better about themselves (or both).

And this niche is exactly that...

You're sitting there asking "What niche is this?" but the real question you, as a marketer, should be asking is how you could better serve this audience.

You don't need to be an expert nor experienced in this niche.

The reason why I say all this is because people tend to judge a niche by its cover and not by it's potential.

You're going to be reading about Fashion Design, and chances are, you've got very little experience in this niche.

The truth is, most experts of any niche are not going to be the best at marketing.

You could easily outsource and find someone who has more knowledge than you do in this niche.

So keep your marketing hat on as you read through this report, and see how you could better serve the audience of this niche and what angle you can take to dominate.

We're going to be breaking it down to bits and pieces and providing all the information you need to jump in this niche (check out the other niche reports you may have missed).

We'll reveal how much money is being spent, why it's profitable, what products are being sold the most so you can get an idea of what you can do for your potential audience.

You'll discover what the most popular content is, who the most influential people are, the most popular social media hubs, blogs and forums.

All of the reports that we create are thoroughly researched and designed to give you a head start in making a profit from the niche.

We try and choose niches that have a wide range of different business models available but the vast majority would make perfect blog / authority sites monetized by affiliate marketing.

And remember, just because other people are reading this report does not mean it is saturated.

So read on, and try to keep in mind that you need to dig into a unique angle and/or sub-niche.

Market Size

Market Size is $1.2 trillion
Median Annual Earnings for salaried fashion Designers - $62,610
Business – 19,295
Amount spent on fashion in the U.S. each year - $250 billion
Employment – 4,200,000
Annual Growth 7.2%
Over the past five years, the Fashion Designers industry has trended toward growth.

Designers and retailers have started closing the gap between style and value in order to appeal to massive amounts of consumers.

As a result, demand for fashion and other specialized design services increased during the period.

Moreover, the industry is poised for growth over the next five years.



Demographics:

Core consumers aged 35-39 about 10.8% followed by 40-44 about 10.5%
65.9% Male and 63.7% Female users are married
29.5% people have secondary level of educational qualification
20.7% people are Assoc. Professional & Technicians
18.4% are in different services
Source: Shownearby



(P.S. If you'd like to download a free list of 1,781 profitable niches click here or the image below)

Niche Demand



Keyword Avg Monthly Searches
fashion designer 110,000
dress design 110,000
design clothes 18,800
clothes designer 12,100
top fashion designers 4,400
famous fashion designers 9,900
online fashion designing 1,300
fashion designing institute 2,400


The table above shows the monthly searches on Google for this niche.

Combined they add up to over 268,900 searches a month and that's not including the thousands of long tail keywords that we haven't covered.

This is a huge niche with a lot of demand.



Common Searches




Google.com
fashion design online
fashion design websites
fashion design software
fashion design careers
fashion design schools


Amazon.com
Fashion design book
Fashion design kit
Fashion design for kids
Fashion designer
Fashion design studio


Yahoo.com
Fashion designers
Fashion design school
Fashion design software
Fashion design sketches


Bing
Fashion designer games
Fashion designers
Fashion design online free
Fashion design new York
Fashion design jobs
Fashion design software


YouTube
Fashion design
Fashion design for beginners
Fashion design documentary
Fashion design software
Fashion design course


Answers.com
What are the work hours of a Fashion Designer?
What is fashion design?
How do you design fashion?
What Knowledge do you need to be a fashion designer?
Who was the first fashion designer of the world?


Wikipedia.com
Fashion design
Fashion design council of India
Fashion designer: Style Icon
Fashion design copyright
Fashion Design services


As you can see people are searching for everything from fashion design to fashion design software in the niche.

This shows just how passionate audiences are about the niche.



Niche Growth & Monthly Searches

Check out the trend in interest in the fashion design niche, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.

It is increasing in popularity and is predicted to remain relevant for years to come so step in as all the market research has been done for you, and all there's left for you to do is dominate your spot with one of the sub niches listed below...

As you can see in the graph, Fashion Design was very popular a couple years ago and has leveled off ever since.

This is because people are naturally interested with fashion design as it's a very profitable niche that can be further 'niched' down as you can see with the sub-niches list below...



Sub-Niches To Explore

Fashion Blogs
Fashion trends
Fashion movies
Speech for fashion
Designers design
Fashion houses
Fashion magazine


May also be interested:

Exclusive clothes design
Celebrity’s designers
Clothes brands
Designer fashion jewelry
Designers’ warehouse
Nail art and design
Tattoo design and current fashion

Most Popular Content

Use the ideas here to create similar content for your site.



Most Popular Content Shares
Here's What 1930s Fashion Designers Thought We'd Be Wearing In The Year 2000 46,300
How Men Should Look… According To Fashion Designers 41,000
Star Magic Ball 2015 Fashion Preview: Designer Pepsi Herrera on the Ball Gown He's Creating for Kim 34,500
Fifth-Grade Fashion Designer Making Name for Herself on the Runway 33,600
French Fashion Designer Steals Mexican Fashion 31,600


As you can see people excited and motivated to share content such as articles in this niche.



Domain Name Ideas



Domain Name
fashiondesign.info
fashiondesign.org
fashiondesign.com
highfashiondesign.org
fashionart.info
highdesignart.com
highfashionart.net
fashionwebsitedesign.net
highfashiondesign.info
onlinefashiondesign.net


Influential People In The Niche



Name Twitter Handle Followers
Bright.Bazaar @brightbazaar 27,549
fashionpulse @fashionpulse 11,946
Lifestyles by Alexis @alexistrends99 257,869
Trendland @trendland 34,594
George Kotsiopoulos @georgekotsi 171,415


These are the 5 most influential people in the market niche on Fashion Design.

Network with them, highlight or feature them in your content.

Interview them. Use them to do research.

These people are NOT your enemy, but instead potential partners who can send you traffic and work with you.

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Why Influencer Marketing Is Great for Your SEO

These four tips will help you build a "win-win" relationship with your influencers.

Many marketers strive to align themselves with influencers because this kind of engagement has been proven to rapidly expand brand visibility for many businesses.

With influencer marketing, a much larger audience is suddenly exposed to your brand, which often results in a significant spike in traffic that can lead to more subscribers, followers, and leads.

An even greater benefit of influencer marketing that some folks miss out on is the long-term SEO improvement. A study conducted by Moz revealed the weight of some significant ranking factors in search, and if you read between the lines, you’ll see how influencer marketing can work to your advantage in organic search.

1. Expanding your link profile.

As much as Google’s algorithm has changed in order to eliminate junk listings from search results, backlinks are still important when it comes to determining your position in the search results. What’s changed with backlinks is how the algorithm scores them, specifically focusing on the source’s authority, quality, and relevancy.

Related: 8 Do's and Don'ts of Influencer Marketing

This is a primary reason why guest posting has gained popularity, as marketers and brands create content to publish on the sites of influencers or influential brands.

When you create content with the purpose of generating targeted referral traffic, providing value to an extended audience, and improving your reach, you’re also generating organic and natural links that will enhance your backlink profile in the search engines.

2. Growing site traffic.

I mentioned how influencer marketing can generate significant traffic for your site. This traffic typically comes from referral links, but you could see an increase in direct traffic as well. Backlinko created a list of some 200 ranking factors used by Google’s algorithm, which includes both Direct Traffic and Repeat Traffic as ranking factors. This was confirmed by the Moz study I referenced above, in which traffic is the fifth most influential factor on the algorithm.

Guest posting is just one way to generate traffic. When you form connections and build relationships with influencers, they will share your content across their social channels, where it will be picked up by your audience.

Although social signals do not impact organic search rank, the growth in traffic to your site over time will have an impact on your rank.

3. Bringing the content home.

A good relationship with an influencer isn’t developed quickly, but it can bring a tremendous amount of value once established. While many of the top influencers tend to be incredibly busy, you may be able to get a guest post on your own site from a mid-level influencer with a growing audience.


Related: 8 Reasons Why Your CEO Needs Influencer Marketing

Once you have that high-value content published in your blog, take the time to promote the content far and wide to both of your audiences. Not only will you gain the benefit of a traffic boost, but that content could also start generating inbound links.

Other people will likely curate that content and link back to it, or quote the influencer in their own posts or to link back to your content to cite facts and statements from the influencer.

4. More visibility with video.

Given that YouTube falls under Google’s umbrella, it’s no surprise that traffic increased considerably after the Google Panda update. Unfortunately, highly relevant and well-trafficked videos might still get preferential treatment in the search results.

Take this as a solid opportunity to work with an influencer to produce more than just blog posts. Diversifying your content not only expands your reach to different audience segments, but it can also give you more of that coveted first page real estate in organic search.

A video interview with an influencer, audio from a podcast, or interview segments divided into slides with striking visuals can give you a significant bump in search visibility. While these efforts won’t contribute directly to the search visibility of your site, it’s always a good idea to have other entry points into your funnel, such as videos.

Related: Reach More Customers with Influencer Marketing

When the influencer’s audience searches for content related to that influencer, they’ll find your videos optimized and co-branded, which will ultimately give your own brand a lift among those new audience segments.


Every relationship should be reciprocal, whether it’s with your audience or an influencer. Working with an influencer in the ways I listed above can give you a lift in organic visibility, but you shouldn’t approach influencer marketing as a means of “using” or “leveraging” the influencer. The best results will come from a mutually beneficial relationship where respect is established. If you treat them selfishly, influencers will start to ignore you.

A win-win approach creates a stronger relationship, and influencers you engage with will be happy to work with you more often when you reciprocate by helping them expand their own brand visibility and audience.

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How To Write SEO Friendly Post For More Organic Traffic To Your Blog

Optimizing your blog posts so that they can achieve higher search engine rankings is one of the toughest yet a simple task.

If you know what you are doing, then you can rank your post by doing just on-page SEO optimization.

You might already know about the various methods to generate backlinks like guest blogging and blog commenting or blogger outreach.

These are all off-page SEO techniques, and they help a lot but if you are generating great content, then you won’t face any problems in ranking your post without any backlinks.

In today’s article, we are going to see how you can write SEO friendly blog posts.

There might be some techniques you already know, but I can assure you that after reading this post, you will surely learn something new.

Things you must know:

1:No matter how much you optimize your posts, if the content is worthless, you won’t be able to see it ranking in search engines.

So before you do anything, you should make sure that you have a superb topic for your article and amazing material and resources that you can add to support your points.

Once you have these things, writing the best content won’t be a problem.

2:Second thing you need to keep in mind is that the longer the post, the better chance to rank the post in search engines.

If you don’t agree with this fact, then you just need to visit Google and type in a search query and go through the first 10 results. Each and every one of them will contain more than 2000 words.

If you type in any tech related or mobile related queries, you will get results that have 500 words or less but those topics won’t bring you traffic for long.

So try searching with a query like “How To Start a Blog” or something similar and you will see that the more detailed the article, the higher it will be ranking.

Now that you know about these things, we can get started with the article.

Steps to Optimize Blog Posts
Now we are going to see the exact steps that you need to follow when writing an article to make your blog post optimized.

Step 1: Write Naturally:

When you write without thinking about adding keywords, SEO, the keyword density and all that stuff, you will end up producing the best content possible. Because you are writing naturally and it will come up as, you are talking with your readers.

But before that, there is one thing that you should do.

You should know what your target keyword is, and you should come up with at least 15-20 LSI keywords (more about it later). Once you have done it, try to memorize those LSI keywords and then you start writing your article.

This way, though you are not looking to add keywords, they will automatically be added to the article, and you might even come up with a completely new keyword group for the article.

Also, you should use formatting in your article like using bold, Italic and underline to highlight some important points. It will help your readers skim through the entire article and even though they didn’t read the entire article, they got everything that you wrote.

I won’t talk much about keyword density because we all know how much we should keep it. If you don’t know about it, then the best keyword density would be around 1% to 3%. And this is the density of your target keyword only.

Step 2: Title Tags:

When writing a long post, you will have to break it down into sub-categories for the comfort of your readers. You don’t want them to get bored while reading your post.

To break down your content, you can use title tags in your article. The various title tags are:

<h1> … </h1> - Heading 1
<h2> … </h2> - Heading 2
<h3> … </h3> - Heading 3
Similarly up to Heading 6!
The H1 tag will be taken for your post title, so if you don’t use it in your article content, there won’t be a problem. I have seen some bloggers use H1 tag again inside the article, but I wouldn't recommend otherwise.

You can use other tags – H2, H3 and H4 in your content but mostly you won’t be using H5 and H6 in your article because those are comparatively less beneficial than the first ones.

When using the title tags, you should use them in descending order which means that you should first use H2 tag before H3 tag and so on.

Even if you use H3 tag before H2, it won’t pose any major problem, but why to take the chance. And since H2 is more powerful than H3, you should keep it before other tags to get the maximum benefit.

The next thing is that you should add your target keyword at least once in your title tags. It should be present in your article title, which is the H1 tag and also in H2 and H3 tags.

If you are using multiple H2 and H3 tags, then you can use LSI keywords for them to avoid over-optimizing your articles.

Step 3: Meta Description:

The meta description is the small description that appears below your article title in search engines and play a very important role in search engine ranking.

Since we are looking to optimize blog posts for better search engine rankings, we will not avoid meta description at any cost.

When you are adding the meta description, you should be creative because you have to make it meaningful and at the same time add a target keyword and a related keyword in just 150 characters or less.

seo friendly meta description
As you can see in the above screenshot, I have added my target keyword “how to start a blog” and you can also see related keywords like “create a WordPress blog” and “how to start a blog and make money.”

I just came up with this, but you can spend some minutes to make it look more professional because the better the description will be the higher your post will rank and the higher CTR you will get.

Step 4: Images:

If you are writing a post with 2000 words and not adding a single image to it, then you are just allowing your readers to get bored and leave your site. We don’t want that, right?

And images are not only useful to keep your readers hooked but they help a lot in the SEO score of your article.

Whenever you are uploading an image to your post, make sure that you name it properly before uploading it. I would keep the name of my image like this – “how-to-start-a-blog.jpg” rather than something like this “blog123.jpg”. And if you are uploading multiple images then use related keywords to name them.

Next you have to make sure that you add a keyword-rich ALT tag to your images. The reason you should use ALT tags is that search engine bots can’t see images, and so they look for ALT tags in your article, and if it’s present then they will know that an image is present.

Since we have used a keyword-rich title for our image, we can just use that for our ALT tag as well.

Name of the image – “how-to-start-a-blog.jpg”

ALT tag – “how to start a blog.”

And if you don’t know how to add ALT tag then here’s how you can do it.

In your Media uploader, when you select an image you will see some options on the right side. There you will see an option for “ALT text.” There just add your ALT tag and add it to your post.

The second way to do it is to go to the HTML section in your post editor and go to the code for your image. It will be something like this.

<img scr=http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/how-to-start-a-blog.jpg” height=”xx” width=”xx” alt=”how to start a blog”>

Add the ALT tag as above at the end of the code inside the bracket.

Step 5: Internal Links:

When you write any article on your blog, you should make it a habit of adding a link or two to your existing articles. This will not only help in improving the SEO score of your blog but also will allow the crawlers to crawl all the articles on your site.

But there is one thing that you need to make sure when adding an internal link.

Just don’t add any link to your article because you have to. Add a link only when necessary. If you are writing an article on how to increase traffic then adding a link to another article regarding increasing traffic or related topic like reducing bounce rate is okay but adding a link on how to install a blog in your traffic post is just not relevant.

Step 6: Outgoing Links:

When you are writing an article that contains more than 2000 words, you will make some points. If you have done your research and you came up with all those points and facts on your own, then that’s awesome, but if you used an article on some other blog, then you should mention it as a resource in the post.

This will do you a lot of good than you expect. Your readers will start to love your articles because they will understand that you want to give them the best you can by giving the links to resources and more information.

Not only will your readers appreciate it, but the other bloggers will also appreciate it because you are sharing their links so they will surely reciprocate the gesture by mentioning you in their upcoming post or sharing your articles on social media sites.

And don’t hesitate in giving dofollow links to these resource sites as long as they are high-quality and gives more information on your post topic.

You may also like to read:

8 Free Google Keyword Rank Checker Tools
What Type of Content Should You Publish To Increase Your Blog Traffic?
Use LSI Keywords


In simple SEO terms, LSI or Latent Semantic Indexing keywords means synonyms or related words.

The reason we should be using LSI keywords is that Google’s search algorithm (ranking factors) doesn’t just look for the target keyword in your article but also looks whether you are using related keywords in your article or not.

Using target keyword at proper places is a very important thing but when you use it a lot, then you might end up over-optimizing your posts that will do you no good.

But when you use LSI keywords, you are adding a superb mix of keywords to your article. This will not only keep the keyword density of your article in check but once your post ranks in search engines, it will be ranking for several terms and not just for the target keyword.

So if you are wondering how to find LSI keyword to optimize blog posts, then it’s very simple. Just go to Google and type in the target keyword of your next post in the search bar.

Scroll down and you will see related search queries. Those are LSI keywords that you can add in your article.

google lsi keywords
There is another great tool called Ubersuggest that lists down hundreds of related keywords for you to use in your article. You can check it out because you will find hundreds of LSI keywords for almost every search term.

Looking for Complete LSI and Long Tail Keywords Guide? Here they are:

How To Find Long Tail Keywords?
How To Find LSI Keywords?
Wrapping it Up:


That was everything that I do to optimize my blog posts. Backlinks and social shares work well to rank your post but if you don’t have the proper foundation in the form of well-optimized content, then the rankings won’t stick.

So before you do any Off-page optimization, be sure to optimize your blog posts for better rankings using the above steps.

If you liked this article, then don’t forget to share the post with your friends and also leave your precious feedback via the comments below. And if you think I missed out on some important factor to optimize blog posts, then please let us know.

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How To Come Out With The Niche Google Will Always Ranked Your Site As The Best

Getting started in your own online business can be quite challenging and one of the things that every internet marketer needs to know is how to find a niche. There are many different ways you can go about finding your niche. In this article you will learn a couple of ways you can do that.

One of the best niches to write about is one that you are passionate about. What is it that you really love? What is your hobby? What would you do for free if you didn’t have bills to pay? That is a good niche. What are you very knowledgeable about? For me I am a health nut. I could talk your ear off and show you ways to be healthier. My other niche is Internet Marketing. I’ve been studying that for a couple of years now and my friends are having a hard time understanding me when I talk to them about my internet marketing business.. What really cool is I have an Internet Marketing neighbor and it’s so fun to talk to him cause we understand what each other is talking about.


Another way on how to find a niche is to go to Google trends. There you will see what the top searches are. You can also go to DMOZ.com. There are so many topics there that it will give you ideas on what product or service to promote. When you learn how to find a niche you will be on your way to the first steps of success in your internet marketing business.

Think about things people need. Especially in these times; people need to know how they can save money, how to make extra money from home on the computer, even side jobs. The most important thing is to stay focused on one thing at a time.

Let’s say you want to work in the Dog niche. Do you want to work in the dog training niche? Keep your dog healthy niche? Dog tricks? Dog grooming? You see, if you sit down and just focus you’ll come up with so many ideas. The trick here is to just pick one. This is how to find a niche and you can do this with any topic.


The next thing you will want to do is to go to Google and do a search. For example “dog grooming + affiliate program. I went and did a search and there was 253,000 results. In those results you should be able to find a program that works for you. You can actually go deeper in your results. Would you like to promote and sell dog grooming tools, like brushes, clippers and shampoos or would you like to promote dog grooming training.

You could go to any of the major affiliate networks like ClickBank and Commission Junction and see what they have on dog grooming. There you can find a number of products you can promote.

Once you learn how to find a niche, the next thing you would want to do is promote your niche. Now there are many different ways to do this. It depends on what your budget is. Pay per click is the fast track way to traffic and making money, if you have the funds available. If you have a small to zero budget then you could promote the products for free by writing articles or having a blog. You are going to have to look like an expert in your field and offer your traffic quality content on your website. That will separate you from the rest and keep people coming back to your website.

How to find a niche is one of the things that every Internet Marketer needs to know.

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How To Get Backlinks To Your Website With No Stress

Getting traffic and visitors to your website is the number one thing you need to do once you have your website up and running. Traffic is key and learning how to do that can be quite challenging. Once you learn how to get backlinks to your website you will have learned one way to get free traffic.

One way to get backlinks to your website is to write articles and post them in the article marketing directories. Learning how to write articles is a very key component in your career as an Internet/Article Marketer. Your going to have to learn this skill so that you can fill your website with content. For some people this can be very easy, especially if it is something that you are very passionate about. For others it is a skill that can be learned. The more you do it the easier it gets. So hang in there. Posting your articles on the article marketing directories and putting your link in the resource box at the bottom is one way to get links to your website.

There is a certain skill that needs to be learned if you are going to rank high in the search engines with your articles. The really cool thing is that you will also have the extra pull from the high-ranking article marketing directories to give your article that extra push. The other skill that you can learn that will be very valuable is SEO, that is Search Engine Optimization. When you learn this skill you'll have that extra pull with the search engines to bring you possibly to the first or second page of Google. I have done this many times by going through the proper training and getting the education I needed to do this.


Another way to get backlinks to your website is by posting a link to your webpage or article at the social bookmarking websites. There are very many out there to choose from. Just do a Google search and you will find them.

You can go there and become a member for free and start posting away. Every time you write an article try to make a habit to get some backlinks. That way it is done and out of your way. I have forgotten to do that in the past and found that I could have saved much time by getting it done right away. So make sure and go get backlinks to your website.

Another way to get back links to your website is to post on other blogs. Now you don't want to go out and spam people blogs. You want to go and find relevant websites that are relevant to yours. That means that if your website is about Internet Marketing you don't want to go and post on an automotive parts blog if you are doing this for backlinks. The more relevant the website to yours will look good for you and Google will like it to.


The last but now least way to get backlinks to your website is posting on forums. I have an internet marketing neighbor who has literally tripled his income and traffic just by using this one technique. Of course, it needs to be relevant to your website and the information that you give needs to be of quality.

Remember backlinks will get you free traffic and traffic is key.

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How To Make Money Blogging In The Comfort Of Your Home With No Sweats

Ever thought to yourself if I was on Mastermind my specialist subject would be.............DIY, Football, Gardening, Geography, History, Fly-fishing, Motorbiking, Fashion, Hair, Religion etc etc?

Well there are people out there that share the same enthusiasm in these subjects and want to read about your experiences and learn from your mistakes.

You could continue to bore your friends and loved ones but you could also blog about your specialist subject, interest or hobby AND make money at the same time!!

I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT BLOGGING!!


Neither did I 2 weeks ago I was a complete novice. I knew I wanted to blog but had no clue about how to so I took to Google and searched 'how to blog' and I came across real people who had been through The Wealthy Affiliate Program.

Wealthy Affiliate take you through the blogging/website process step by step. Explaining everything at a level (and in a language) you can understand. Even if you're a complete technophobe.

The best part about the program is that for a starter it's completely free and it stays free for as long as you want it to. So if you don't like what you're learning there's nothing to lose. But if you do want to move up and learn more advance stuff then you pay to be a Premium Member (which I am and would highly recommend).

The community of over 100,000 people all very helpful and willing to answer any questions AND the site owners yes the owners actually interact with you.

Trust me I know that there are so many internet scams out there.......Pyramid schemes, Make money fast online etc etc but this is no get rich quick scheme. I almost got scammed before I found this program totally by accident whilst doing my research. And I'm so glad I did!!

You do have to put the work in to succeed in this field and by work I mean your time. But you can work and learn at your own pace (After all most of us have full-time jobs) AND make money doing what you love.

Personally I love to talk about what I'm passionate about. I can go on for hours and bore people to death. But when you're blogging you actually 'talking' to people that have purposely searched for the topic and want to know more. And when you blog you can 'talk'/write with your own voice. You do not have to put on any airs and graces just talk as if you were talking to a friend.

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How to Be Successful In Network Marketing On The Internet Today

Network marketing on the internet is a fast growing industry. The downshift in the economy has caused many people who would normally stay with jobs from working age to retirement to look elsewhere for income security. People are feeling less and less confident that they will retire from the job they are currently working at as they have in generations before. Many feel the only way to obtain financial security is to pursue it on their own.

The internet has been an every increasing source for all sorts of information and it's no different when it comes to making extra money. The latest statistics show that at any given moment 39% of all internet users at any given time are looking for ways make income from home on the internet. With little upfront investment required to start in network marketing on the internet it has caused large growth in the industry.


While network marketing on the internet is a thriving source of revenue for many people there is a lot of debate about how a person is successful in the industry. There are many methods that can be used to be successful in network marketing on the internet. The most important step to take is to decide how you want the internet to be a part of your business. Do you want to build a business strictly on the internet or is the internet merely going to be a tool in building your business?

Many people in network marketing on the internet choose to use the internet as a tool or part of building their business. In this situation most marketers use a web based presentation but tend to stick with the older methods of building a business. They invite "warm market" or close friends, family and contacts to visit a web based presentation about their business. They do this so that as other people come into their business and try to duplicate the same thing they are able to use the same presentation.

There is another way people choose to build network marketing on the internet and that is by using the internet entirely to build their business. They do this for a few reasons. First, the network marketing industry over the years has been given a bad name for one main reason. To be successful in the industry someone would have to recruit their friends, family and anyone they came in contact with in their local market. Most people by nature are not sales people so face to face selling would ultimately lead to failure. Second, most business owners would eventually run out of people to talk to which eventually means failure as well.


Now that the internet has come along and is so widely embarrassed as a place to make extra money focusing on network marketing on the internet opens many doors for people who may have failed before. There are many perks to using the internet for your business. You are able to expand globally instead of locally resulting in many more prospects and you can also put a system in place that anyone can follow. Then anyone can duplicate the process and be successful. This allows you to build a much larger organization.

Deciding how to pursue network marketing on the internet can be difficult but it's evident that the internet has opened up doors for many people seeking extra income that would have never thought of running their own businesses before.

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How To Build A Successful E-Commerce Blog

The idea of operating an ecommerce website to earn extra money is very popular. Many think that it is easy to do this and in some ways they are right. There are several ways that an ecommerce website can work.

The website can be an extension of an existing brick and mortar business. A business is able to use the website as another outlet to sell the products they already have. Another way to sell things online is by acting as a middle man. The owner of the ecommerce website works with another business that has the products that are being sold. The ecommerce site will offer the different products, collect the money, but the other business will be responsible for fulfilling the orders. The ecommerce site makes money by charging more for the products they sell than they have to pay to the other business that fulfills the orders. Both of these methods can be a successful way to operate a website and can help people earn money online.

While it is possible to make money through a website, just creating a website does not guarantee any success. There are many things that separate the successful websites from the failures. There are a few key things that should be done to help an ecommerce business succeed.

Web Design – The design of a website matters much more than some people may think. The design of an online shopping site is critical in many areas that include attracting visitors to a website, keeping them on the website for a longer period of time and converting them into a paying customer. It is possible to find free or low-cost templates that will allow a business to build a website, but for the best chance at success it is always best to look for a top web design company.

Marketing – Like any business, the marketing plan is essential to attracting customers to a website. Online marketing may seem simple to some, built it is actually very complicated. There are many different ways to market a website. Search engine optimization techniques are very popular, but they are also misunderstood. Some may think that SEO marketing simply involves using keywords to help the site become more searchable, but there are many other techniques that are also involved. Link building, pay per click advertising and other methods have to be combined into a cohesive marketing plan. The best website design company will not a only be able to use these techniques in the right way, they will also include ways to monitor what is working and what is not and be able to make changes that improve the searchability of a website.

Navigation – Once a person is able to find the best ecommerce website in London, the ease of moving around the website becomes very important. If people cannot navigate around a site to find what they want, they will leave and go somewhere else. There are so many different sites that are selling similar products, that an inability to easily navigate a site could be disastrous. A good online website design company will be able to create a site that is easy to move around and that has the appearance that customers want.

Branding – A familiar brand is one of the best marketing tools that a business can have. Online branding is a great way to increase the corporate identity of a website. It is done through the marketing and through the website. The better the brand is represented, the easier it is for a website to be successful.

Trust – Customers will only go to businesses they can trust. Building trust for an online site is not always easy. It is important to create a website that has a secure and reliable payment method that is known by customers. This is another era where the web design company can play an important role.

Local SEO – Many businesses will need to concentrate on building local business. The use of a website design in East London service may give businesses in that area a competitive edge.

The dream that many people have is of setting up a website and watching the cash roll in. This is a dream that often goes unfulfilled. It may be easy to create an ecommerce website, but there is a big difference between having a website and running a successful business. There is a lot of work that has to be done to make the website successful.

While many people will turn to offers of opening a quick website, it would be better to turn to the professionals that have the understanding of online marketing and of what it takes to design the best websites for ecommerce. The investment in a professional website design service is one that can be repaid quickly.

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Everything You Need To Create An Expert Roundup Post in Blogging

If you’re a new blogger, one of the things you need most is more blog traffic.

But, unfortunately, one of the hardest things to get as a new blogger is more blog traffic.

How do you get people to come to your blog when you’re just starting out?

One of the best ways to increase your blog traffic and build relationships with other bloggers in your niche is to create a roundup post.

Roundup posts do take a while to put together, but luckily for you, I’m about to break down everything you need to do to create a roundup post that will get you a lot of traffic – even if you’ve just started your blog. Psssttt…

It’s the first thing I get my new clients to do!


What is a roundup post?

In a nutshell, a roundup post is a compilation of expert answers to a single question.

Roundup posts are very valuable to readers because they get many expert opinions in one place. The post brings in traffic because many of the experts will share your post with their audiences. You also build relationships with the experts because you’ve featured them on your blog.

Now I’m going to dive in and show you exactly how to create a roundup post for your blog.
Step 1: Choose a question your audience is dying to read about

The key to writing a successful roundup post is choosing the right question.

Think about your audience and what their pain points are. Then choose a question that directly speaks to their pain points.

Don’t ask a yes or no question, because you want your experts to write detailed responses. And if you can write a question that gets them to tell a story, your responses will be much more interesting.
Roundup post question starters:

    What is the biggest mistake you made when you first started…?
    What is the best thing you’ve done when it comes to…?
    If you could change one thing about how you… what would it be?
    What is your number one tip for …?

You’ll notice that all of these question starters ask the experts to tell you ONE thing. Remember, experts are busy, so you want to make it as quick and easy as possible for them to answer your question.
Step 2: Create your list of experts

You are now going to compile a list of 10+ experts to email your question to.

Remember, not all the experts will answer, so put enough names on the list that you’ll still have a good number responses even if some people don’t get back to you. At the same time, keep in mind that the more responses you have, the longer your post will take to put up. So don’t ask 50 people if you don’t want to spend hours and hours putting your post together.

When compiling your list of experts, choose bloggers that have larger audiences than you do. But don’t just approach bloggers with huge audiences, as they will be likely to reject your request for the roundup post. Ask a few really big bloggers, but also ask experts with medium-sized audiences that will be more likely to respond to your request.
You can find your experts by:

    Googling “Top [YOUR NICHE] blogs”
    Searching for other roundup posts in your niche and seeing who participated
    Asking your readers (if you have them) whose blogs they read

Once you create your list, write the names and email addresses down in a spreadsheet so that you can keep track of who you’ve already contacted.

EXPERT TIP: To find your experts’ email address, go to their “Contact” page. If you don’t see it in the top menu, scroll to the footer. Most bloggers’ contact pages are listed there. Or you could just try http://blogname.com/contact.
Step 3: Create a Google Form for them to submit their answers


Go to Google Forms and create a simple form with the following:

    The question
    Name
    Twitter handle
    Website
    Short bio

Then set it up to feed into a spreadsheet.

Now, all of your answers will be nicely organized so that it will be easier to put your roundup post together.
Step 4: Email your experts

Once your Google form is ready to go, it’s time to email your experts. Make sure that you give them plenty of time to answer your question before the due date.
Here is an example of what you can email them:

Subject line: Quick question

Hi [EXPERT NAME],

I’m [YOUR NAME] from [YOUR BLOG] and I am doing an expert roundup post about [ROUNDUP SUBJECT]. I highly value your opinion, and I would love for you to participate in the roundup post.

If you could fill out this Google Form [LINK] by [DUE DATE], I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance,
YOUR NAME

To make this as quick and easy as possible, add the template into your Google “canned responses”, or copy and paste it into each email, and change the expert name, and send it out.

When you get responses back, make sure to email your experts and thank them for their responses, and then tell them when you are going to publish the post.
Step 5: Put your post together

For each expert in your post, include:

    A headshot (you can grab it on Facebook or LinkedIn)
    Their Twitter handle
    Their website address
    Their answer to your question
    Their 1–2 sentence bio
    Optional: A click to tweet pulled out of their answer.

Examples of well put together roundup posts:

110 Top Bloggers And Entrepreneurs Share Their Most Successful Social Media Action

25 Valuable Lessons from Seriously Successful Writers

35+ Bloggers Share Their Top Secret Strategies for Google+ Traffic
Step 6: Email your experts and let them know the post is live

On the day you publish your roundup post, make sure to give yourself time to email all the experts to let them know you’ve published the post.
You can use this template to email them:

Subject line: The roundup post on [SUBJECT] featuring you is live

Hi [EXPERT NAME],

I am emailing you to let you know that I just published the roundup post on [SUBJECT]. Thanks again for your response. I know it will be a big help to my readers.

If you’d like to check out the post, here’s the link. [LINK]

And if you think it would be helpful for your audience, here’s a tweet you can copy and share with them. [Tweet with the link, your handle, and your roundup headline].

Thanks again,
[YOUR NAME]

And when they share your post, be sure to thank them!

if you are too busy and you can’t afford to spend so much working on a roundup post, you could reach out to an expert in roundups. Minuca has done several great (and well-read!) roundups for me.
Now that you have everything you need to create a roundup post on your own blog, go out and make it happen!

You will be amazed at how much traffic you will get and how many relationships you will build.

What’s your idea for a roundup post? Share in the comments below.

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