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Wednesday 23 December 2015

8 CEO’s Who Became Wealthy Before Age 30

Image Source: Cosmpolitan
“Overnight Success”.
A phrase so often used, it gives inspiration to millions of people around the world to come up with a bright idea, get some crowd funding and strike it huge. The truth is though, there isn’t any such thing as an overnight success. As Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter famously said:
“TIMING, PERSEVERANCE, AND TEN YEARS OF TRYING WILL EVENTUALLY MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS.” – BIZ STONE
Of the famous and successful CEO’s we see today, they all put in tireless hours of blood, sweat and tears to make their dreams come to fruition. Elon Musk for example; he is well known for SpaceX, Tesla and co-founding PayPal, but before these ventures he had already struck it big before the age of 30. Him and his younger brother Kimbal worked hard to create a software company called Zip2, which they sold to Compaq for around $220 Million in 1999.
It takes determination, action and consistency to make any dream into goals, and a successful flourishing business. Thanks to an infographic created by Essay Expert, let’s look at eight CEO’s who hit it big before 30.

8 CEO’s Who Became Wealthy Before Age 30

businessjunkee-8-ceos-who-made-their-fortune-before-30

Sunday 20 December 2015

30 Top Investment Quotes for New Investors

Investment Quotes
Investment quotes are a great way for investors to learn from experts. They are snapshots of wisdom. An insight into the minds of the professional investors who we all aspire to emulate. Many of these quotes by themselves could be the basis of an entire book.
When you are new to investing, your mind is a sponge. It should be. There is a lot to learn. One of the more important things to learn is how different every successful investor is. Their investing philosophy, styles, and approach to growing their capital are different from their peers. One could not hope to easily duplicate the performance of a Warren Buffet, Carl Ichan, or a Jim Rogers.
It is important to learn the lessons that make these investors great. Both their successes and failures are learning tools. These investment quotes are a mini-lessons about how these investors approach investing.

30 Investment Quotes Every Investor Should Read, Especially New Investors

“Things are almost never clear on Wall Street, or when they are, then it’s too late to profit from them.” - Peter Lynch
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John Templeton
“Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria.” – Sir John Templeton
“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable” – John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
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George Soros
“It’s not whether you’re right or wrong that’s important, but how much money you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.” – George Soros
“The elements of good trading are: (1) cutting losses, (2) cutting losses, and (3) cutting losses. If you follow these three rules, you may have a chance.” – Ed Seykota
Ed Seykota
“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” – Benjamin Graham
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Stanley Druckenmiller
“When you have tremendous conviction on a trade, you have to go for the jugular. It takes courage to be a pig.” –Stanley Druckenmiller
“Doing what everyone else is doing at the moment, and therefore what you have an almost irresistible urge to do, is often the wrong thing to do at all.” – Phil Fisher
Philip Fisher
“Learning about investing from books is like learning about sex from romance novels.” – Charlie Munger
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Peter Lynch
“If you’re prepared to invest in a company, then you ought to be able to explain why in simple language that a fifth grader could understand, and quickly enough so the fifth grader won’t get bored.” – Peter Lynch
“Outright speculation is neither illegal, immoral, nor (for most people) fattening to the pocketbook . . . There is intelligent speculation as there is intelligent investing. But there are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the foremost are: (1) speculating when you think you are investing; (2) speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it; and (3) risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose.” – Benjamin Graham
Benjamin Graham
“The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different’.” – Sir John Templeton
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John Maynard Keynes
“Thus inflation is unjust and deflation is inexpedient. Of the two perhaps deflation is, if we rule out exaggerated inflations such as that of Germany, the worse; because it is worse, in an impoverished world, to provoke unemployment than to disappoint the rentier. But it is necessary that we should weigh one evil against the other. It is easier to agree that both are evils to be shunned.” – John Maynard Keynes
“It never was my thinking that made big money for me. It was always my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!” – Jesse Livermore
Jesse Livermore
“Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology.” – Seth Klarman
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Nathan Rothschild
“Buy when there is blood in the streets.” – Nathan Rothschild
“If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.” –George Soros
George Soros
“Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.” – Warren Buffett
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Alan Greenspan
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value” – Alan Greenspan
“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.” – Franklin D Roosevelt
Franklin D Roosevelt
“Wall Street’s graveyards are filled with men who were right too soon.” – William Hamilton
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Paul Samuelson
“Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.” – Paul Samuelson
“The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.” – John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
“Never confuse brains with a bull market.” – Humpfrey Neill
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Seth Klarman
“The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation.”– Seth Klarman
“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” – Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett
“The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” – John Maynard Keynes
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Ray Dalio
“In trading you have to be defensive and aggressive at the same time. If you are not aggressive, you are not going to make any money, and if you are not defensive, you are not going to keep it” – Ray Dalio
“There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” – Frédéric Bastiat
Frederic Bastiat
I hope you enjoyed this post. Please leave your feedback below if you have suggestions for this list. Also please share this if you think this post could help someone else.

Monday 14 December 2015

30 Tools Every Growth Conscious Digital Marketer Shouldn’t Ignore in 2016

tools
As a digital marketer, do you ever get the feeling that your days could be so much easier – if you only had the right tools? Truly, these days, there is software and a dashboard for everythingThe question is, which tools are worth the investment and learning curve?
To answer that question, I’ve assembled a list of tools that I think companies can use to grow their business. This post shows some of the different types of digital marketing tools available,as well as several examples of the leading tools.
Marketing Tools by Strategy:
  • Paid Social Media
  • Email Marketing
  • Display Retargeting
  • Website Testing
  • Video Hosting
  • Content Creation
  • Content Curation
  • Website Analytics
  • Customer Service
  • Search Engine Optimization

Paid Social Media Tools

Social media sites aren’t just great for organically reaching and engaging with your customers; they’re also very effective for paying to promote your brand to large groups of active users. The major social networks have so much data on their users that targeting can become extremely effective, which makes social media an ideal place to pay for the right tools.
  1. Nanigans
Nanigans is a multichannel advertising software with an emphasis on Facebook marketing. Its software has access to the Facebook Exchange (FBX) for retargeting and a plethora of other tools that make targeting more efficient. Nanigans is the tool of choice for companies such as eBay, JackThreads and Zynga.
Nanigans
  1. Facebook’s Power Editor
The Power Editor is a tool in Facebook used for creating and running advertising campaigns. Facebook is constantly improving its ad platform, and the tool frequently releases new targeting and budgeting features for users.
The power editor is very smart choice for digital marketers just starting out as there is? third-party fee to create and manage your advertisements.
  1. Twitter Native Platform
Twitter is another major social media platform businesses should consider paying to advertise on. Twitter has some fantastic features for targeting, with segmentation functionality that includes the ability to target certain keywords so that whenever someone Tweets out, or engages with a tweet, using that key phrase they’ll be targeted.

Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing still plays in our online marketing strategies. It’s one of the oldest marketing channels, dating all the way back to 1971. So it is still very useful. In fact, it was predicted that email marketing would be the top target for increased investment in 2015, which is why you should look into email marketing software for your business.
  1. MailChimp
MailChimp is one of the most powerful email marketing platforms on the market. MailChimp’s incredibly simplistic platform structure and free plans make it easy for even some of the most amateur email marketers to get setup with robust email campaigns.
mailchimp
  1. Emma
Emma also an abbreviation for email marketing is a strong platform that backs up its powerful features with a notoriously hands-on customer service team. Emma has all of the tools that you need to start creating and testing your own email marketing campaigns.
  1. Marketo
Marketo is better suited for advanced digital marketers. Although email is a large facet of its business it is by no means the only part of the tool. Marketo allows you to combine email into your entire automated marketing campaigns.

Display Retargeting Tools

Have you ever gone to a website, left without purchasing anything, only to be followed around by that company’s advertisements all around the web?
These are retargeting ads, and even if you haven’t heard of them there’s a good chance that you’ve been targeted by them in the past. This channel is incredibly efficient for getting customers back to your site to make a purchase or become a lead.
  1. AdRoll
AdRoll is a popular name in the retargeting space, boasting a customer base of over 20,000 brands. Its platform grants access to over 500 ad exchanges, which includes most of the major social media networks. It offers a self-service platform, but you can also leverage its employees for additional help if you need it.
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  1. ReTargeter
ReTargeter is a tool that uses site retargeting, search retargeting and dynamic retargeting. You can use ReTargeter as a self-service platform, or you can pass all of your campaigns onto an account team to run your retargeting for you. You can use these search services la carte or combine several into a custom package.
  1. Chango
Chango is an award-winning display advertising platform with robust retargeting features. With Chango you can combine your own retargeting information with audience intent data that Chango accumulates, which adds a second layer of targeting to your campaigns.

Website Testing Tools

The smallest changes can make the biggest differences when it comes to getting people to convert on your landing pages.
Changing the color of your call-to-action button can spell the difference between getting someone to start a free trial of your product, and bouncing from your site. That’s why it’s important to use website testing tools to constantly innovate your pages.
  1. Unbounce
Unbounce is an amazing tool for quickly building, tweaking and publishing new landing pages to test. One of the most fantastic features of Unbounce is how easy it is to use the platform to create brand new pages. Even if you’re not much of a designer, you can use some of the templates available as a jumping off point, then tweak them to fit your style.
  1. Maxymiser
Maxymiser is a tool that goes beyond landing page testing. This enterprise-level software solution was built to test all sorts of portions of your website, and to run several different tests all at once. Maxymiser also allows you to segment who you want to send to each tests, creating a more catered experience for your website visitors.
  1. Optimizely
Optimizely combines tools for visual creation and robust targeting into its platform, making it easy to quickly create and target tests to the proper groups of users. The company also has a formidable amount of partners to make it easier to centralize customer data for your various tests.
optimizely

Video Hosting Sites

It seems like video has recently become the next big content powerhouse brands are taking advantage of, and with so much effort needed to create videos it’s important to make sure you get as many eyeballs on them as possible. A solid way to do that is to host them on some of the popular video sites which draw in large crowds of viewers.
  1. Wistia
One of the best functions of its platform is the ability to include a custom CTA at the end of each individual video, making it easy to drive viewers to specific pages.
  1. Vimeo
There are over 20 million people and businesses that trust Vimeo to host their high-definition, ad-free videos. With Vimeo, the idea is to get everyone to host some of their high-quality videos on the site, thereby driving viewers who are looking for visually stunning videos.
vimeo

Content Creation Tools

We all know that content is king, which is why it’s so important to start creating some of your own to share with your fans and followers.
With so many different content formats out there infographics, blogs, videos the biggest question is which type of content can you create that will resonate with your audience.
  1. Canva
Canva is a web-based design tool you can use to create unique images to share on your blogs, social networks and more. You can use Canva to create completely unique images from scratch or to polish up some photos that you already have on hand. One of the best features within the tool is the ability to create perfectly sized social media images using its templates.
  1. Piktochart
Infographics are a fun way to share interesting data with your fans and followers, as the visuals make it much easier to digest a lot of great information. Think through your own great idea and use an infographic creation tool like Piktochart to put it all together.
piktochart
  1. Visual.ly
If you don’t have the time or artistic flair to create your own pieces of content, then you can use a tool like Visual.ly. Visual.ly is a platform that pairs those who need content up with those who can create it. The site charges a flat rate for each type of project, which includes Infographics, eBooks and video.

Content Curation Tools

We constantly need to fill our content calendars if we’re going to satiate the growing need to share actionable insights with our fans and followers.
However, we don’t always have the time to put together something unique for every post we create. That’s why it’s good to have some content curation tools on hand to help you fill up those lulls in your calendar.
  1. Feedly
With Feedly you choose all of the different blogs, publications and topics that you’re interested in and Feedly aggregates all of the recent topics from those people or about those topics into a feed you can monitor. You can integrate your Feedly feed with a tool like Sprout Social to continuously share these articles with your fans and followers.
  1. Scoop.it
Scoop.it is an incredible tool for easily finding and sharing unique, relevant content to your social networks, blogs and more. With Scoop.it you can find months worth of great in no time at all!
scoop it
  1. Kapost
Kapost is a platform that takes into account every step of the content marketing cycle. One fantastic function is the ability to assign different pieces of content different buyer personas, which shows which stages of the content marketing cycle your prospects are most likely to convert on.

Website Analytics Tools

Many tools out there come with their own performance analytics. However, it’s important to keep an eye on the data about events that actually take place on your website.
  1. Kissmetrics
Kissmetrics offers analytics tools that help you increase conversions across your entire website. The platform tracks your site visitors throughout their entire conversion journey and gives you reports on each part of the funnel. This helps you fine-tune your entire conversion process to increase sales and revenue.
  1. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the standard for most websites these days. Google has advanced analytics that shed light on a variety of your website information, including who your visitors are, how they make their way through your sales funnel and what they do on your website in real-time.
google analytics
  1. Adobe Analytics
Adobe provides an enterprise-level analytics solution for companies who want to gather deep analytics on their website data and performance. The platform has cross-channel attribution functions, 360-degree customer analysis and predictive intelligence which enables you to observe and respond to customer actions in real time.

Search Engine Optimization Tools

SEO is a huge portion of most companies’ online marketing efforts, which explains why there are so many tools out there to help brands take full advantage of the channel.
These tools take something incredibly complicated and simplify it, which is something we should all be thankful for.
  1. Moz
Moz offers two key products to customers: Moz Pro and Moz Local. The Moz Pro product helps with the classic SEO practices, such as tracking rankings, tracking link building efforts and informing content marketing campaigns. Moz Local helps businesses improve their local SEO listings. All you need to do is enter your business’s location information and Moz goes to work getting you listed.
moz
  1. SEMRush
SEMRush has a ton of great tools that help both paid search experts and SEOs track and improve their search rankings. One key use of SEMRush is to track your competitors. You can use the tools to pull your competitor’s backlinks, monitor their fluctuations in ranking and conduct a full competitive analysis.
Screaming Frog is a spider tool that can quickly crawl websites, lists of websites or specific web pages to give you a complete analysis on performance. You can use the tool to see if you have any broken links, broken pages, bad redirects and much more. Fixing most of these errors is a quick win for search marketers.
30. BuzzSumo
Buzzsumo is a great tool for both content curation and SEO. You can filter results by time, language, country, and type of content. The basic tool is free, but you can upgrade to BuzzSumo Pro starting at $99/month for more detailed content keyword analysis.
Conclusion
All the above mentioned tools when used together in tandem will work wonders for your digital marketing strategy. It might be what you need to put you in fron of your competitors in 2016 and beyond.
While most of these tools require a fee, they are definitely worth the purchase. You can even make use of free trials so that you can get to know the product before you buy it.
Have I forgotten to mention any tools you think belongs on this list? Let us know in the comments below!