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When in doubt, innovate.

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The 25 Most Innovative Ag-Tech Startups Even the nation’s oldest and most storied industry – farming – isn’t immune to the information revolution. Here’s a look at the most promising technology startups that are seeking to improve the work and lives of America’s farmers.

Why look down while climbing the ladder of success? Opportunity awaits!

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Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?

The long read: It is an industry like no other, with profit margins to rival Google – and it was created by one of Britain’s most notorious tycoons: Robert Maxwell

The core of Elsevier’s operation is in scientific journals, the weekly or monthly publications in which scientists share their results. Despite the narrow audience, scientific publishing is a remarkably big business. With total global revenues of more than £19bn, it weighs in somewhere between the recording and the film industries in size, but it is far more profitable. In 2010, Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported profits of £724m on just over £2bn in revenue. It was a 36% margin – higher than Apple, Google, or Amazon posted that year.

But Elsevier’s business model seemed a truly puzzling thing. In order to make money, a traditional publisher – say, a magazine – first has to cover a multitude of costs: it pays writers for the articles; it employs editors to commission, shape and check the articles; and it pays to distribute the finished product to subscribers and retailers. All of this is expensive, and successful magazines typically make profits of around 12-15%.

A little light-hearted hump day tom foolery.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING AN AVAILABLE PRODUCT

Work Smart Show daily blog. What are the reasons people buy your product? Undoubtedly this question has many answers and I want to focus on the lesser known today, that of reciprocity. Of course many people buy a product because they need it, want it, have worked to be able to buy it or often times because they want to thank the vender.

​I want to look at the case study of Patt Flynn, host of the Smart Passive Income and Ask Pat podcasts, who wrote his first book, Will it Fly, in late 2016. Now Pat is someone who provides immense amounts of value to his listeners through both of his podcasts and really builds into his listeners, taking an episode each to answer their questions even though they could be considered competition.

So it was that when he released his book and surveyed the reasons that people were prompted to buy it he found a strange trend. He found that many people were buying to support his work and his brand. He had provided so much free advice and material for them that they wanted to financially pay him back and so many bought the book even if it wasn’t relevant to them.

This idea fascinated me and I have seen it in several other situations recently such as my wife buying a products to support her favorite YouTuber simply because she wanted to financially support them. Now undoubtedly people buy your products because they need or want them, but are people also buying to support or thank you or your business.

This provides us with two very key takeaways to implement in our business. If you are in a business or entity that sells services or media maybe consider a physical product that people can buy to support you. Secondly if you have products available for sale are you providing enough valuable content that makes followers or customers feel they want to support you with their purchasing power?

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(via SenaTechno: Affiliate Marketing Tips)

Among many different ways to monetize your website or blog, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular one. What is affiliate marketing and how does it work? To put it simply, you will sell or recommend a product or service through your website or blog. You also put the link that will bring people directly to the place where the product or services were selling. When website visitors click on your affiliate links and then make purchase, you will receive commission. How much money or commission that you will receive ?How much money or commission that you will receive is highly depending on the seller. It range from 30% to 70% of the product price depend on the seller itself. This program is very popular because it offers people the chance to get more money by doing things they love (in this case writing something on their blog or website). Amazon is one of the most popular websites that offer affiliate program to everyone. People can join the program in Amazon for free and then promote the product that was on sale in Amazon in their website or blog. This day, many similar website such as Amazon also offer people the affiliate program that people can use for their own benefit. For those who want to join this program to get more money from their website should consider several things: 1. First of all, it will be better if they already have well established website or blog with lots of visitor.It means they only need to persuade the visitor of their website to make purchase on the product or service they promote. Getting lots of visitor takes time and effort, so it will be better for people to work on the number of visitor before they start to join any affiliate program. 2. Besides getting enough visitors to increase the chance of them to click on your affiliate links, another trouble that you have to deal with is setting up the account on each affiliate marketing program out there.It can be time consuming and if you sign up for too many programs, you could lose count and lose your chance. You can join a site that will help you to join different kind of affiliate program with just one account. Sites like Viglink and Skimlink will do well for this purpose although there are other similar sites that you can use. If you are really serious on getting some money from the internet, then you should consider joining affiliate program; if you’re not ready, you can use other alternative to get money from the internet.

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Stay Humble by Colin Tierney Twitter: @visualvibs

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Why Use Google Analytics?

When it comes to running an online business, it is important that you have visibility into the performance of your site, particularly how your customers interact with your site. Luckily, there is a free tool out there called Google Analytics that will help you do this. Below is the purpose of Google Analytics, as well as some of the key features and capabilities.

Purpose of Google Analytics:

Understand Your Audience

Sell and Convert

Make Business Decisions

Understanding Your Audience:

Know Your Audience

Audience Data and Reporting - This feature allows you to dissect your audience: the kinds of people they are, where they come from, how they find your content, and how loyal and engaged they are.

Advanced Segments - This feature allows you to isolate and analyze subsets of your traffic, like organic traffic or visits that led to transactions.

Filters - This feature allows you to limit and modify the traffic data that appears in any given report view (Ex: You can exclude traffic from certain domains). 

Trace the Customer Path

Traffic Sources - This feature allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your referring sites, direct traffic, social media platforms, organic (unpaid) search keywords, and custom campaigns.

Map Overlay - This feature allows you to see your visitor stats broken down by continent, country and city, which will help you understand the real origins of your traffic and find the best places to invest for new opportunities.

See What Your Audience Is Doing

Behavior Reporting - This feature allows you to see new vs. returning visitors, how frequent visitors come to your site, how long visitors are staying on your site, etc.

Flow Visualization - This feature lets you see and analyze the path a visitor takes on your site. See where they came from, the pages they moved through, and where they exited your site.

In-Page Analytics - This feature allows to see how users really interact with your pages (Ex: see where are users clicking the most on your homepage).

Sell and Convert

Reach Your Performance Goals

Ecommerce Reporting - This feature allows you too see the performance of your products. Trace transactions right down to specific keywords, understand shopper behaviors, and adjust your shopping cart to build loyalty and improve sales.

Goals - This feature allows you to measure your sales, downloads, email signups, conversions, or define your own business goals.

Reach Peak Capacity

Real-Time Reporting - This feature allows you to see how many people are on your site right now, where they came from, and what they’re viewing.

Alerts and Intelligence Reports - This feature will call attention to any abnormal behavior happening on your site (Ex: A huge spike in traffic coming from a particular city or traffic source).

Site Search - When visitors can’t find what they want on your site, they search. This feature allows you to see what your visitors are really looking for, spot missed opportunities, and speed up time to conversion.

Site-Speed Analysis - This feature shows you load times across your site, so you can fix slow pages and make your visitors happier.

Make Business Decisions

Based on the information in Google Analytics, you will be able to make educated decisions regarding the following:

Product success and determination

How to better target and sell to your customers

Marketing and advertising strategies

Improved website design

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The business model of petsitting is so insane?Getting paid to spend time with someone else’s pet without having to deal with the owners? I’m petting this cat that isn’t mine, and I’m on the clock? Wild

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