Monday, January 24, 2011

Making Money Marketing

As
General Motors has shrunk, its pool of U.S. retirees has swelled.
Today there are almost 700,000 GM retirees and just 70,000 active
workers, a 10-1 ratio. The company’s $100 billion pension fund is twice
the market capitalization of the automaker itself, and keeping up with
funding obligations acts like a ball and chain on GM’s core car-making
business. Small swings in the value of the pension plan can have
massive effects on the value of the company. “That’s no way to run a
company,” said GM’s chief financial officer Christopher Liddell.

I
met with Liddell during the Detroit auto show this week, and he talked
extensively about GM’s more conservative financial philosophy since
emerging from bankruptcy in July 2009. GM’s objective is to carry no
debt, fully fund its pension plan, and pay for its day-to-day
operations using cash generated from the sale of cars and trucks. It
sounds so simple, but that’s not the way GM has been run in many years.

GM
took a big step in that direction Friday, announcing it had
contributed $2 billion in newly minted GM stock to its U.S. pension
plan, on top of $4 billion in cash it had contributed a couple of months
back to try to bring that pension fund closer to fully funded status.
As of the end of 2009, the portfolio was $17.1 billion short of what it
should have, under government rules, to cover its current and future
pension obligations.

The gap likely
closed some in 2010, thanks to strong market returns, but the gains
could be offset by further swelling in the retiree ranks. GM plans to
give an annual update on the health of its pension plan next month when
it announces its fourth-quarter financial results.

Three
factors determine the health of any pension fund: asset returns,
company contributions and the discount rate, which is used to calculate
the present value of pension liabilities and is tied to interest
rates. In the past, market swings and interest rates would cause GM’s
pension fund to fluctuate wildly between being overfunded and
underfunded. In the 1990s, GM borrowed heavily to pay off its pension
plan, saddling itself with hefty interest payments. As long as the stock
market remained high, the value of the assets in GM’s portfolio
exceeded its liabilities. But even a change in the discount rate could
cause big swings in the plan’s funding status.

Between 2005 and
2007, GM’s pension plan was in great shape, and the company didn’t need
to make any contributions. But then the equity and credit markets
collapsed, coupled with declines in the discount rate (which made the
present value of GM’s pension liabilities rise significantly) and more
early retirements at GM, increasing the number of beneficiaries.
Suddenly, the pension plan was $17.1 billion in the hole.

“We’ve
got to get this company to where the economics, everything, is driven
around designing, selling and producing cars,” Liddell said. “Things
like the pension plan don’t enter into the equation.”

Liddell
said he believes GM can fully fund the pension plan within three years
at which point, he plans to “de-risk” the portfolio by investing less
in equities and real estate, and more in fixed income assets, which
generally provide a lower rate of return. “Perfection to me would be
where the assets exactly equal the liabilities in both their maturity
and their risk profile,” he said.

He’s not expecting perfection,
but he is expecting GM to operate debt-free in the future. It seems
like forever that GM has been up to its neck in debt, including its
pension and health care obligations to retirees. But it’s only in the
past 15 years or so that GM has been highly leveraged. Before that, it
was a AAA-rated company.

Now it’s working to get back there. It
off-loaded retiree health care to a union trust fund in 2009, is
working on the pension problem, and restructured the rest of its debt
during its government-controlled bankruptcy. In 2010, GM lowered its
debt from $14.2 billion to $5 billion, and reduced its $9 billion
preferred share obligation to $7 billion. It obtained a $5 billion
revolving credit loan, but Liddell said he doesn’t think GM will have
to tap into it.

Perfection? No. But progress, yes.

I
agree, it's not perfect but it's progress. GM is doing the right thing
by topping up its pension plan now that times are good. If they can
reach fully funded status in three years, so much the better. Of course
that entirely depends on where markets are heading. In the
meantime, GM can focus on its core business and hope that car sales pick
up steadily in the next few years.

Every day, more and more people go online to find a way to make money. Here are some ways you can exploit the power of the Internet.

Sign in with eBay – Despite the downturn in the economy, people are always very nice to the U.S. dollar on eBay. All you need do is to set up an account with them and with PayPal and both are free. Once you have done this take some time to gather all the things you already have, and no longer want or need, and begin to list them on eBay. Be sure to take good pictures and descriptions of your articles are great. Thereby significantly increasing your sales.

Learn Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is big and growing fast now. If you do not know anything about this strange way to make money, takes time to learn all this. Affiliate marketing is basically when a person is committed to promoting company products and / or services. For each sale generated from that person to receive the commission. There are many people making full time income and just affiliate marketing. Sounds crazy right? Well, actually there are millions of people around the world who earn their living in earnest with the powerful method of affiliate marketing. Could be one of them?

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

A tetralogy of science news

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Probably Bad News: Lawsuit FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny ...

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

A tetralogy of science news

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

A tetralogy of science news

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

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Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

A tetralogy of science news

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Probably Bad News: Lawsuit FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny ...

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Transfer news Football Spy video: Latest on Liverpool's chase for ...

Darren Lewis is back with the best round-up of transfer news and gossip on the web.

A tetralogy of science news

Four more picks from the latest science news by David Bradley Tales of the unexpected: a night with Tim ...

Probably Bad News: Lawsuit FAIL - Epic Fail Funny Videos and Funny ...

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

why internet marketing

In the world of entrepreneurship one of the most important forms of currency is information. If you aren’t on Quora, you probably don’t have that currency.

Listening To Customers

One of the hottest topics in Silicon Valley nowadays is the “Lean Startup Model”, a model in which quick iterations are superior to theoretically long, drawn out releases which have a significant potential of failure. The position of Lean Startup Model evangelists is a legitimate one: if you don’t listen to your customers then you are pretty much destined to fail because customers tell you what they want. To many of those individuals I would suggest that their single landing page site which is used to test an idea is often times completely misleading. One case and point comes from a story told on Quora by Michael Flaxman in response to the question “What is the best way to test an internet startup idea?”:

Unfortunately, the most reliable way to find out is to build the minimum viable product and see how people respond to it.

The idea that you can scientifically determine whether or not a startup will work is a nice thought, but I think it’s unrealistic. If there were reliable tests you could take before launching a startup, wouldn’t startups fail at an exceptionally low rate?

I have a developer friend who wanted to build a cheaper email marketing software, but he didn’t want to make the investment in building a product only to find that it couldn’t make money. So, he found some of his competitors’ clients and asked them if they’d switch. When that seemed promising he setup a landing page that looked like it was for real email marketing software, only the software wasn’t yet built. He then bought traffic and carefully measured how expensive it was to get a “signup” on his landing page. Looking good so far. 6 months of building a clone product and he was ready to get it to some of those trial users.

Unfortunately, his users had lots of reasons why they now wouldn’t actually leave their current SaaS product and switch to his cheaper one. 6 more months of fixing bugs and adding features — including one that let you 1-click copy your account from one of his major competitors into his software — and the project had flopped. It turns out getting people to say yes to “are you interested in a better/cheaper product?” is much easier than getting them to actually make the change (and pay money for it).

Ouch! Take that lean startup people! Listening to the customer is definitely important to some extent, however I would suggest that customers don’t know what they want. That doesn’t mean that all hope should be lost though. That’s because there’s a much better indicator of what to build: the market.

Listening To The Market

While the customer doesn’t necessarily know what they want, the market is a very effective gauge of it. Successful companies are those who build products that resonate with their customers. Those customers in turn tell others about the product and eventually the product reaches a significant number of customers. So how on earth do you monitor the market? Read the news, extensively research the market, and most importantly (if you are in the Internet industry): read Quora! I have a quick story to illustrate the point of this.

I have an entrepreneur friend who is constantly asking me for advice and asking for help on raising funding. My single greatest complaint isn’t about his business (e.g. that it’s a bad idea … which it isn’t), but instead that he has no idea who the other players are in the market. How can you truly become a seriously player in a market that you are completely oblivious to? The answer: you can’t. There are tons of companies who are out there doing the research for you to find out what the market wants.

Unless you are a first mover, which is most often not the case, there is no excuse for not knowing who’s in your market, what they’re doing, and what works for them and what isn’t working. The bottom line: if entrepreneurship were a chess game, no chess player makes their moves without taking into consideration the other player’s moves. So pay attention to the market!

Quora As A Place To Gain Insight

While Quora is by no means the beat of the marketplace, there is plenty of insight to be gleaned from people who post on the site. There are great responses posted about many of the toughest challenges facing entrepreneurs. Clearly, if you spend too much time on the site you are doing yourself a disservice. Additionally, not all players in the marketplace are exactly transparent about their intentions, so the deepest insight comes from those who are sharing the moves they made weeks, months, or most often, years ago.

These anecdotes can prove to be extremely valuable. Business anecdotes are one of the reasons that incubators like YCombinator have become so successful. Aside from providing money, they provide unfiltered insight from business leaders in the community. While much of the information on Quora is clearly filtered (often times so much that it’s clear the person responding has intentionally left out chunks of a story), there are plenty of great insights to be gleaned from reading the site. Do you agree that Quora has become a critical resource for any serious internet entrepreneur? Do you use the site regularly?

We all know the Facebook story or at least saw the movie. A site for college kids to publish their pictures became an Internet phenomenon. But while grandma may now be posting what she ate for breakfast, the real revolution Facebook has created is for advertisers. Brands are salivating at the prospect of reaching the 500 million users who collectively spend over 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.

In 2011 and beyond, Facebook will become one of the most important marketing channels in the world. Already, Facebook is on track to generate more than $2 billion in ad revenues in 2010, far surpassing earlier estimates of around $1 billion, and will likely skyrocket past that figure in 2011, as more marketers shift budgets from TV, radio, and print to the social realm. Proctor & Gamble got a head start on this move by recently announcing it would transfer the majority of its daytime TV advertising budget to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

And, it’s not just Facebook that’s having an impact on marketing. In fact, all social media – from Twitter and blogs, to forums and YouTube – is having a profound impact on how consumers interact, find products, get deals, shop, and get information. For marketers, that means social is no longer just a channel, but an integral part of a strategic marketing plan. Social media now impacts all of a brand’s marketing campaigns, with free viral “sharing” beginning to surpass paid marketing channels like search engine marketing, display, and print advertising at driving large audiences to campaign pages and brand websites.

To be sure, brands are already spending on social media marketing-– but 2011 will likely see a huge surge in investment into social as Facebook, Twitter, and all things social become increasingly measurable and ROI-focused. The investment in online advertising iw predicted to set a new record in 2011, growing 14 percent to $51.9 billion, up from $45.6 billion in 2010, according to Borell Associates. Two of the fastest-growing segments of online advertising are the local sector and social media.

So what will the social media marketing landscape look like in 2011? Here are four predictions based on our work with hundreds of top brands to measure, track, analyze their social media marketing programs.

Social media will kill the TV star – Okay, “kill” may be a stretch but did you know that more people play Farmville than watch daytime TV? A recent study by Deutsche Bank found that 7.5 million people tune into Oprah every day, whereas 43 million people play a Zynga game each day. In contrast to advertising on TV, targeted social media campaigns offer brands the ability to deliver relevant messages with precision to specific, highly engaged audiences –0 and present them with compelling offers and instantly-redeemable coupons.
In contrast to the “lean back” experience offered in front of the TV, social media brings brands and consumers closer together than ever before. TV watchers may see a brand flash before them on the screen, but game players may see an offer from your brand within a game they are playing, and be offered free game credits for taking a survey, referring a friend, or making an immediate in-game purchase of one of your products.

The Groupon effect is here to stay — Consumers today have a “deal mentality”. With the rise of daily deal sites like Groupon, flash sales sites like Gilt, and myriad coupon sites, consumers don’t want to buy a product unless they feel they’ve gotten a great deal on it. What’s more, customers now expect recognition and rewards for spreading the word about deals, discounts, and exclusive opportunities. They don’t just want a good deal, they want an even better deal for promoting deals to others!
Most brands now use Twitter and Facebook to publicize deals, and an increasing number are experimenting with Groupon and other deal sites, but future sales belong to marketers who not only publicize their promotions, but reward sharing in real-time so buyers have a strong incentive to spread the word and extend the reach of every campaign.

Mobile is social According to Facebook, there are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices, and these mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users. With the emergence of location-based services like Foursquare and Facebook Places, the integration of social and mobile is growing ever stronger.
Today, not only are we constantly connected via our mobile devices, but as our friends discover content, deals, and discounts, they share them with us – spreading brand campaigns directly from phone-to-phone. People are beginning to expect that relevant content, including advertising, will reach them via the friends or contacts they trust. Some of the fastest-growing segments of mobile marketing include mobile coupons that customers can use by presenting a barcode on their phones to scanned at checkout; iPhone apps that allow price comparison, product searches, and immediate transactions; and Foursquare-type services that allow businesses to reward frequent store visitors with discounts and promotions. The best mobile marketing promotions and content are those that can be shared.

Sharing is the new search — While Google will continue to prosper in 2011, the role of “sharing” in how people discover information, deals, and products is changing how we search and what we search for. News finds us. Fun, entertaining content finds us. Deals and discounts find us.
In fact, from our own research across Meteor Solutions’ customers, we found that influencers –- those who share your campaigns across their social graph –- can directly influence 40 to 60 percent of all visits to an advertising campaign page. More and more, people will get product information through the social graph –- instead of directly from a brand advertiser. Search will remain the most efficient way for people to find something specific, but sharing will become the most efficient way for relevant, useful, and entertaining content to find us.

Marketers need to create campaigns that go beyond interrupting consumers with advertising, and create content that’s highly useful and easily shareable –- such as contests, deals, promotions, inside information, and product reviews. The social graph is creating effective ways for marketers to reach audiences at scale.

Social media is no longer just a way for consumers to waste a few minutes looking at funny cat photos. Today, Facebook and other social channels are becoming the way people interact with the larger world around them –- and brand marketers are going to make sure they’re not too late to the party.

Ben Straley is the CEO of Meteor Solutions, a company offering website tracking and content sharing tools to advertisers and publishers. He’s also the lead instructor for the University of Washington Certificate Program for Advanced Interactive Marketing. He can be reached at ben@meteorsolutions.com or @meteorsolutions.

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Friday, January 14, 2011

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How do you usually start your morning? Lunatic rush, eternal lack of time, work, where we come sleepy, irritated and seedy? Delaying the time for getting up to the critical moment and again being late, we convulsively invent excuses about a stuck lift or traffic jams.

Getting up earlier you can clear up your head and thoughts. Morning hours carry silence and peace, which we are usually lack of during the noisy day. This is the time of solitude, when we can read, reflect, and just take a breath.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

budgeting personal finances

Five Best Mobile Personal Finance Tools

It's easy to convince yourself to spend and save responsibly when the numbers are right in front of you, but it's a different story when you're on-the-go. These five great mobile personal finance tools keep your money goals nearby at all times.

Photo a composite of images by neernijus and mellowr.

Smartphones have brought nearly every aspect of desktop computers to your pocket; it only makes sense they'd bring money management, too. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite mobile personal finance tool. Now we're back to highlight the five most popular options.

Mint (Android/iOS, Free)

Popular web-based personal finance tool Mint has an equally as popular mobile application for Android and iOS devices. It sports the same simple design as Mint's main site and makes it easy to track your spending, receive alerts about bills and budget issues, and monitor your savings goals. It's polished, the graphs are easy to read, and the total-overview that Mint provides helps keep you on top of your personal finances in ways other tools don't.

Pageonce (Cross-Platform, Free)

Pageonce isn't only about personal finance, but it does personal finance well, and it's available for nearly every mobile platform around. On top of a web-based interface, they have highly polished apps for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile (including the newly released Windows Phone 7). It's easy to get real-time updates via email or push notifications on your phone, set alerts to warn you about impending bills or overspending, and view all of your financial stats in eye-catching charts and graphs.

EasyMoney (Android, $9.95)

EasyMoney is an Android-only personal finance manager that includes a home screen widget for speedy transaction inputs, bill notifications, graphs to help you analyze and chart your past and future spending, and a host of small but very useful features like the ability to split transactions between multiple categories. Easy Money also includes a tool for photographing receipts and importing data as well as a checkbook register and easy import/export to .CVS files. EasyMoney offers a 30 day-trial if you're on the fence about spending $10 on the app (consider also, many of the features in EasyMoney are paid upgrades on similar applications).

Pocket Money (iOS, $4.99)

Pocket Money puts a sweeping view of all your accounts and transactions right on your iPhone or iPad. You can manually enter transactions, create repeating transactions based on cycles or dates, create custom filters to view your money the way that is most useful to you, and more. On top of the plethora of features in the stock app you can expand the feature set with in-app purchases like the $0.99 Photo Receipts plugin that allows you to photograph your receipts and import the transaction data off them. Pocket Money has a companion desktop application available for Windows, Mac and Linux—a nice break from the common pattern of iOS apps having Mac-only desktop companions.

ProOnGo (Cross-Platform, Starting at $0.99/Month)

ProOnGo is the most distinctly business-oriented tool in this week's Hive Five. You could use it as a personal finance manager if you desired but the feature set is weighted heavily towards business users who need to track things like automotive mileage, business-related expenses, and generate reports for tax purposes and submission to their company. The basic package runs $0.99/month and is limited to manual entires and expense report generation, the premium package runs $4.99/month and includes web-based access, backups, custom spreadsheets, and synchronization to your American Express business card.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the five most popular mobile finance tools, it's time to vote for your favorite:

Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to give you idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Best Mobile Personal Finance Tool?

Earlier this year we took a look at best money management web sites, but often, tracking money on-the-go is just as important. What's your favorite tool for managing your money on the go?

Photo by Erik Hersman.

Whether you're using a mobile-optimized web site or an application specific to the iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and so on, we want to hear from you. What mobile money management tool makes it easy to manage your money when you're away from your computer?

Hive Five nominations take place in the comments, where you post your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Mobile Personal Finance Tool. Please don't include your vote in a reply to another commenter. Instead, make your vote and reply separate comments. If you don't follow this format, we may not count your vote. To prevent tampering with the results, votes from first-time commenters may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: The Hive Five feature series asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get: "Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every weekend, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Five Best Resources for Free Games.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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