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Category: SmallSiteNews

SmallSiteNews

  • OpenTable CEO: One In Four Restaurants Closing Is Conservative

    OpenTable CEO: One In Four Restaurants Closing Is Conservative

    “We expect around one in four restaurants to close and to not be able to return because of COVID,” says OpenTable CEO Debby Soo. “Unfortunately, now we think that number might even be conservative. Restaurants are going through a grueling time right now. We don’t know when it is going to come back to pre-COVID levels but it is likely to be after there is a vaccine available for people to take.”

    Debby Soo, CEO of OpenTable, discusses the ramifications of COVID and the related government mandates and restrictions on the restaurant industry:

    One In Four Restaurants Closing Now Appears To Be Conservative

    We expect around one in four restaurants to close and to not be able to return because of COVID (related mandates). Unfortunately, now we think that number might even be conservative. Restaurants are going through a grueling time right now. They are having to pay for their wait staff and rent is a huge cost. For restaurants to open back up any type of government aid that can be given to them would be amazing and is necessary. But also again, people have to feel comfortable being in an enclosed area and feeling safe to be around other people. With a lot of the restaurants space is a constraint. 

    We are thinking (about what’s going to happen in the winter when people will want to go into restaurants). It’s very much top of mind for restaurants who are right now experiencing a great surge in demand because it’s summer and dining out is so popular and prevalent. I imagine that takeout and delivery will continue to gain share, especially in the colder months. People now are much more willing to order food and get it delivered or to go and pick it up. That will be one of the main lifelines for restaurants during the colder months.

    Vaccine Needed For Dining To Come All The Way Back

    For dining to return all the way back to pre-COVID levels, a vaccine will be needed. However, we do see dining demand starting to pop up. We recently ran a survey at OpenTable and 25 percent of our respondents said they were dining out at least once a week. That demand is definitely there. Of course, safety precautions are very top of mind for both our restaurants and diners. They want to make sure that the restaurants are keeping both their employees and patrons safe with mask-wearing, table spacing, and all of that. 

    We don’t know when it is going to come back to pre-COVID levels but it is likely to be after there is a vaccine available for people to take. However, we are seeing signs of life and we know that diner demand is there. People are itching to get out and eat.

    Launched Myriad Of Features In Response To COVID

    We’ve recently launched a myriad of different features to adapt to the quickly changing environment around us. We launched Takeout which for diners is a really convenient way to browse a restaurant’s menu, order a meal, and pay all from your OpenTable app. For restaurants, it’s great because it is an additional revenue stream. We also released a new feature we call Safety Precautions. When you come to OpenTable for each restaurant that you are looking at going to you can see a list of all the specific safety and health initiatives that restaurants are following to keep their diners and staff safe. 

    We also recently launched Experiences. This can be anything from a happy hour to a prix fixe menu or a chef’s table. We are seeing a lot of demand for this, even now when people are still not completely comfortable going out to eat. There is this hunger and need for special occasions and these types of experiences.

    OpenTable CEO Debby Soo: One In Four Restaurants Closing Is Conservative
  • It’s Crazy To Rely On Amazon To Sell Your Product

    It’s Crazy To Rely On Amazon To Sell Your Product

    Everybody who sells something through a third party needs to figure out their ecommerce strategy,” says VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk. “The thought to be reliant on retailers or Amazon or anybody else and not being the driving force of your own destiny of producing something and sending it to somebody is crazy to me.”

    Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia discusses on Bloomberg the necessity for sellers of products to develop their own sales channels and to not rely on Amazon or other third-party sellers:

    It’s Crazy To Rely On Amazon To Sell Your Product

    Everybody who sells something through a third party needs to figure out their ecommerce strategy. The thought to be reliant on retailers or Amazon or anybody else and not being the driving force of your own destiny of producing something and sending it to somebody is crazy to me. Regardless of where the world is, try not to overextend yourself on CapEx and OpEx. Let’s get into the game. For others, it’s trying to mitigate their excitement on how good their numbers look so that they don’t overspend. 

    Innovation comes from times like this. If you’re selling through a retailer and you make a product you’re in a bad business. Walmart, Target, Albertsons, they have disproportionately too much leverage. If you’re selling through Amazon you’re really just setting up the next giant that’s going to have too much leverage and they’re going to ask you for more brand dollars and you’re going to spend less on the consumer. 

    I think the change that you’ll see, much like anything, you look at downtown, supermarkets, and now e-comm, I do think you’ll see a fragmentation of products going direct-to-consumer, not through Amazon or Walmart. In seven years I think that many will talk to this time as the aha moment of we need to get our act together on going direct to consumer.

    Customer Acquisition Costs Right Now Are Crazy Attractive

    Meanwhile, because this is a complicated game. Facebook and Instagram and Google prices are down in costs in the auctions because a lot of people are not spending. Customer acquisition costs right now are crazy attractive. So the cliche plays out. Cash-rich businesses always accelerate aggressively during downtimes. If you have the ability to spend on acquiring customers right now and have a healthy business there’s a huge growth opportunity.

    For others, it’s a restrategize opportunity. Dwelling and going on full defense is only the answer if you’re actually on the verge of going out of business.

    It’s Crazy To Rely On Amazon To Sell Your Product
  • Robert Irvine: New App Makes It Possible For Restaurants To Reopen Safely

    Robert Irvine: New App Makes It Possible For Restaurants To Reopen Safely

    “We’ve partnered with the National Restaurant Association for a restaurant safety app called VirusSAFE Pro,” says Restaurant Impossible host Robert Irvine. “When you say you’ve done something, say you’re cleaning the refrigerator, and you’re actually outside smoking a cigarette, I know because of geotagging that you didn’t clean that when you said you did. It’s really about accountability of duty of care. What we’re trying to do is put back the consumer of customer confidence through transparency.”

    Robert Irvine, celebrity chef and host of Restaurant Impossible, discusses the launch of his new app VirusSAFE Pro which helps restaurants and consumers monitor the implementation of safety protocols. Irvine says the key is restoring “consumer confidence” in restaurant dining:

    VirusSAFE Pro App Helps Restaurants Stay Healthy

    We’ve actually partnered with the National Restaurant Association for a (restaurant safety app) called VirusSAFE Pro. It enables checklist reminders on your phone so that COVID-19 safety protocols are done in a timely manner and all the protocols are completed. You think about standing operating procedures for restaurants especially in the COVID-19 times where we’re looking at masks and gloves and everything that’s clean. 

    We’ve all been to airports and restaurants where people say that things have been done and they actually haven’t. VirusSAFE Pro is an app for phones that also has a desktop which helps with mitigation. When you say you’ve done something, say you’re cleaning the refrigerator, and you’re actually outside smoking a cigarette, I know because of geotagging that you didn’t clean that when you said you did. It’s really about accountability of duty of care. What we’re trying to do is put back the consumer of customer confidence through transparency. That’s the biggest part. It’s simple. It’s easy to use. It provides verification of stuff done in real-time.

    Right Now The Problem Is Consumer Confidence

    It’s 99 percent fail-safe as opposed to a pen and a piece of paper. I can actually tell you where you are and what you are doing. This is the only consumer-facing app that when you’re verified and you’re using that system you can put a check and verified sticker in your window. A consumer can then take their smartphone use it on the QR code and find out exactly what’s been done for the last 24 hours or 48 hours of your protocols. That allows a guest who has two kids that are below three years old or an 89-year-old grandmother to feel safe to go back into your restaurant. Right now the problem is consumer confidence. 

    It’s tracking everything that we’ve done for two years or more. You know what it’s like right now, everybody’s saying I got sick in your restaurant. Now I’ve got this mitigation tool to say we have done our best practices and protocols and our duty of care to make sure you are your safest. There is no system that’s 100 percent clear but this is 99 percent that we can follow what you’ve done, how you’ve done it, and make you want to get back to a restaurant. If you don’t do this and this is a big don’t, we already are at 30 to 40 percent of failure with the restaurants that will not be able to come past this pandemic. That is a huge amount when we’ve got 11 million folks out of work. 

    Restaurant Impossible Reopen

    I’ve just reopened six restaurants in three weeks in four states following COVID-19 closures putting in new practices and protocols to make sure that consumers are safe. You will hear more from me regarding this on my TV show Restaurant Impossible Reopen which you’ll see very soon. It’s really important that we take these protocols seriously.

    Robert Irvine: New App Makes It Possible For Restaurants To Reopen Safely
  • Apple CEO: Mac Transitioning To Our Own Apple Silicon

    Apple CEO: Mac Transitioning To Our Own Apple Silicon

    “Today is going to be a truly historic day for the Mac,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook at their at the Worldwide Developers Conference. “Today we are going to tell you about some really big changes, how we are going to take the Mac to a whole new level. From the very beginning, the Mac redefined the entire computer industry. The Mac has always been about innovation and boldly pushing things forward, embracing big changes to stay at the forefront of personal computing.”

    Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, announced today that Apple is going exclusively with Apple created silicon chips to power the Mac. Cook spoke at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference earlier today:

    The Mac has had three major transitions in its history. The move to PowerPC, the transition to macOS X, and the move to Intel. Now it’s time for a huge leap forward for the Mac. Today is the day that we are announcing that the Mac is transitioning to our own Apple Silicon. When we make bold changes it’s for one simple yet powerful reason… so we can make much better products. When we look ahead we envision some major new products and transitioning to our own custom silicon is what will enable us to bring them to life.

    At Apple, integrating hardware and software is fundamental to everything we do. That’s what makes our products so great and silicon is at the heart of our hardware. So having a world class silicon design team is a game changer.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook: Mac Transitioning To Our Own Apple Silicon
  • If People Can Ride the Subway We Can Open Factories, Says Jason Calacanis

    If People Can Ride the Subway We Can Open Factories, Says Jason Calacanis

    “If people can ride the subway and if people can go to Trader Joe’s and pack into all these different places we can start to open factories,” says legendary tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis during an interview on CNBC:

    When we look at the issues around reopening it’s very confusing for people running businesses today and I think for Americans generally. We’re not allowed to go to the beach and we’re not allowed to play golf but we can take the subway. This is the incredible failure of our government from the federal level down to the local level to not be able to give basic instructions and to have a clear voice.

    Somehow this has turned into a political issue which is the worst of all outcomes. You’re a Republican right-wing person if you want to go back to work. On the left if you let people go back to work you’re committing murder. It’s ridiculous. We have to take a much more measured thoughtful approach to let people go back to work who want to. I understand people are scared people and they can opt-out of this.

    We’ve got a lot of people who work behind keyboards, some of them in the media, who really want to tell people they can’t go back to work when they have a six-figure job clicking keys on a keyboard. It’s not very realistic. Certainly, if people can ride the subway and if people can go to Trader Joe’s and pack into all these different places we can start to open factories.

    If People Can Ride the Subway We Can Open Factories, Says Jason Calacanis
  • You’ve Got To Bail Everyone Out, Says Barry Diller

    You’ve Got To Bail Everyone Out, Says Barry Diller

    “You’ve got to bail everyone out,” says Expedia and IAC Chairman Barry Diller. “This is like when you’re picking losers and winners. Everybody is in the same position which is the world stopped for commerce. You see this when you drive down streets and you see big cities and small cities and you see nothing is open. They’re ghost towns. The damage that is being done every day is enormous. Everybody needs to be bailed out of this one-time thing and we’ll worry about paying the bills later.”

    Barry Diller, media mogul and Chairman of IAC and Expedia, says that every business in the United States must be bailed out in an interview on CNBC:

    You’ve Got To Bail Everyone Out

    What we’re doing at Expedia is using the time to do a lot of the things that we were not able to do when we were running a hundred miles an hour to keep up with our growth. You can think of it as a small business writ large. And then one day the door closes. And if you’ve got a small business with nobody coming in you have no revenue. Well, travel-related companies have no revenue. Expedia, like many large travel companies, has a very very large cost base so we haven’t yet dealt with that specifically. The real planning inside the company is to come out of this stronger than when we went into it.

    The bailouts of the airlines are necessary. Full stop. You’ve got to bail everyone out. This is like when you’re picking losers and winners. Everybody is in the same position which is the world stopped for commerce. You see this when you drive down streets and you see big cities and small cities and you see nothing is open. They’re ghost towns. The damage that is being done every day is enormous. Everybody needs to be bailed out of this one-time thing and we’ll worry about paying the bills later. 

    What has to happen is the fear has to decline

    What has to happen is the fear has to decline. The fear of associating with other people. There are plenty of friends of mine who say I’m not going to go to the theater or I’m not going to do this because I’m afraid. Actually, now people are saying, even though you’ve been isolating for three weeks you can’t come over to my house, which is kind of nuts. Fear is the next thing that’s going to thaw. Until that happens, whether you test people on the way in or whatever you do, at some point everybody’s going to have to be comfortable being a foot away from other people. If that fundamentally changes then a huge amount of our infrastructure disappears, which I don’t think will happen.

    You kind of have to get over it (the fear). You go into a theater and you’re sitting literally within inches of people, you go in thinking that no one is going come in with enormous toxicity. No one is going to come in who has got some terrible communicable disease and sneeze on you. You kind of just trust in that. We’re all too frightened right now. We’re gonna have to get over it or everything will change.

    One Way Or the Other This Is Going To Be Over or We’re Over

    When we see the damage that is being done everywhere we’ll really see in the second quarter (what’s happening). How can you get fair value? I absolutely believe that in a year or two from now this will be over. One way or the other this is going to be over or we’re over. But how can you value that today? I don’t think you can do it? 

    II think the streaming will be impacted by (the crisis) also. You go a few more months and while people say (that Netflix) and other subscriptions to entertainment) will be the last things they’ll cut because people feel they desperately need it to just get through the day but that is eventually going to take its toll. People truly will not have the discretionary income to afford it. 

    Cornoavirus Doesn’t Change the Dynamics of Anything

    But it doesn’t change the dynamics of anything. You’ve got the competitors. Streaming has taken over the world. Hollywood is irrelevant. The only companies that have a true path, an absolute clear business model path forward, have nothing to do with the entertainment business. Amazon and Netflix. Everybody else, good luck to them. They may be able to build subscription services that may be profitable but that world has changed forever. I think this pandemic has nothing to do with it other than earnings that are going to be much less for a while. 

    Of course, there are opportunities (to invest in) you just have to have a very long view or sure-footed look at things as not only they are but as you think they will be. We’re looking at some very large potential acquisitions for IAC. This is the environment where if you are acquisitive you’re going to do the thing that for many years everybody’s asked for. Oh my God, everything’s over-inflated and prices are crazy. You can’t buy things for this or that without these new premiums. Well, you know what, that’s all gone. If you’ve got capital what could be a better time than to exploit what is a terrible downfall for many companies.

    You’ve Got To Bail Everyone Out, Says Barry Diller
  • Mark Cuban: Some Banks Actively Not Taking PPP Loan Applications

    Mark Cuban: Some Banks Actively Not Taking PPP Loan Applications

    “There are some banks who are actively trying not to take applications and to minimize the number of loans they make through the program,” says investor Mark Cuban. “This is despite the fact that it pays a five percent commission for the loans made on the small businesses. It might take the Treasury Department really pushing some banks who were unwilling participants to start to push some loans out there.”

    Mega entrepreneur Mark Cuban discusses the difficulties with the launch of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) designed to help small businesses in an interview on CNBC:

    Some Banks Actively Not Taking PPP Loan Applications

    You have got to execute on what you’ve already promised obviously. Small businesses have been told that this (PPP forgivable loan) was coming since the legislation was passed more than almost two weeks ago. The rush was more than the banks were able to handle. The banks have just got to do their job. 

    Part two to that is I think there are some banks who are actively trying not to take applications and to minimize the number of loans they make through the program. This is despite the fact that it pays a five percent commission for the loans made on the small businesses. It might take the Treasury Department really pushing some banks who were unwilling participants to start to push some loans out there.

    Surprising That Banks Not Taking Advantage Of Opportunity

    It’s kind of surprising to me because the reality is that the Fed has said that they’ll buy back all the loans. Plus on top of that, they’ll pay that five percent origination fee slash commission for smaller loans. So banks have an incentive and it’s a unique opportunity for banks to pick up new clients. Never in the history of banking has a bank been able to say to a small business, I’ll loan you money and if you increase or maintain your employment you don’t have to pay it back. 

    I really truly expected that forward-thinking banks would use this as a way to attract new customers because it’s a unique opportunity. But they just haven’t. It’s going to take some prodding, unfortunately, to really get the stimulus in the hands of those who need it. Also, unfortunately, even more so, it’s a race against time because a lot of these companies are looking at going out of business if they don’t get that money in their hands.

    Mark Cuban: Some Banks Actively Not Taking PPP Loan Applications
  • Grubhub Rolls Out $30 Million Stimulus To Restaurants

    Grubhub Rolls Out $30 Million Stimulus To Restaurants

    “A $250 payment per restaurant (from Grubhub) doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s going to be a huge difference,” says Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney. “We’re looking at it as a stimulus almost because the way we’re rolling it out is a consumer gets $10 if they spend $30. So our $30 million dollars is going to transform into over $100 million dollars of food sales to restaurants across the country.”

    Matt Maloney, CEO of Grubhub, announces a $30 million stimulus to restaurants in a discussion on CNBC:

    Grubhub Rolls Out $30 Million Stimulus To Restaurants 

    A $250 payment per restaurant (from Grubhub) doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s going to be a huge difference. We’re looking at it as a stimulus almost because the way we’re rolling it out is a consumer gets $10 if they spend $30. So our $30 million dollars is going to transform into over $100 million dollars of food sales to restaurants across the country. That’s a big slug when everyone’s working really hard to try to put money in the hands of small businesses.

    It depends on the market (in terms of how many restaurants are still open). In early COVID West Coast markets, we saw a dramatic dip in restaurants that went off the platform. Now they’re starting to come back on. You have New York and Detroit that are in the throes of the crisis right now and so you’re they’re peaking with about 30 percent of the restaurants off. But remember, we’re having thousands and thousands of restaurants coming on the platform for the first time so we’re seeing about the same number in terms of net. It’s just a transition.

    Grubhub Triples Highest Restaurant Onboarding Month Ever

    Our teams are working around the clock. We tripled our most onboarding month ever of restaurants. We had 15,000 restaurants go live in March. We’re probably going to do more in April. It’s just an incredible intensity of need right now for restaurants. We’re doing everything we can to help them. With drivers, we launched contact-free pickup or drop-off. We also just launched, just last week, curbside pickup for the drivers to make sure there are two layers of protection.

    There’s plenty of work on Grub and I know there’s lots of work on other delivery platforms as well. We have our own stimulus for our drivers too. If they get impacted directly by COVID we’re paying them. I know other platforms are also. And, of course, the CARES Act just came through with a lot of relief for gig workers also. Everyone right now is all hands on deck trying to help the restaurants, the drivers, and everyone impacted through this economic and health care crisis. 

    Fundamental Economics Are Still Intact

    I am hoping for the best. I think that the fundamental economics of our society is still intact. There is a lot of demand right now for restaurants. If we can help restaurants get through the next few weeks or months, depending on how bad this is, they will come back, they will be there for our communities. If they can’t, then that’s going to be a real problem.

    What we’re seeing right now is as the crisis bottoms out in the market growth does start to come back in that local area. We’re seeing the crises (at different levels) around the country in different markets at different times so we’re trying to dynamically manage that situation on the ground.

    Grubhub Rolls Out $30 Million Stimulus To Restaurants, Says Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney

  • Slack CEO: We’ve Seen an Enormous Surge

    Slack CEO: We’ve Seen an Enormous Surge

    “In the first 60th percent of this quarter added 9,000 new paid customers,” says Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield. “That’s a net number. This is compared to 5,000 for the previous quarter and 5,000 for the quarter before that. That’s an enormous surge. We’ve also seen the number of messages sent per user up 25 percent. Suddenly people are discovering a lot of techniques that were available to them before that suddenly become mandatory.”

    Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack, discusses via Zoom on CNBC how the pandemic has doubled their pace of growth:

    Customers Added Has Nearly Doubled

    You think about what people hope to accomplish out of having a meeting. It’s often to get a decision made. It’s to update people on the status of projects. There’s a whole bunch of reasons to have a meeting. There’s an immediate obvious switch that goes off in people’s heads, hey we used to sit in the same room and now we’re at home, we need to have a videoconference. But the best way to support that work in getting the decision made, getting people on the same page, and knowing where you can ask the question is often better served by other methods. In the case of Slack, that’s channels. 

    In the first 60th percent of this quarter added 9,000 new paid customers. That’s a net number. This is compared to 5,000 for the previous quarter and 5,000 for the quarter before that. That’s an enormous surge. We’ve also seen the number of messages sent per user up 25 percent. Suddenly people are discovering a lot of techniques that were available to them before that suddenly become mandatory. When the only tools you have to get work done are meetings and email and meetings suddenly become a lot harder to pull off you begin to look for alternatives.

    Right Now It Looks Great For Us

    We look at what might happen on the small business side (on whether we will see sustained growth). There could be millions of bankruptcies and that will obviously affect us. We have a very healthy small business part of Slack. Enterprises can shut down spending. On the other hand, we’ve seen the surge in sign-ups so obviously people are seeing the need. We also see expansion in existing enterprise customers. It’s very hard to know how those two forces balance each other out. 

    There are other things to consider too. I’ve been talking to other software CEOs. What do you do when you’re not doing field marketing events to drive new customers? What do you do when your salespeople can’t travel? What do you do when your executive briefing centers are shut? How is that going to manifest in pipeline and growth in 3, 6, 9, 12 months? Right now it looks great for us but it’s impossible to say how this takes out over the year.

    Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield: We’ve Seen an Enormous Surge
  • Waves of Job Losses For 2.2 Million Startup Employees, Says VC Group

    Waves of Job Losses For 2.2 Million Startup Employees, Says VC Group

    According to a report on CNBC, startups may not get government money from the coronavirus relief bill if they have already taken venture capital or private equity money.

    “So-called affiliation rules from the Small Business Administration could prevent startups from getting loans as part of that stimulus package,” says CNBC report Kate Rooney. “According to SBA rules, a startup should be affiliated with their investors. For example, if a VC backed company has 30 employees, it is grouped in with thousands of other employees at fellow portfolio companies.

    “The head of the National Venture Capital Association tells me that startups don’t have access to emergency capital in the meantime and there could be waves of job losses for the countries 2.2 million startup employees,” says Rooney.

  • There’s Been a Lot of Advances In Machine Learning, Says Etsy CEO

    There’s Been a Lot of Advances In Machine Learning, Says Etsy CEO

    “There’s been a lot of advances in machine learning that take things that would have been literally impossible ten years ago and made those things much more possible today,” says Etsy CEO Josh Silverman. “With 62 million products for sale, picking for any given buyer the 20 or 30 that should be on page one of search results is a pretty interesting and pretty challenging task. The key is understanding what an item is with relatively little data and then being able to determine for each individual person how to personalize search results.”

    Josh Silverman, CEO of Etsy, discusses how Etsy has increased growth by standing out in a world of sameness and by employing machine learning technology to personalize the Etsy experience for their customers. Silverman talks about his strategy for success in an interview with Fortune:

    We Started Doing Much Fewer Things Much Better

    Etsy has never been more relevant. In a world where so many of our products are being commoditized and we’re surrounded by a sea of sameness, Etsy stands for something really different. I think it’s really important that we stand out in the world and I’m proud of what the team has done to achieve that. The definition of success was really clear. I think from day one it’s about growing the size of the pie for everyone. The actual tactics that it was going to take to do that we’ve learned together as a team over time. 

    When I arrived, there were maybe eight or ten different metrics of success that we all held relatively equally. I said there’s one metric that matters much more than every other, which is what we call gross merchandise sales. In other words, the total sales of our sellers. When we stopped saying what’s a good idea, what moves any one of these 10 metrics and started saying, what are the fewest things we need to do to really accelerate gross merchandise sales, we came to a very different answer. We started doing much fewer things much better. That’s really been the key to our success.

    There’s Been a Lot of Advances In Machine Learning

    Change is hard. When running a marketplace we have access to a lot of data and insights that each individual seller won’t necessarily have. Our job is to really look after the good of the whole and be willing to make some decisions that sometimes, in the moment, may not feel obvious to every seller but really do lift all boats and make our sellers as a whole much better off. We’ve really focused at a high level on doing two things really well. One, make it much easier for people to find great products on Etsy. And two, once they’ve found those products to actually buy them. 

    With 62 million products for sale, picking for any given buyer the 20 or 30 that should be on page one of search results is a pretty interesting and pretty challenging task. There’s been a lot of advances in machine learning that take things that would have been literally impossible ten years ago and made those things much more possible today. The key is understanding what an item is with relatively little data and then being able to determine for each individual person how to personalize search results. We’ve made leaps and bounds in the science of search and machine learning. That’s more relevant at Etsy than almost anywhere else.

    The mission of Etsy is incredible. As the nature of work changes creativity can’t be automated. The role we play for creators and makers being able to harness their creative passions and power and turn that into a way to earn a living for their families is a mission that I think is ever more important in this fast-changing economy.

    There’s Been a Lot of Advances In Machine Learning, Says Etsy CEO Josh Silverman
  • Amazon VP Says 58% of Sales Come From Small Businesses

    Amazon VP Says 58% of Sales Come From Small Businesses

    “Over 50% of everything that gets sold on Amazon actually comes from small and medium-sized businesses.,” says Amazon’s VP of Small Business, Nick Denissen. “Their success is our success so we’re definitely focused on doubling down on that. We have over 1.9 million small and medium-sized businesses in the US who work together with Amazon to conduct their business. Those include our sellers, authors, and skilled developers. They’re just a very important part of the customer experience we serve up.”

    Nick Denissen, vice president of small business at Amazon, discusses the huge impact that small businesses have on Amazon sales in an interview on CNBC:

    Over 50% of Everything Sold On Amazon Is From Small Businesses

    Over 50% of everything that gets sold on Amazon actually comes from small and medium-sized businesses. Their success is our success so we’re definitely focused on doubling down on that. We have over 1.9 million small and medium-sized businesses in the US who work together with Amazon to conduct their business. Those include our sellers, authors, and skilled developers. They’re just a very important part of the customer experience we serve up. 

    The 58 percent I just culled out they are actually the part of the business that is growing faster than our first-party business. We definitely have our interests aligned with small businesses on all fronts. As I pointed out, 58 percent of everything that gets bought is from small and medium-sized businesses. Many customers don’t realize that. 

    Amazon Storefronts Shed a Little Bit More Light On Small Businesses

    Last year, we launched Amazon Storefronts to shed a little bit more of a light on small businesses. Amazon Storefronts is essentially a curated shopping experience where customers can dedicatedly shop from local small businesses. They’re all US-based small businesses. When we opened that Storefront last year a little bit over a year ago we had 20,000 sellers. To date, we’re excited to announce that we actually have 30,000 sellers. 

    We’ve also developed special technology for them to share more content. They can actually share their story. Those sellers have reached 70 million customers in the last year and sold over 250 million products. I think those numbers speak for themselves that we really are helping and that small businesses can get discovered on Amazon.

    Amazon Announces Small Business Spotlight Awards

    Today, we’re super excited to announce our Small Business Spotlight Awards. We’re continuing to shine a spotlight on many of these exciting small businesses where they can share their stories. We’re announcing 18 finalists across three categories. There’s Small Business Woman of the Year Award, Entrepreneur Under 30, and Small Business of the Year Award. When we asked our sellers to nominate themselves for this process we actually had over 1300 nominations. Since it’s the first time we did it we really didn’t know what to expect. 

    Starting today our customers can vote until November 8th for their favorite small business in this category. One thing that we’ve learned is that customers do like to learn more about these small businesses, about their stories, and also other small businesses get a lot of inspiration from small businesses. We’re pretty excited to have these sellers on this journey with us. 

    Small Business Winner Will Get $80,000

    We’re also conducting two live seller events in the US today where we’re enabling small businesses to meet customers and to actually conduct a sale. I just want to call out that one of the nominees, one of the finalists in the Small Business of the Year award, is  Damhorst Toys and Puzzles. They are a multi-generational company. They’ve been in business for 48 years. They hand manufacture their wooden toys in Missouri and now they found their way online with Amazon. They’re growing and it’s great to see those types of companies. 

    The winner will get an $80,000 award so we’re pretty excited to have them continue to grow and prosper on Amazon. One of the things we hear from small businesses is it’s not easy to find the skill sets to help them drive an online business, in particular businesses who have started offline. That’s one of the areas we’re also looking at. How can we help small businesses on that front?  So stay tuned on that.

    Amazon VP Nick Denissen Says 58% of Sales Come From Small Businesses
  • Brazil Fines Facebook Over Cambridge Analytica Scandal

    Brazil Fines Facebook Over Cambridge Analytica Scandal

    Bloomberg is reporting that Brazil has levied a $1.6 million fine on Facebook for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

    The fine is the result of an investigation that began in April 2018, finding that Facebook illegally shared data for some 443,000 users.

    “It’s evident that the data of about 443,000 users of the platform were made available by the developers of the app ‘thisisyourdigitallife’ for reasons that are at least questionable,” Brazil’s justice ministry said in a statement.

    Facebook has said there is no evidence the data from Brazilian users was transferred to Cambridge Analytica, but the justice ministry said Facebook and its local unit failed to prove that less users were impacted.

    As Bloomberg points out, Facebook agreed in July to pay a $5 billion fine to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It is not clear if Facebook will immediately pay the Brazilian fine or fight it, however. The company simply said “we are currently evaluating our legal options in this case.”

  • IRS Makes It Easier For Taxpayers To Find Free Options

    IRS Makes It Easier For Taxpayers To Find Free Options

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced an agreement with Free File, Inc. (FFI) designed to make tax season a little easier.

    Taxpayers earning less than $69,000 a year have the option of filing their taxes for free. Unfortunately, many tax preparation companies hide their free options, making it difficult for customers to find them.

    “This updated agreement is part of a larger effort by the IRS to help taxpayers meet their tax obligations,” said Chuck Rettig, IRS Commissioner. “It continues to show the partnership we enjoy with the Free File partners and the commitment we both share in helping taxpayers since the program’s creation 18 years ago. The improved process will make Free File stronger and give taxpayers another reason to consider this valuable software option.”

    “The IRS and FFI will also continue to work together to identify and explore ways to better help low- to moderate-income taxpayers and to pursue meaningful opportunities to enhance taxpayer awareness and use of the Free File Program beyond the 2020 filing season,” Rettig continued.

    As part of the agreement, Free File partners will not obscure their Free File options from search results, as Intuit has been accused of doing in the past. As part of the agreement, the IRS will begin offering its own Free File alternatives, something it was previously prohibited from doing.

  • View Velocity Is The Secret To Ranking On YouTube

    View Velocity Is The Secret To Ranking On YouTube

    “To determine rankings on their platform, YouTube uses a metric called the View Velocity,” says HubSpot SEO expert Braden Becker. “The View Velocity metric measures the number of subscribers who watch your video right after it’s been published. The higher your videos view velocity the higher your videos will rank. YouTube also accounts for the number of active subscribers you have when they rank your videos.”

    Braden Becker, Senior SEO Strategist at HubSpot, reveals the secrets of YouTube’s Ranking Algorithm in his latest video:

    The Secrets of YouTube’s Ranking Algorithm

    Since marketers are at the mercy of algorithms on nearly every publishing channel, knowing how each of these unique algorithms work is crucial to attracting and maintaining an audience. Luckily, while some channels are rather reserved about the secrets of their algorithms, YouTube has been remarkably transparent. To figure out which videos and channels that users are most likely to enjoy watching, YouTube follows their audience. This means they pay attention to which videos each user watches, what they don’t watch, how much time they spend watching each video, their likes, their dislikes, and “they’re not interested in” feedback. 

    What YouTube Pays The Most Attention To

    Ranking High In YouTube Search Results

    YouTube’s algorithm also uses different signals and metrics to rank and recommend videos on each section of their platform. With this in mind, let’s go over how the algorithm decides to serve content to its users on their search results, homepage, suggested videos, trending, and subscription sections. First, are the search results. The two biggest factors that affect your video search rankings are its keywords and relevance. When ranking videos in search, YouTube will consider how well your titles, descriptions, and content, match each user’s queries. They’ll also consider how many videos users have watched from your channel and the last time they watched other videos surrounding the same topic as your video.

    Positive Engagement With Your Videos Is Key

    Next is the home page and suggested videos. No two users will have the same experience on YouTube. They want to serve the most relevant personalized recommendations to each of their viewers. To do this they first analyze user’s activity history and find hundreds of videos that could be relevant to them. Then they rank these videos by how well each video has engaged and satisfied similar users, how often each viewer watches videos from a particular channel or topic, and how many times YouTube has already shown each video to its users. 

    Ranking On The Trending Page

    Next is trending. The trending page is a feast of new and popular videos in a user’s specific country. YouTube wants to balance popularity with novelty when they rank videos in this section, so they heavily consider view count and rate of view growth for each video they rank. 

    High “View Velocity” = High Ranking

    Last is subscriptions. YouTube has a subscriptions page where users can view all the recently uploaded videos from the channels they subscribe to. But this page isn’t the only benefit that channels get when they acquire a ton of subscribers. To determine rankings on their platform, YouTube uses a metric called the View Velocity, which measures the number of subscribers who watch your video right after it’s been published. The higher your videos view velocity the higher your videos will rank. YouTube also accounts for the number of active subscribers you have when they rank your videos.

    The Secrets of YouTube’s Ranking Algorithm with HubSpot SEO expert Braden Becker
  • We Enable Small Sellers To Compete With the Big Guys, Says Etsy CEO

    We Enable Small Sellers To Compete With the Big Guys, Says Etsy CEO

    “We allow small sellers to be able to compete head-to-head with the big guys,” says Etsy CEO Josh Silverman. “We do that by giving them a super simple and easy way to build a business online and market themselves while we do all the business work for them. They can just focus on making great products and serving their customers. We really are (trying to equalize and level the playing field for small sellers). Most importantly, we bring them customers and we bring them buyers. We’re not just a way to put a shop on the web. We’re a way to actually have people come and buy. That’s really powerful.”

    Josh Silverman, CEO of Etsy, discusses how they are focused on driving customers and buyers to their base of 2.3 million sellers on the Etsy platform, in an interview with Jim Cramer of CNBC:

    We Enable Small Sellers To Compete With the Big Guys

    Free shipping is now an expectation in the market. Too often buyers on Etsy have said that they think shipping prices are too high. What we announced in the second quarter is that we’re going to make free shipping the standard that people expect when they come to Etsy. So we announced a number of initiatives to make that easy for sellers to adopt. Obviously, to help sellers, the most important thing is that we can do is drive traffic to Etsy. But our sellers are hungry to invest in their own success. So we also announced just the other day the launch of Etsy Ads, which is a new platform that allows our sellers to invest to grow and buy traffic off of Etsy and bring it on to their Etsy shop.

    We allow small sellers to be able to compete head-to-head with the big guys. We do that by giving them a super simple and easy way to build a business online and market themselves while we do all the business work for them. They can just focus on making great products and serving their customers. We really are (trying to equalize and level the playing field for small sellers). We give them that kind of data. We also make it really easy for them to understand by giving them tools that make it super easy for them to understand. Most importantly, we bring them customers and we bring them buyers. We’re not just a way to put a shop on the web. We’re a way to actually have people come and buy. That’s really powerful.

    To get a two-sided marketplace where you’ve got 43 million buyers and 2.3 million sellers at scale, that’s incredibly hard to do and incredibly hard to replicate. Once you’ve got it it’s durable. Just look at our growth rate. We’re incredibly excited about our opportunity here.

    We Enable Small Sellers To Compete With the Big Guys, Says Etsy CEO Josh Silverman
  • Alibaba.com Opens World’s Largest B2B Marketplace To US Businesses

    Alibaba.com Opens World’s Largest B2B Marketplace To US Businesses

    “Alibaba.com is the largest B2B marketplace on the planet,” says John Caplan, the North America B2B President at Alibaba Group. “Today is a great day for US small businesses. Manufacturers and wholesalers can join Alibaba.com today to sell to the world. The platform is now open to enable those businesses to reach the 190 countries at four corners of the globe where we have ten million business buyers on the platform. That business is $23.9 trillion and in fact, it’s six times larger than the B2C market.”

    John Caplan, President, North America B2B at Alibaba Group, discusses opening Alibaba.com to US small businesses to reach 10 million new B2B buyers, in an interview on Bloomberg:

    Alibaba.com Now Open To US Small Businesses

    Today is a great day for US small businesses. Manufacturers and wholesalers can join Alibaba.com today to sell to the world. The platform is now open to enable those businesses to reach the 190 countries at four corners of the globe where we have ten million business buyers on the platform. That business is $23.9 trillion and in fact, it’s six times larger than the B2C market. Alibaba.com is the largest B2B marketplace on the planet. What we built are simple to use tools for small businesses to have a global storefront, to market to customers, and then to reach deep into the globe so that they can sell their goods.

    Today’s the big announcement. But in fact, one-third of the demand, the buyers on Alibaba.com, are here in the United States. So those folks we’ve been doing business with for 20 years since Jack founded the company. Now what we’re saying to them is you’ve been sourcing on the platform and now you can, in fact, sell to the world on the platform. We are entirely focused on the B2B market. It is $23.9 trillion. Alibaba.com is purpose-built to help small businesses sell to the world. We’re very focused on helping digitize small businesses around the globe.

    70 Percent of US Small Businesses Do Not Sell Online

    One interesting statistic, 70 percent of US small businesses do not sell online today. This market is not yet digitized. What we’ve created are simple to use tools to help small businesses get online. It’s an interesting space because. In fact, the value chain for small businesses, the value chain for B2B is so complex that no one has digitized it end-to-end other than Alibaba.com. 

    We’ve actually created a platform that enables a small business to message, talk to, negotiate with, pay, and handle the logistics for orders end-to-end. I think we’re in a class by ourselves.  Our business has seen a triple-digit growth and this plan has been in the works for many years. I joined Alibaba.com in 2017. The transformation of our business from a yellow page business to an end-to-end procurement platform is now adding the globalized supply to the platform.

    Alibaba.com Opens World’s Largest B2B Marketplace To US Businesses – John Caplan
  • We’ve Seen Active Buyers Consistently Grow, Says eBay CEO

    We’ve Seen Active Buyers Consistently Grow, Says eBay CEO

    “The most important thing that we look at is the underlying health of the marketplace,” says eBay CEO Devin Wenig. “For me, that really comes down to three things. It’s how many people are shopping with us? How many people are selling with us? And how much inventory is in the marketplace? What’s on the shelves if you will. All three of those have never been higher. We’ve seen active buyers consistently grow, we added two million last quarter.”

    Devin Wenig, CEO of eBay, discusses their strong Q2 earnings announcement and growth going forward. Wenig also took the opportunity to slam the internet sales tax movement, saying the “internet sales tax is a regressive tax on small business,” in an interview on CNBC:

    We’ve Seen Active Buyers Consistently Grow

    The most important thing that we look at is the underlying health of the marketplace. For me, that really comes down to three things. It’s how many people are shopping with us? How many people are selling with us? And how much inventory is in the marketplace? What’s on the shelves if you will. All three of those have never been higher. We’ve seen active buyers consistently grow, we added two million last quarter. We continue to see growth in business sellers and inventory. If you look in our history every time those numbers grow GMV (gross merchandise value) grows. 

    What we’re facing right now is a couple of things and GMV can move up or down in the 90 day period. We are in the middle of a rollout of internet sales tax, which we know is making an impact, particularly on our US business. We’re also seeing the withdrawal of some of the marketing spend that we did last year, which was part of the plan. We said we would do that this year and we have a line of sight to it, and it’s explainable. So we’re not that concerned about GMV being soft in the short run. What we see is a healthy marketplace and we know when those metrics grow GMV follows, as it has in every year in our past 24 years.

    We’ve raised guidance now twice in the last two quarters. We don’t give GMV guidance. We give revenue guidance and earnings guidance. We started the year saying this year was about growing the underlying marketplace metrics and let’s get the two real growth priorities, advertising, and payments, going. And half of the way in I’d say I’m pleased but not satisfied. I’d say we’ve made a lot of progress against those priorities, although we still have a long way to go. But it’s given us the confidence to raise our forecast in Q1 and we raised it again yesterday. So that’s a good start, a good first half.

    Internet Sales Tax Is a Regressive Tax On Small Business

    At the beginning of the year, there were no states that had enacted a marketplace collection of sales tax. Now we have nine and there are 30 that have declared and 30 will be in place by the end of this year. Obviously, when a state declares an internet sales tax we must collect on behalf of the sellers. So we have a forward view as to how many states will enact that tax and where it will be in place by the end of the year. It will be 30 and it will cover the majority of our sales in the US and the fourth quarter of this year will be the peak. 

    The impact of internet sales tax will make a bigger impact before it wanes. It’ll wane as we lap out of it next year. I’ll just take the opportunity to say I think it’s a bad policy. We’ve been advocating on behalf of small businesses for years that an internet sales tax is a regressive tax on small business and that is exactly what we’re seeing.

    We’ve Seen Active Buyers Consistently Grow, Says eBay CEO Devin Wenig
  • Designed From the Ground Up To Be a Great Medium Of Exchange, Says Facebook Calibra Head

    Designed From the Ground Up To Be a Great Medium Of Exchange, Says Facebook Calibra Head

    Facebook announced today a new digital wallet for a new digital currency. It is currently in a test phase and will launch live in 2020. Here is how Facebook explains the launch in its announcement release:

    “Today we’re sharing plans for Calibra, a newly formed Facebook subsidiary whose goal is to provide financial services that will let people access and participate in the Libra network. The first product Calibra will introduce is a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology. The wallet will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp and as a standalone app — and we expect to launch in 2020.”

    “From the beginning, Calibra will let you send Libra to almost anyone with a smartphone, as easily and instantly as you might send a text message and at low to no cost. And, in time, we hope to offer additional services for people and businesses, like paying bills with the push of a button, buying a cup of coffee with the scan of a code or riding your local public transit without needing to carry cash or a metro pass.”

    A sneak peek at what the experience of using Calibra will be like.

    David Marcus, head of Facebook’s Calibra, discusses the details of Facebook’s entry into cryptocurrency in an interview on CNBC:

    This Is Designed From the Ground Up To Be a Great Medium Of Exchange

    If you want to compare Libra with traditional cryptocurrencies the first big difference is that typically they are investment vehicles or investment assets rather than being great mediums of exchange. This is really designed from the ground up to be a great medium of exchange. Libra is a very high-quality form of digital money that you can use for everyday payments and cross-border payments, microtransactions and all kinds of different things.

    There are a lot of issues that need to be solved. If you were to get out of the studio right now and ask anyone to send ten dollars on their mobile phones to Canada, they probably wouldn’t know where to start. This is 30 years after the web was invented and mobile broadband is available to so many people. We felt that it was time to try something new and this is the beginning of a long journey to launching this new network in this new digital currency.

    Moving money around the world with Libra should be as easy and cheap as sending a text message.

    When You Can Move More Value Around Profound Changes Might Happen

    We are privileged. We live in a country that has a very stable currency and has very trusted institutions, easy ways to pay each other on mobile devices. That’s actually not the case for many people around the world. Definitely, cross-border payments are still very hard and very expensive. They cost an average of seven percent to send across one border. They sometimes take three or four days to clear. It is a very cumbersome and expensive process for many people around the world. If you think about it from a use case, cross-border payments are definitely going to be a primary use case.

    But when you think about the effect that having an internet of value exists, or protocol for money on top of the existing internet, and all of the things that can be built on top of a low-cost system. Microtransactions are things that we’ve been talking about for decades and haven’t materialized because the amounts we are trying to transact are actually lower than the transaction fees. When all of these things change and you can move value around the Internet in a really easy way I think profound changes might happen.

    Read the Libra White Paper …

    There’s Never Been a Better Moment For Us To Do This

    I have a slightly contrarian view on this (trust). I don’t think there’s ever been a better moment for us to do this because of the way we’re doing it. We’re actually going to launch this new blockchain at some point next year. We’ve launched a test net today that people can start experimenting with. This new blockchain is actually going to be decentralized and run by the members of an association.

    We’re just going to be one among many to govern over this new network and currency. When you look at how much effort we’ve put to limit our influence and limit our control over this network I think it’s a new way of operating. We don’t have control over the network and we don’t have control over the currency. What we have control over is going to be the wallets that are going to operate within Facebook and on top of the network.

    We Aren’t Going To Be the Defacto Wallet

    We aren’t going to be the defacto wallet. There will be plenty of competition. To earn people’s trust we are going to have to make strong commitments notably on privacy, ensuring that financial data and social data never get commingled and really earn people’s trust over very long periods of time. There are going to be a number of wallets that are going to compete with us on the network we helped create.

    Designed From the Ground Up To Be a Great Medium Of Exchange, Says Facebook Calibra Head David Marcus
  • Jeff Bezos: We Need To Have Billion Dollar Scale Failures

    Jeff Bezos: We Need To Have Billion Dollar Scale Failures

    “At Amazon, we still take risks all the time,” says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “We encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing. Our failures have to grow with the company. We need big failures if we are going to be moving the needle. We need to have billion dollar scale failures. If we are not, we are not swinging hard enough.”

    Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, discusses how to be a successful entrepreneur by being customer obsessed in a conversation at the Amazon re:MARS conference in Las Vegas:

    The Most Important Thing Is To Be Customer Obsessed

    If you want to be an entrepreneur, the most important thing is to be customer obsessed. Don’t satisfy your customers, figure out how to absolutely delight them. That is the number one thing whoever your customers are. Passion. You have got to have some passion for the arena that you are going to develop and work in. Otherwise, you are going to be competing against people who do have compassion for that. They are going to build better products and services.

    You can’t be a mercenary. You have to be a missionary. Missionaries build better products and services. They always win. The mercenaries are just trying to make money. Paradoxically, the missionaries always end up making more money.

    We Need To Have Billion Dollar Scale Failures

    You have to pick something that you actually have a genuine passion for. You have to take risks. You have to be willing to take risks. If you aren’t going to take risks, if you come up with a business idea where there are no risks there, those ideas are probably already being done. There being done well by many many people. So have to have something that might not work. You have to accept that your business is going to be in many ways an experiment. It might fail. That’s okay. That’s what risk is.

    At Amazon, we still take risks all the time. We encourage it. We talk about failure. We should be failing. Our failures have to grow with the company. We need big failures if we are going to be moving the needle. We need to have billion dollar scale failures. If we are not, we are not swinging hard enough.

    Disagree and Commit

    If I have a new idea and I want to see it pursued I do have to build support for it. You need very smart people to embrace the idea and move it forward. We have a framework at Amazon, it’s one of our leadership principals, it’s called disagree and commit. That is extremely useful. After you discussed an idea, you do need to make a decision and move forward. The whole team needs to really commit to that. When I really feel strongly about something and the team disagrees with me I have a helpful phrase that I look to use which is, “I want you to gamble with me on this.”

    The truth is when you are in a position like that nobody knows what the right answer is.  You’re not saying I’m right on this. Go do this. You’re saying I want you to gamble with me on this because I don’t know if it is right either. I disagree and commit all the time. I promise the people when I do it, I’m very clear in saying, “I don’t agree with this. I think it is probably not going to work. But I will never say I told you so and I’m going to be on your team. I will do everything I can to make it work.”

    Broadband Access Is Going To Be a Fundamental Human Need

    A recent big bet (we’ve taken at Amazon) would be Project Kuiper. This is our LEO satellite constellation. The goal here is broadband everywhere. One of the things this does, it’s just the way the systems work, you have equal broadband all over the surfaces of the earth. Not exactly equal, it tends to be a little bit more concentrated toward the poles, unfortunately. You end up servicing the whole world.

    It’s really good because by definition you end up accessing people who are under bandwidth including rural and remote areas. I think you can see going forward that access to broadband is going to be very close to being a fundamental human need as we move forward.

    Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: We Need To Have Billion Dollar Scale Failures
  • How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel

    How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel

    “You know you need more traffic to your blog posts but you don’t have the money to spend to get those eyeballs,” says online marketing strategist Neil Patel. “What should you do? Today I’m going to teach you five ways to promote your content when you don’t have any money. Have you tried all the basic stuff that most of these marketers, including me, are talking about, and find that you’re not getting any results?”

    Neil Patel, online marketing strategist and founder of Neil Patel Digital, discusses how to promote your content when you don’t have money in his latest YouTube video:

    Tip 1 – Answer Quora Questions

    The first tip I have for you is to answer Quora questions. Quora is such a popular site, one of the most popular sites in the world. There are questions around everything; What is it like to be an Olympic gold medalist? How do you get traffic to a blog? Who is Neil Patel? There are questions on every topic under the sun.

    If you go on Quora, and you start answering all these questions, and you even link out to your blog whenever it’s relevant, you’ll find that you’re going to start getting more and more traffic. Why is this? Well, these Quora posts rank for everything in Google. It’s one of the simplest and easiest ways to get more traffic to your site.

    Who is Neil Patel? - Quora Result on Google Search
    Quora posts rank for everything in Google, Says Neil Patel

    Tip 2 – Go Live On Social Media

    The second tip I have for you is to go live on social media. Even if you don’t have the biggest social following, live videos are super engaging and all these socialites show it to almost all of your subscribers because they want to compete with all the television networks. If you look at people like Tai Lopez, some people may hate on him, but he’s a really smart marketer. When he goes live, he can generate hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars in sales, just from his live videos. It’s a smart tactic. Not only is he getting people to go wherever he wants but he’s also generating real revenue from it because a live audience is very captive.

    Tip 3 – Do Video Teasers

    The third tip I have for you is video teasers. If you just bust out your phone and you do a video teaser, talking about what you’re going to release, or this content, or what is new, and why they should check it out, or why they should be patient and wait for the next week, they’re more likely to come the next week and actually read that blog post. You know, Apple, whenever they launch new products, they do this whole event. They create all this mystery. They’re doing videos and conferences, breaking down what they’re going to release in the future. These teasers are a great way to build up the pent up demand for the product right when they launch it, and you can do the same with your content. You just have to create videos that tease people to let them know what’s coming out in the future.

    Tip 4 – Answer Questions On Social Media

    The fourth tip I have for you is to answer questions on social media. Whether it’s Facebook, whether it’s Twitter, people are tweeting, asking questions. Whether it’s groups, it doesn’t matter where it is. If you go there and you respond and help people out, they’re more likely to follow you. Not just on the social web, but they’re also going to follow you on your website. And the beautiful part about this, especially when you do it on sites that are your competitors, you’re going to get more link clicks because when you leave a comment, you can typically link back to your site. When you do this on the social web, you’ll find that you’re getting more followers and that way when you release more content, you’ll get more views. But it’s a very effective strategy, especially when you do it to competitors because they have your ideal audience.

    Tip 5 – Do Direct Outreach

    And last but not least, direct outreach. When you link out to people, let them know that you linked out to them. Just email asking to share your content. You know how many emails I get of people saying, hey Neil, I linked out to you. I love your content. If you like the post, feel free and share it. I don’t share all the time but I do it some of the time. It works, it even works with me. That’s just showing you that outreach, if you take the time, you can get extra shares. Sure, not 100% of the people are going to share your content or link back out to you, but if you do it in quantity, you will get extra traffic from it.

    How To Promote Your Content When You Don’t Have Money – Neil Patel