Category Archives: General

WHAT IS A UNICORN COMPANY?

WHAT IS A UNICORN COMPANY?

  • Who Are They?
  • How Are They Valuated?
  • What’s Expected Of Them?
  • How Are They Perceived? 

Unicorn is a term used in the venture funds industry to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion and usually no more than 10 years old. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures. 

At that stage, there were only 39 companies that were considered to be unicorns. She looked at software startups founded in the 2000s and estimated that only 0.07% of them ever reach $1 billion valuations. She noted startups that managed to reach the $1 billion mark, are so rare that finding one is as difficult as finding a mythical unicorn.

According to Lee, the first unicorn companies were founded in the 1990s with Alphabet (GOOG) or Google as it is now called, being the super-unicorn of the group with a valuation of over $100 billion. Many more unicorns came along in the 2000s with Facebook being at the top of the list and classed as the only super-unicorn for that decade.

Categorizing these companies have evolved and the terms used now are, Decacorn which is for those companies over $10 billion, while Hectocorn is used for such a company that valued over $100 billion.

Since Lee’s publication, the term unicorn, is widely used and refers to startups in the technology, mobile, and information technology sectors and usually integrates all three, questionably supported by their fundamental finances.  

 

Average Life Of A Unicorn 

According to Google, there were 465 unicorns as of April 2020. The largest unicorns included Ant Financial, Didi, Airbnb, Stripe, and Palantir Technologies. The most recent Decacorn is Lyft which became a public company on March 29, 2019. Generally, these billion-dollar valued unicorns become a public company or are bought out or merged with another successful public company. 

In 1999 the average life of a company was 4 years before it went public. Now that has been stretched out to 11 years before a venture-supported technology company is listed. This is brought about by an increased amount of private capital available to unicorns, along with the increase of the number of shareholders a company can have before it is required to disclose its financials publicly. Notably, private investors can only take a position on unicorns when they choose to list.

 

No Need For An IPO

Through many funding rounds, companies do not need to go through an initial public offering (IPO) to obtain capital or a higher valuation as they can just go back to their investors for more capital. IPOs also run the risk of devaluation of a company if the public market thinks a company is worth less than its investors. 

Just two examples of this situation were Square, best known for its mobile payments and financial services business, and Trivago, a popular German hotel search engine, both of which were priced below their initial offer prices by the market. 

This was because of the severe over-valuation of both companies in the private market by investors and venture capital firms. The market did not agree with both companies' valuations, which in turn, dropped the price of each stock from their initial IPO range.

 

Where And Who Are The Unicorns?

Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: China (125), United States (124), India (27), South Korea (11), UK (10), Israel (7), Sweden (6), Indonesia (6), Singapore (4), France (3), Hong Kong (3), Portugal (3), Switzerland (3), Australia (2), Estonia (2), Belgium (2), Canada (2), Germany (2), Ukraine (2), and fourteen other countries (1 each). 

The Top 10 Unicorn companies are listed in this image below

Former Unicorns 

Below are the top 10 unicorns that exited due to an IPO or Acquisitions

Click the link to view the full list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies
NOTE: The companies in red on this list do not have a website. 

 

The Valuation Of A Unicorn

The valuation of a startup company to be classed as a unicorn is unique in comparison to more established companies. For an established company, the valuation stems from past years’ performance, while a startup valuation is derived from its growth opportunities and expected development, so there is no actual math to estimate startups’ valuations. 

Valuations for unicorns usually come from funding rounds of large venture capital firms. To give such high valuations in funding rounds, venture capital firms have to believe in the vision of both the entrepreneur and the company as a whole. They have to believe the company can evolve from its unstable, uncertain present standing into a company that can generate and sustain moderate growth in the future. This approach can backfire as it did when it hurt Softbank, a leading investor in WeWork who took a $4.6 billion hit when the company failed to float in 2019. 

A very significant final valuation of startups is when a much larger company buys out a company and gives them that unicorn valuation. For example when Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion.

Bill Gurley, a partner at venture capital firm Benchmark predicted in March 2015 and earlier that the rapid increase in the number of unicorns may "have moved into a world that is both speculative and unsustainable", that will leave in its wake what he terms "dead unicorns". Also, he said that the main reason for Unicorns' valuation is the "excessive amount of money" available for them. 

Similarly, in 2015 William Danoff who manages the Fidelity Contrafund said unicorns might be "going to lose a bit of luster" due to their more frequent occurrence and several cases of their stock price being devalued. Research by Stanford professors published in 2018 suggests that unicorns are overvalued by an average of 48%. 

 

It’s In The Numbers

Businesses on the internet have made great headway. Some of the biggest businesses in the world, including Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple, are solidly established in the online tech world. A lot of other companies also have large, tangible revenue growth and earnings. They don’t buy users or customers with the hope of making money considering the inevitable attrition rate when those users eventually change their behavior. 

So valuations shouldn’t depend on imaginary future earnings but on actual returns and EBITDA. (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) Amortization being affiliate fees or payments of an obligation of a series of installments or transfers. 

Some argue that venture investors are getting over-enthusiastic when pricing businesses, inflating the price of startups that should be valued in the millions, not billions. Instead of carrying out proper risk analysis, they are diving in out of a fear of missing out on the supposedly next big thing.

 

Path To Profitability – The New Watchword

Silicon Valley’s crop of highly valued tech start-ups, which include Uber and Airbnb, now household names, all benefited from the mass adoption of smartphones and cheap cloud computing. Many of these companies built global empires by simply taking existing businesses, like taxis, food delivery, hotels, etc, and making them mobile, based online. 

Now we are seeing the likes of robotics and Artificial intelligence (AI) startups wanting to be a contender for the next big thing in unicorns. However, growth at all costs has gone out the window after years of IPOs being done without much focus on profits. “Path to profitability” is the new watchword according to Ryan Dzierniejko of Sequoia along with Michael Moritz, another Sequoia partner who says  “The law of economic gravity has returned as it does every decade or so”.

 

There are a considerable number of unicorn companies and the valuations seem to grow beyond the imagination of anyone. Is this the tech bubble 2.0?

 

The Unicorn Reality Check

Even before it was declared a global state of emergency due to COVID-19 on March 13, 2020, the unicorn reality check was underway with venture capitalists reckoning that a third of American unicorns would thrive, a third would disappoint and a third would be subject to an acquisition or die. Some are calling it the next dotcom bubble which burst 20 years ago with the advent of the internet and others are more optimistic. Either way, startup pastures that emerge in the aftermath of this economic upheaval will look very different. 

The past decade saw huge sums of money from sovereign-wealth funds, also mutual and hedge funds pour in, either directly or via VC firms into startups that were unicorns or at the very least their backers believed they might be soon. 

The jubilation began to diminish last year in May 2019, with Uber’s downturn of $43 billion, down more than a third of what it was on its first day of trading. Then, in October, WeWork, a “techie” office-rental group, scrapped its IPO after it became clear that investors had no appetite for shares in a firm that lost as much money as it generated in revenues. Its valuation was cut from $47bn to less than $8bn.

However, for Airbnb, a home-sharing website will bounce back from seeing bookings fall by 40% as the pandemic restricted travel and a possible delay of its IPO, (which was expected to be this year’s biggest) because, despite its losses of late, it is well managed and cash-rich. It also has an unmatched global reach and is likely to be back on track, making money once people are free to travel.

UNICORN – The New Buzzword In Marketing

Unicorns have come a long way since Aileen Lee coined the term in 2013, to convey wonder and rarity. Nowadays every startup wants to be one, for bragging rights and to hire the cleverest coders. Some are portraying themselves to be the next super unicorn to impress and lead potential users, consumers, and possibly victims into believing that the company is positioned to reach great heights and needless to say, using the term completely out of context. 

 “For millennials and Gen Zs being a unicorn became a filter,” says Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, a unicorn company that offers online learning courses and university degree programs.

 A small Austin-based scooter startup called itself, simply, Unicorn. It was said to be an attempt to leverage the popularized name and what it stood for, as on a psychological level, people will tend to gravitate towards what they believe identifies as successful. The outcome? It subsequently failed when the firm went bust in December of 2019, after spending all its cash on Google and Facebook ads.

Artificial intelligence is a very generic term and used by many different industries for various use-cases, however, AI is being used in a way that is basically unchained and they’re not making smart decisions about it. It’s heading into areas that people don’t know about, giving it too much power and control and will ultimately get burned. It’s all about competition and the race to see who will create the best AI for any given industry.   

Too many unicorns rest on shaky and opaque financial structures that may exaggerate their lofty valuations. These include “not-so-techy” capital-intensive firms such as WeWork, where accommodating more customers means leasing more physical office space. 

Also, direct-to-consumer retailers such as Casper, which sell flashy bedding. The co-founder, Neil Parikh declared in 2016 that, “We consider ourselves a tech company first,” Stock Market investors considered it a mattress retailer. In February it listed at $575m, less than half its $1.1bn private valuation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) used in marketing is more about automating simple tasks that allow us to free up more of our time to be strategic, effective, and less repetitive. It’s about improving processes while still keeping that human touch with customers and prospects. So you could say it’s automated intelligence. Some companies are taking it to the extreme with hype boasting they are first and foremost a tech company, and completely AI-based, but it is simply to generate a buzz.

 

 

The Next Unicorn

In terms of the next unicorn Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins, a big VC firm, offers an alternative rule of thumb. For a unicorn to count as genuinely “tech”, and therefore profitably scalable, its actual product must be technology, he says, “it can’t just be using technology.” 
Businesses selling physical goods or services and startups offering online solutions with an already established market without proprietary technology often don’t make the cut. 

As it stands now, even viable listings are on ice until the markets’ pandemic fever breaks. In the interim, the unicorn sphere is talking about consolidating. Softbank reportedly wants Uber Eats and Door Dash to merge. In the USA, Uber may try to charm Lyft into merging, whose share price has fallen faster than its own.

There is no magic formula for identifying the next unicorn company and only time will tell us whether the unicorn boom is a bubble or not. If today’s big startups go on to secure significant profits for their investors, they’ll be looked back on as a smart opportunity well taken. If they go the way of WeWork, then the unicorn boom will be remembered alongside the dotcom bubble as an example of investor folly.

 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

Kanye’s Shock Announcement To Run For President In 2020

Kanye’s Shock Announcement To Run For President In 2020

The presidential election is not going to be boring this year as Kanye West has announced that he plans to run for president. West made this announcement on July 4, 2020, and at the height of the Independence Day celebrations, the real fireworks began when he broke the news on Twitter with a picture of the American flag and the hashtag 2020vision. declaring,

“We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision, and building our future. I am running for president of the United States.” 

This comes five years after West promised to run for president while at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2015. However, after a meeting with President Trump in 2018 where his show of support for the president stirred controversy, the 21-time Grammy Award winner said he would no longer pursue a career in politics, tweeting at the time, 

"My eyes are now wide open and now realize I've been used to spread messages I don't believe in. I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!" 

But by late 2019, Kanye had changed his mind and said he would launch a presidential campaign in 2024 after all. During an appearance at Fast Company's Innovation Festival, the star rapper shared, 

"When I run for president in 2024, we would've created so many jobs that I'm not going to run, I'm going to walk."

It’s a possibility that due to controversial events in the last 12 months could have sparked West’s decision to run for POTUS this year instead, with only four months to go before the election. It has also been opined that West’s race for the upcoming election could siphon votes from Biden to Trump’s advantage. So in actuality, West is more of a spoiler than a contender. 

If West does actually want to run for president, he would have to do so as an independent. And even that would need to acquire the necessary signatures to get on November's ballot. Bad news for voters in Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and Texas as the deadline has already passed to file and you won't get a chance to vote for West. (Unless you want to write him in.)

Kim Kardashian West (Kanye West’s wife) has spent a fair amount of time at the White House over the past few years and met with Trump to push the criminal reform policy. She first met with the president in 2018 when she secured the commutation of a Tennessee woman's life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. She is also doing a law degree which would certainly be in her favor as a first lady. 

Although many believe this flash announcement to be ludicrous and a stunt for publicity, West has the full support of Tesla’s, Elon Musk endorsing his twitter post almost immediately along with many others. 

 

Only a week prior to the announcement, Kanye West, the Christian rapper, Jesus Is King star, released the first single off his upcoming album “God’s Country” titled “Wash Us In The Blood” which would make a “hella interesting” campaign song for the hard-hitting, multi-tasking artist. 

There’s a powerful message behind this song that sounds nothing like a prayer but it’s Kanye’s way to drive home and show you the urgency of his call to action for the oppression and injustice in the world where Kanye says things must change. He calls out to God and the Holy Spirit for help and says “We need you now” as people are dying and the world is in chaos and a change has to happen sooner. 

The White House has been the home of an actor (Reagan), now an entrepreneur/TV personality, (Trump), and now possibly a born again power rapper. All I know is something’s got to give and make way for real transformational change. As the saying goes “ stranger things have happened” and I guess only time will tell if West and his supporters are serious about this humongous endeavor. 

 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

 

THE INBOUNDOUTBOUND MARKETING EVOLUTION -THE BUYER’SJOURNEY

THE INBOUND/OUTBOUND MARKETING EVOLUTION – THE BUYER'S JOURNEY

 

My introduction to online marketing consisted of a training course that heavily focused on a form of email marketing, mainly safelists, which I found to be a very confusing and overwhelming strategy that involved numerous email accounts and hundreds of advertising sites that took up all my time with very little results. After a while, I felt totally disillusioned and burned out with that and turned to social media marketing of sorts which was okay for a while but then became frustrating and nonsensical. 

Then by chance, I came across Inbound Marketing and it all made sense to me. “Inbound marketing” was a term coined by Hubspot which was founded in 2005, but invented and established nearly a decade earlier by Markethive (operating as Veretekk) way back in 1996 and known as Automated Marketing. For many companies needing to cater to the customer and prospects’ needs and as competition became more fierce they turned to inbound marketing to help give them the edge. 

 

Outbound Marketing

Prior to inbound marketing, we relied upon more traditional methods known as Outbound Marketing which included TV, radio and print ads, billboards, etc. Then with the internet, came paid and rented email lists, banner and display ads, most social media advertising, pop-ups, and pop-unders, etc. In direct contrast to Inbound marketing, these tactics have traditionally been thought of as interruptions and frowned upon, labeled as invasive, and often seen as driving an ideal buyer away. 

Outbound marketing aims at trying to reach as many people as possible, whether or not they are active buyers and in some cases has its merits. 

 

 

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy by which you drive prospects to your website rather than outwardly advertising your products or services. The idea is that bringing potential customers to your website will familiarize them with your brand and offerings through targeted content, tailored to the needs and basic questions of people and offering solutions. Ideally, you’ll build a virtual relationship with the prospect, making it more likely that they will choose your product or service when they’re ready to buy. 

Typically inbound marketing involves blogging or content creation and integrates email marketing, marketing automation, social media monitoring & publishing, SEO, and analytics all in one. It incorporates landing pages and a content management system that assists you in optimizing your content. 

Outbound marketing brings your offering to your prospects. Inbound marketing brings your prospects to you. 

 

Inbound Marketing is a marketing methodology focused on attracting, educating, and empowering consumers via relevant content that actually helps and guides them until they are ready to purchase your product or service. That road to purchase is the buyer’s journey, an active exploration or research process that a buyer goes through, prior to and leading up to the actual purchase.

Out With The Old – In With The New

Back in the day, when I needed to buy something I would pace the shopping mall, searching and comparing until I found what suited me. When I bought my car I went directly to the car yard, talked to the salesperson to learn my options, get answers to my questions, took it for a test drive, and bought it. 

Now I search online before I take a step out of my home and go directly to that store I found most helpful online or maybe buy it online. The way we buy is evolving and according to Google, buyers on average now conduct 70% or more of their research online to help them with a purchasing decision, even before they think about contacting someone in sales or reaching out to a company for more information on their products and services. 

With any sales and marketing method, it must continue to evolve just as consumers’ buying behaviors are evolving. So what does that mean for marketers in the digital world?

Inbound marketing is a strategic process that has several elements to it and some of those elements are not just technical but to gain an insight into the psychological aspect. We need to understand what stages a prospective buyer goes through before making a purchasing decision.

Another way of looking at it is that inbound marketing is designed to better align you and your business with the Buyer’s Journey, which is becoming the natural process that today’s buyer goes through when searching for a solution online.

The internet, along with inbound marketing platforms, has made it easier for marketers to engage customers at the various stages of their journey using content marketing. That’s one of the main reasons that 88% of B2B marketers are using custom content marketing, which is up a whopping 86% from 2015.

 

What Is The Buyer's Journey? 

The Buyer's Journey was first described in 1968, long before the internet, and was perceived as a linear process.   However, today’s customers are sophisticated, savvy consumers who do their research and the internet has made it very easy to access a wide range of information, so these stages are not so cut and dried and it is why we need to be customer-centric in our inbound marketing efforts, with consistent and current relevant content. 

Each stage of the inbound buyer’s journey requires unique content types that range from website pages and blog articles to downloadable offers and video demonstrations. So the new Buyer's journey takes place online and inbound marketers have a golden opportunity to go the extra mile by helping them reach a decision with custom content that will attract and delight the potential buyer. 

 

The three basic stages of the Inbound Buyer's Journey are Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. 

  1. Awareness Stage: Through online research, the buyer is trying to identify their own problems and looking for answers, resources, education, research data, opinions, and insight.  
  2. Consideration Stage: Once the buyer has identified their problem, they begin more heavy research of specific solutions for that problem, whether it’s a good fit for them which leads them to potential solution providers, partners, or vendors.
  3. Decision Stage: After engaging with enough expert, trust-building content, the buyer can filter their solution provider list down and make a confident decision in who they want to work with or buy from.

Inbound marketing is designed to help prospects discover your business in the early stages of the Buyer’s Journey and to educate them on the benefits of your solution for them, all while building trust throughout the process.

 

The Strengths Of Inbound

Although inbound marketing is the preferred method and considered to be more successful due to its not only holistic but an empathic approach, outbound marketing, albeit marketer centric, still has a place, and to determine which one suits your purpose, you need to consider your specific business, audience, and marketing objectives. 

One of the biggest advantages of inbound marketing and what gives it substance is that it focuses on providing value for prospects. It’s educational and in some cases non-promotional and as inbound marketing aligns with the Buyer's Journey, it builds a relationship between your prospects and brand and is not seen as an annoying interruption. Rather it helps the buyer as they are already researching and obviously ready to buy.

Another major strength of inbound marketing is the long term return on investment (ROI) Whether it be sweat equity or money that you’ve invested, this strategy tends to have slower results for the first few months, however, those initial stages are necessary to build your digital marketing assets. It allows you to build your presence online and rank higher in the search engines. 

Eventually, the value of those assets will increase and your outlay to maintain or improve will be less. Digital assets like blog articles and perpetual choice offers can continue to generate leads years after they were originally created without costing an extra cent. 

 

What About Outbound?

The biggest strength of outbound marketing is its ability to get in front of a large number of people quickly and build awareness. When it’s done correctly, you can launch an outbound marketing campaign, get seen by millions, and have new customers within a few weeks, but the results usually depend on the amount of money you invest. 

The more you spend, the more results you get and when you stop investing, the results diminish. With outbound marketing, you don’t accumulate many tangible, long-term assets that continue to generate leads as you do with Inbound marketing. Plus, these days, outbound is generally more disliked by the consumer.

Having said that, there are businesses that have found great success by using inbound or outbound exclusively. There are many that have utilized both consecutively and have had tremendous results. Your marketing strategy really depends on your market, your type of buyer, and your goals. 

 

What Are Your Goals? 

What are you trying to achieve? Do you want to build brand awareness? Drive traffic? How many customers are you aiming to get and what’s your timeline for that goal?

Inbound marketing is the best long-term strategy, however, it will take time and probably won’t dramatically increase business in the first few months. 

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, can help you get customers in the door quickly, but it comes with diminishing returns.

Ideally, the best strategy is to combine a little of both, by taking an inbound approach to both, using outbound for brand awareness, following up with inbound for relationship, and brand-building.

This means you are measuring results accurately and you’re aiming for long-term brand-building alongside short-term growth.

 

Looking After Your Brand And Reputation

It’s important to consider how the tactics you deploy will affect your brand’s image. Launching an aggressive cold-calling campaign or obnoxiously posting fruitless or misleading advertisements too much on peoples’ newsfeeds may get a few sales, but how will that affect your reputation long-term? 

You only want to use marketing tactics that your brand can be proud of and that your customers would approve of if they knew how you executed them. More often than not, the truth comes out and it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad reputation.

 

Balance Your Outbound With Inbound

Here at Markethive, we believe in an inbound-focused approach that also uses outbound marketing when appropriate. This means using outbound channels like the Banner program where you can purchase banner impressions from our Banner Impressions Exchange. Your banners are displayed internally at Markethive and externally on numerous domains. 

This will successfully get your business in front of potential buyers, then by using Markethive’s inbound tools you will be focusing more on assisting with the buyer’s journey rather than selling upfront. This works because people are more likely to engage in a brand that helps them understand the buying process, instead of simply asking for their money.

The Next Generation

Markethive has been in the Inbound Marketing business for 25 years and is an ever-evolving platform. Now integrated with Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency as of 2018, it’s certainly keeping up with the changes and advances the marketing realm is experiencing with many still stuck in the old school ways. 

Markethive is always evolving and right now in the process of building a new engineering team to take its funnels (Pagemaker System) integrated into its landing pages which are groups or otherwise known as Storefronts. A self-replicating system will be added to these pages and aligning autoresponders, along with assignment rotators. This makes it Turnkey for members to just walk in and gain great results of a powerful inbound marketing campaign, utilizing another unique feature within this system – the CO-OP engine. 

Markethive delivers a proven Inbound Marketing platform outfitted with email autoresponders, blogging platforms, landing pages, social media broadcasting, Tracking analytics, SEO, backlinking automation, messaging, ecommerce, and SEO which is designed to build a large loyal long-term customer base. The benefits of these systems are to “attract”, “convert”. “close” and “delight” an individual on the buyers’ journey. 

This next-generation platform also has multiple commerce platforms, digital media sites, along a social network bringing together a community of aspiring entrepreneurs and marketers evoking a collaborative mindset. Above all its other benefits, Markethive is a concept and a vision with a focus on providing a universal income for all and being built on the blockchain allows Markethive to pay its members for all activity, regardless if you’re a free member or upgrade to one of our loyalty programs or memberships. 

We believe sharing our resources with you as you build your business and seek to reach your goals, benefits all of us. We welcome all to our collaborative world and ecosystem for the Entrepreneur, Markethive, the Market Network, built for you, by you, and with you.

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals.

 

 

CRYPTOCURRENCY SPARKING A WAVE OF GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION

CRYPTOCURRENCY SPARKING A WAVE OF GLOBAL TRANSFORMATION

The future of finance is being redefined as cryptocurrency is becoming a thriving ecosystem, quietly encroaching on the territory of traditional finance institutions’. 

Over the last five years, Bitcoin users and transactions have averaged a growth rate of nearly 60% per year. Similarly, private and public investors have deepened their commitment to cryptocurrencies including Ethereum, Ripple (XRP), Stellar, and the upcoming Markethive Coin (MHV) along with a number of other cryptos across different sectors of the industry.

We are most definitely heading towards decentralized communities. Countries all over the world are taking notice of cryptocurrencies, particularly the countries that have suffered hyperinflation. One prime example is that of Venezuela, where inflation soared, trust in the national government policy, and currency plummeted led to a rise in the interest of cryptocurrencies.

 

Cryptography Begets Cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency has erupted into a $200 billion industry, sparking a wave of what is seen as a global disruption, however, in many ways a savior in this world of oppression and the autocratic system that society has been subject to. 

There is a rich history of innovation at the heart of cryptocurrency and blockchain. One of the core elements being cryptography and dates back to ancient times of nearly 4000 years ago in Egyptian and Mesopotamian writings only to enhance its linguistic appeal. 

Cryptography has been used throughout the course of history and evolved into being used to protect sensitive information with analog cryptography used in WW2. The science of cryptography continued to advance progressively throughout the centuries. It’s come a long way since then and as long as there is a need to protect sensitive data cryptography will continue to advance. 

Beginning in 1990, an entirely new form of cryptography, dubbed quantum cryptography, was under development by computer scientists hoping to once again elevate the level of protection offered by modern encryption.

Then came cryptographic techniques used to make cryptocurrencies possible. Cryptocurrencies leverage several advanced cryptographic techniques, including hash functions, public-key cryptography, and digital signatures. These techniques are used primarily to ensure the security of data stored on blockchains and to authenticate transactions.

 

 

Since then, a series of key events have continued to shape the sector

Year     Event


2009    Satoshi Nakamoto mines the first Bitcoin on a decentralized network


2011    Litecoin launches


2012    Ripple is founded


2013    The price of a single Bitcoin reaches $1,000


2015    Ethereum launches, introducing smart contracts into the crypto ecosystem


2017    Over 1,000 cryptocurrencies listed


2017    Bitcoin's price rockets past $10,000, reaching a peak just shy of $20,000


2018    EOS offers a blockchain-based infrastructure for decentralized apps (DApps)


 2019    Markethive, the first Blockchain-based Market Network introduces crypto coin (MHV)                 

 

Now, there are over 5,000 cryptocurrencies in circulation, some will stagnate and peter out and others will soar as they are built on innovative applications and have real use-cases giving rise to a rapidly evolving ecosystem.

 

The infographic below displays a cross-section of cryptocurrencies, stakeholders, and core applications across a sector that’s continuing to grow more important as we see the economic climate change dramatically.

 

Setting The Stage For The Bigger Picture

As cryptocurrency and blockchain technology continues to gain momentum, its longer-term ramifications will be a focal point. Essentially, its cryptographic foundation sets the stage for future developments in a financial economy.

  • Privacy

Anonymized transactions protect users’ data through cryptographic techniques.

  • Access

Providing a new financial model for 1.7B unbanked individuals around the world.

  • Efficiency

Steep reductions in settlement time and efficacy could save consumers $16 billion annually.

  • Security

Providing immutable, traceable records of security-rich transactional networks.

  • Programmable Money

Smart contracts could drastically eliminate manual and administrative work⁠, ultimately bypassing them altogether.

 

The Practical Advantages Of Cryptocurrencies

The cryptocurrencies of today go beyond just replacing cash. This new token-based economy is evolving, with unique solutions emerging in finance, security, identification, social engagement, the marketplace, digital media, and ownership. Cryptocurrencies are adding both value and utility to the digital economy, and to the global financial market as a whole.

  • Payments

Digital cash can be used for both ecommerce and brick-and-mortar retailers for purchasing goods without the need for a trusted third party. 

  • Store of value

A new form of scarce native currency and a means of settlement.

  • Global Transactions

Borderless money that enables easy conversion between currencies.

  • Stablecoins

Crypto version of fiat which is tied to the value of resources like gold or the U.S. dollar.

  • Digital ownership

Digital handling, storage, and monetization of data.

  • Alternative finance

Digital assets such as collectibles, commodities, and tokenized securities

  • Decentralized utilities

Crypto-enabled networks, products, and services that exchange between assets.

 

Four Projects Set To Rock The Landscape

Cryptocurrency and blockchain offer cutting-edge advances that are diverse and transformative. These are just a few of the ways cryptocurrencies are breaking down barriers for people and companies worldwide, allowing them to grow personal wealth and enter the global market.

SPEDN auto-converts crypto to fiat for merchants, reducing exchange rate risk while offering convenient customer payment options. SPEDN makes it possible to spend Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without needing to cash out to fiat currency or load a plastic card.
 SPEDN currently supports Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), the Gemini dollar (GUSD), and Zcash (ZEC), with many more coins coming soon.

 

ECOSC is a Malta-based company and has designed a platform using blockchain technology to embrace the oil and gas minerals and all products for trade. It is a global, decentralized supply chain management solution that aligns stakeholders, vendors, and buyers with the strategic management of supply and demand outcomes with cryptocurrency assets. 

ECOSC will reduce the risk of human error, counterfeiting, and fraud. It means less time will be spent processing documents and reconciling, which will increase the transaction process speed.

 

Blockchain Foundry provides custom blockchain consulting, development, and integration solutions that help leverage blockchain technologies. This firm targets governments and enterprises in need of customized blockchain solutions. 

Blockchain Foundry’s mission is to disrupt markets by leveraging the potential of blockchain technology. It eliminates middlemen, clearinghouses, and other mechanisms that can lead to errors, security breaches, or negatively affect your bottom line.

 

MARKETHIVE Market Network incorporates social media, digital media, ecommerce, ewallet, and inbound marketing that enables entrepreneurs, business professionals, commercial artists, etc, to utilize a blockchain-driven state of the art platform that encompasses every aspect of inbound marketing and social media engagement where it rewards all users’ activity with MHV and allowing all users’ to prosper on many levels. 

With the ability to take advantage of the many cottage industries within the ecosystem brings financial sovereignty, privacy, autonomy to every individual with a genuine opportunity to be in control of your future with peace of mind and set to champion the social media and internet marketing industry. 

 

The Blockchain Crypto Industry Is Expanding 

Worldwide, the numbers show that blockchain-based technology and cryptocurrency use is growing. Blockchain wallet users rose from nearly 9 million in 2016 to over 47 million recorded in March 2020.

Only 100 decentralized apps (DApps) were produced by developers in 2015. with that number skyrocketing to over 3,118 by 2020.

Overall, cryptocurrencies are helping to create an innovative and accessible financial system around the world giving back freedom and autonomy to the community at large. 

 

“Cryptocurrency deserves an opportunity to find a sustainable future in our economy.”
                                                                                     Adena Friedman, President & CEO of NASDAQ

 

While the future of the new cryptocurrency economy is still taking shape, one thing is for sure, cryptocurrencies are infinitely changing the way we view and measure the value of money.

Grounded in decentralized and autonomous systems, cryptocurrencies are having an unprecedented effect in the financial world. Ultimately, cryptocurrencies will help to transform finance as we know it, delivering a slew of investment opportunities across the global economy and a more secure, autonomous way to engage and conduct business online. 

 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

IMPRESSIONS – CLICKS – CONVERSIONS – REACH Are These Metrics Equally Important In Marketing?

IMPRESSIONS – CLICKS – CONVERSIONS – REACH 
Are These Metrics Equally Important In Marketing?

Do you just randomly post advertisements in the hope they bring results without knowing the statistics of the process? Sorting out the data produced by an online advertising campaign can be an intimidating task, especially if you’re new to online advertising. If you’re a marketer you will have heard of the terminology used to measure statistics of an online ad campaign but it’s not always clear or understood how they are differentiated and why all metrics are equally important. 

Many understand the importance of social media engagement, however, when it comes to strategy, it’s critical to know the difference between the key terms or metrics, that are frequently used, as it will help you make sense of your campaign statistics. It’s all about accurately measuring your data to know what’s working and identifying areas where you can increase your efforts or improve on your content where it’s not working so well. 

Defining The Basics Of Metrics

REACH  
Reach is the total number of unique people who can see your ad or content. If 1000 people in total have seen your ad, that means your ad’s reach is 1000.

The advantage of having accounts on various social media platforms and a central system that allows you to broadcast your blog or advertisement to those individual platforms have the potential to increase your reach into the millions. Markethive, with its proprietary blogcasting system, is the springboard and gives you the ability to create massive reach which is exponential and very powerful. 

For example, If I subscribe to your blog and I have 20,000 followers across all my social media accounts, and you have 15,000 subscribers each with a similar following, your blogs have now been potentially seen by around 300,000,000 people which by enlarge are not directly subscribed to you. 

Every time you publish a blog with Markethive as the core platform, that article is posted out to literally hundreds even thousands of social network news feeds and WordPress sites. 

 

IMPRESSIONS
Impressions are the number of times your content or advertisement is delivered and displayed on any given website or page. Let’s say that your ad from the previous example above popped up on those people’s screens a total of 3000 times. That means the number of impressions used for that ad is 3000.

Impressions are where your online advertising begins, and most likely where you will see the highest numbers as an impression is generated every time a webpage is loaded and potentially viewed. It’s important to note that just because the banner was displayed doesn’t guarantee the visitor saw it. 

It’s a bit like driving past a billboard on the side of the road, the ad is displayed continuously but it doesn’t mean that you took any notice of it. So, in a sense, every car that passes the billboard would represent an impression, as the potential for the ad to be viewed is there but no guarantee that every driver saw it.

Impressions are typically used for displaying banner advertisements across the internet on any site that allows this type of advertising. This comes at a cost that varies across the board and usually set by the management of the company website. See some comparisons here 

This protocol has now been preceded by a new system that is unprecedented, as Markethive, the social market network and ecosystem for entrepreneurs have developed a Banner Impressions Exchange (BIX) which is advertising as a non-fungible token built into an exchange.

This system delivers to the media buyer a transparent value for their impressions in an exchange type environment. This ensures open market principles, allowing the media buyer to buy impressions from the exchange similar to buying coins in a coin exchange. The market sets the price.


Image credit – Markethive Associate, Dan Bruning

Traffic Impressions Are Like Electricity
Traffic impressions are like electricity, in that they cannot be stored, they are only effective at the moment as is electricity. As electricity the rate or cost is determined by the utility at a set rate, as is the case across the world or as is now that case the price is determined in the exchange based on supply and demand, making its value determined by the demand and effectiveness. 

This also means third party sites can join the Markethive Banner Impressions Exchange to put their impressions up for sale based on the same principle of supply and demand and the free market driving the value accordingly. 

In the case of the Banner Impressions Exchange, impressions can not be rolled over to the following month. If they are not allocated to a particular banner advertisement or sold to a buyer within the present month, they are purged at the end of that month and replaced by the next month’s impression allocation.

 
CLICKS
Clicks are usually seen as the most important step in the online advertising process, as a click means you have an interested visitor and a potential sale. 

A click is recorded when a visitor clicks on your banner which takes them to your website where a lead is captured or the possibility of a sale. But when it comes to clicks in relation to impressions, you need the impressions to generate a click and since not every person who views your banner (which is counted as an impression) will click on it, you will always have more impressions than clicks. 

This ratio of clicks to impressions is measured by what’s known as the click-through rate (CTR). To calculate CTR, simply divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions.

For example, if your banner received 1,000 impressions and out of that you got 25 clicks, you would have a 2.5% CTR. The rule of thumb is that a banner with a high CTR is effective at grabbing a visitor’s attention, while a low CTR banner means that you may need to tweak something about the banner image or ad text to hopefully harvest more clicks.

Your ideal ad click-through rate takes time to determine. It’s not the same for everyone, and average CTR also depends on such factors as your industry and keywords, and how competitive they are.

Based on the internal data of Wordstream, they’ve determined that the average CTR across all industries in Google Ads is 1.91% on the search network and 0.35% on the display network. The graphic below shows the variation in the average click-through rate for twenty different industries.


Image Credit – Wordstream

 

CONVERSIONS
Conversions are the ultimate goal and end result that every marketer sets out to accomplish.

Generating conversions means that the purpose of the advertisement/banner has been achieved. The term conversion covers a broad spectrum of actions including capturing a lead, making a sale, or just having a visitor download an ebook or whitepaper, etc. It’s good to measure the effectiveness of any campaign by determining how many conversions are achieved to how many dollars spent. This calculates your return on investment (ROI). 

 

All Metrics Are Equally Important

When you’re analyzing your campaign data, it’s not a good idea to draw conclusions based upon only one metric. You always need to consider how each metric relates to the other. 

For example, (1) you may have an ad that has a particularly high CTR, but a disheartening conversion rate. Or the opposite, (2) you may have an ad that gets very few clicks, but when it does, it almost always converts. 

The first scenario is not ideal because you’ll spend a lot of money on clicks but have little to show for it especially if you’re using pay per click (PPC). The second scenario is not really okay either, because you won’t be able to properly scale that campaign to any significant size.

One of the most reliable ways to determine where best to channel your resources is by using a metric known as “Profit per Impression” (PPI). This metric takes both the beginning being impressions, and ending being conversions or (profit) points of the advertising process, and uses them to determine the ultimate viability of an ad campaign. 

This is particularly helpful when participating in Markethive’s Banner Impressions Exchange, where you can purchase impressions for your Banner Ad Campaigns. 

 

How Do You Calculate PPI?

The way to calculate PPI is to simply find out how much profit (not revenue) you generated from a campaign, and then divide that by the number of ad impressions it took to produce that profit. 

For example, if it took a total of 90,000 impressions to produce $20,000 in profits, then your PPI would be $0.22 ($20,000 divided by 90,000 impressions). This enables you to see how well your banners perform after all costs have been accounted for. Campaigns with high PPIs will ultimately be the best candidates for scaling and growth.

By keeping the Profit per Impression (PPI) metric in mind gives you more confidence and you will be more clear as to which ads will ultimately generate the most profit for your advertising campaign.

 

Another Factor To Consider – The Rule Of 7 – What Is It?

The Rule of 7 is a marketing principle that states that your prospects need to come across your offer at least seven times before they really notice it and start to take action. Your prospects can be exposed to your offer significantly more than seven times, but they need to see it at least seven times.

This helps them remember you amongst an overwhelming amount of marketing messages, other information or clutter, and positions you to get better results from your marketing efforts. It’s not just about banners – social media and all digital marketing require a thoughtful content strategy approach. This is accomplished by sharing content, interacting with people, and targeting ads to people who are interested in what you sell.

Socially-savvy companies like Markethive have the best of both worlds when it comes to marketing your business. It has the social newsfeed and specific storefront groups, inbound marketing tools, and now the banner impressions exchange. This gives you the ability to engage with prospects at every level of the buying process as it’s been proven that the more positive contact you have, the easier it is to develop and sustain relationships and ultimately attain more sales. 


 
What Can Marketers Do To Capitalize On The Rule Of 7?

So if the Rule of 7 involves encouraging repeat interactions with prospects, how do you do this?

  • Have a very clear idea of who your customers are. Develop a plan to make yourself visible amongst your target customers and know where they hang out or which websites they visit.

  • Make quality and consistent use of Banner Advertising on high profile sites with lots of relevant traffic.

  • Have a content marketing plan that gets your prospects to notice you, so you need to provide content they perceive will add value for them. Your blogs or articles should start conversations and prompt people to want to find out more about you and your product, so make sure you have the necessary calls to action to lead them to where you want them to go.

  • Amplify your content into social media. Ideally, your content will get you some SEO visibility, but broadcasting your content to the various social media channels will increase your reach.

  • Have an email nurture campaign. Don’t think of email as an opportunity to make sales. Think of it as a way to help and nurture your prospects and customers. Drive email opt-ins by offering helpful free content that they can subscribe to.

With these initiatives in place, you will start to develop a level of visibility that will mean your prospects are being more frequently exposed to your brand. This can all be achieved and facilitated within the Markethive Platform utilizing its comprehensive range of marketing tools. 

The result will be an increase in brand searches, an increase in the number of inquiries, leading to an increase in sales. Don’t expect overnight results, this requires a consistent, long term effort.

You need to have a bigger picture view to see how all these metrics and systems with all their different moving parts work together, especially when it comes to valuing impressions, clicks, and conversions. The best way to get a good understanding of how these factors work together and track your results is to constantly test and tweak your marketing campaigns. 

 

References; 260Digital B2B Marketing

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE IN A DIGITAL UNIVERSE

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE IN A 
DIGITAL UNIVERSE

GOING BEYOND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. The future is in technology, but the bigger future is in transcending it.

Right now we are experiencing exponential change with the term Digital Transformation re-emerging to what was a fuzzy and undefined topic where many talked about it but didn’t really understand its true meaning or purpose, to a newer more holistic model that is imperative for sustainability and going forward with purpose in this digital world. 

The word Digital in this context can be considered as a synonym for the pace of change occurring in today’s world driven by the rapid adoption of technology. Existing companies are put under tremendous pressure making many of them irrelevant as they are not keeping up with the changes. Because of rapid technology adoption, companies need to change how it operates to be able to create and sustain a competitive advantage of how users engage within the system.

There are two different types of organizations – Those that are just doing digital, and a new kind being digital innovators. These digital innovators are way out in front as they are disrupting every sector of the marketplace that is enabled by this new technology adoption.  The mistake many companies are making is they are just digitizing existing services or simply adding the technology and calling it digital transformation, but that’s not what digital transformation is now. 

 

So What Is Digital Transformation? 

Digital transformation was previously understood to be when a company went paperless, or when a brick and mortar company gets a website or starts a Twitter account, but it’s much more than that now. 

Digital transformation is a journey of strategic, planned organizational change that starts by empowering individuals and teams with new methods to create highly responsive strategies that are predominantly data-driven and a courageous culture of innovation. 

It is the right leadership that creates a high performing, innovative organization that is delivered by marketers and technologists primarily. It is transforming innovation, teams, and culture enabled by technology allowing collaboration, new levels of efficiency, and adding more value to users’ interactions and engagement. 


Image credit Brian Solis

“Business As Usual” Is No More

Once upon a time, business as usual” was often good enough, but now with technology advancing exponentially, “business as usual” is dead. In a world where everything is connected, considered to be equally excellent and performance is reaching perfection, the biggest innovation is yet to be realized. We as human beings are the central point fuelled by digitization, mobilization, augmentation, disintermediation, automation, and more. 

The way we work will never be the same and the skills we need will be dramatically different. So how do we discover new opportunities in one of the most transformational times in human history?  Are you driving change or are you being driven by it? 

Disruption is ever-present in this new normal. Change has stopped happening gradually and it now happening exponentially as everything that was dumb and disconnected is now wired and intelligent. The next 20 years will change faster than the last 300 years.  

Increasingly, science fiction is becoming science fact. Exponential technologies are rapidly changing our lives and societies, every day and everywhere. Everything from smartphones to home appliances, cars, cities, and ports, even our bodies will be wired. 

One such example is that Elon Musk believes he can merge our minds with machines. His new venture called Neuralink is a thin mesh device that is inserted into the skull that is then connected to the internet so we can upload our brains and become superhuman. Really! He’s done some great things but I’m not sure this is a good thing for humanity. 

Musk suggests it’s a way of gearing up, but we don’t have to compete with technology in becoming technology. We can embrace it and as Gerd Leonhard, a futurist speaker says, “technology is not what we seek, but how we seek it.” 


Adapted by Gerd Leonhard

Two Primary Keys Go Hand In Hand

So this has created a new paradigm. The biggest innovation needed to be realized is that we need to go from dehumanization to re-humanization and have a different purpose. Not just profit, growth, jobs, and GDP, but people, planet, purpose, and prosperity. Technology is the key to this and the other key is ethics. 

Technology can do great things but someone has to decide what those great things are. Technology drives our future, but ethics defines it. I think it’s safe to say algorithms know the logic of everything but the feelings of nothing. It can’t comprehend emotional intelligence, so we need to invest as much in humanity as we do in technology.

Quantum computing fuels big data and the internet of things (IoT) fuels artificial intelligence and deep learning which in turn fuels robotics, however anything that cannot be digitized or automated will become extremely valuable. Human-only traits such as creativity, imagination, intuition, emotion, and ethics will become more important in the future because machines are very good at simulating, but not good at “being”.

Robots and software will take over some of our work, but this allows us to focus on things that cannot be automated. Technology is defined by automation, even knowledge is automated… just need to Google it. But what cannot be automated is understanding that knowledge. That requires human perception.  If we go beyond technology and data to reach human insights and wisdom, only then, will we have a perfect balance. 

How And Why = Holistic

Technology represents the “How” of change and humans represent the “Why”. The future is about holistic business models and the opportunity is to be liquid, learn, and be one step ahead of the inevitable. This will take complete transformations, not just single improvements, with a focus on new ecosystems, not individual systems.

The future is in our hands today, it’s not tomorrow. The future is not a time frame, it’s a mindset. There has been a boom in technology over the last 4 years and it seems in the last few months technology has come out on top, given the COVID-19 situation with the surveillance tools now being implemented. This crisis is a test of our humanity. The more we connect with technology the more we must protect what makes us human. 

Humanity is where true and lasting value is created as we engage, relate, and buy things because of the experiences they provide. The new way to work is to embrace technology, but not to become it. The future is in technology, but the bigger future is in transcending it.       

As I said before, technology drives our future, but ethics defines it. This is what went wrong with Facebook as it has been ethically irresponsible and said to be destroying the very fabric of human relationships by inciting anger amongst the users due to the threat of democracy and its censorious nature. The real damage being done is to people’s mental health, to a cohesive and functional society, and to free speech itself.  

Also, it has been documented that “data is the new oil”, but given the lack of ethics with data harvesting, it can also be addressed as “data is the new plutonium”. It can be used as a weapon. 

“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right (or the power) to do and what is the right thing to do.”Potter Stewart

 

The Heart Of Digital Transformation

We need different skills, and we need to be comfortable and effective with driving change, or we will be driven by it. One company that is driving transformational change in the social media, marketing network sector is Markethive.  Here we get to enjoy our autonomy and free speech along with a sustainable balance between technology and humanity. 

Digital transformation is a process, not a destination. It’s not a workaround adding technology on top to an existing company, it’s a total re-work. It’s where systems and infrastructures are designed to be digital and can scale seamlessly and thrive in that domain. Markethive has been built and rebuilt from the ground up, starting off with blockchain technology and cryptocurrency.

The very fabric of Markethive is it’s collaborative and entrepreneurial nature of the community. Markethive’s culture is not fixed, but a decentralized, autonomous, fluid environment that is founded, built, operated, and used by entrepreneurs. It is self-governing, independent, and sovereign by design with a culture of innovation. It is the personification of Digital Transformation. 

Integrated with state-of-the-art blockchain, cryptocurrency, inbound marketing, and decentralized database technologies, Markethive has constructed a social market network that provides a “Universal Income” created exclusively with entrepreneurs in mind and will benefit greatly from its ultimate success. 

What to date has become the “norm” of social platforms having full access to your private and other data to use for their benefit is over. Your voice is yours, and yours alone, and you should benefit from it as well as your work and success you achieve through the Markethive platform. 

There are so many facets to Markethive. This is a mammoth undertaking and a continuous one. For as long as technology evolves so will Markethive along with the humanity within it. Check out the Markethive Blog Section which segments the many components of this complete Entrepreneurial ecosystem to understand what we have here.

 From the Visionary, Founder and CEO and of Markethive, Thomas Prendergast,

“Look beyond the looking glass. Markethive is not just this Newsfeed. But this Newsfeed is unique and the portal to the unlimited power of Markethive.”

 

Conclusion

Markethive’s continuous objective and mission are to provide a social environment, complete with an arsenal of technology, that champions the rise of the entrepreneur. We should embrace technology but not become it or be overcome by it. Anything that can be digitized or automated, will be, and anything that cannot be digitized or automated will become extremely valuable. Markethive with its collaborative community goes beyond technology and defines the real human values in this new digital ecosystem. Digital ethics is Markethive’s key differentiator. 

Join us at our weekly webinars on Sundays at 10 am (Mountain Time) to stay informed of Markethive’s evolvements as they happen. Witness the true collaboration and heart of Markethive and its members. The link to join the meetings can be found in the Markethive calendar.  See You there! 

 

Resources: Ionology, Gerd Leonhard

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

CRYPTO AD NETWORKS Overcoming The Adversities Of A Nascent Industry

CRYPTO AD NETWORKS
Overcoming The Adversities Of A Nascent Industry

The cryptocurrency sphere is no longer considered a craze only supported and bolstered up by tech geeks and anarchists. Cryptocurrencies have become a whole new financial class by themselves and Blockchain technology is at the forefront as we move into a new world where the recent events have seen complete economic chaos and we are now recession-bound on a global scale. 

Whether it’s a mining collective, a crypto exchange, an ICO or ILP with a specific use case,  or plain old marketing – inbound, affiliate, referral, the whole gamut, a myriad of opportunities has opened up for companies, and the individual, that is focused on cryptocurrencies and blockchain, in order to create an ecosystem of self-sovereignty, financial and otherwise, along with transparency, and a trustless environment where society isn’t at the behest of the powers-that-be.    

However, getting the word out to the people en-masse has been inhibited and a hindrance to this emerging industry which is a concern to the advertising and marketing of the blockchain and crypto businesses.

  
Advertising Network Adversities

Traditional ad networks and social media giants like Google, Facebook, Youtube, et al have either outright banned any type of advertising/marketing content relating to crypto, or have placed unreasonable conditions such as requiring a license from a governmental authority. 

Also, their policies could change in the blink of an eye without any warning, such as YouTube banning cryptocurrency channels, or Facebook’s constant run-ins with blockchain ads.  
                                                                         
And even if you somehow do find a way to run crypto ads, you’ll be restricted in a variety of ways that would severely impact the success and reach of your campaigns. For instance, 

  • Everything is dependent on whims and fancies of the network, and its changing policies towards crypto. 
  • Little to no targeting options on the audience you seek to engage
  • The requirement to share a lot of personal information.
  • Campaigns will be put under stricter scrutiny, and go through a longer review period
  • Restrictions on the type of payment methods you can employ
  • Limited number/type of websites where you can advertise

Furthermore, as technology keeps evolving, it is crucial for businesses in the sector to keep pace and grow along with it. This is why it’s become vital for advertisers, and publishers, to seek out alternatives. 

A Real Need For Cryptocurrency Ad Networks

Cryptocurrency ad networks are niche online advertising platforms connecting advertisers and publishers who share a common objective of promoting cryptocurrency marketing campaigns. Like with any other ad network, publishers offer their ad space and advertisers pay to use that. 

Crypto ad networks offer a myriad of benefits, such as:

  • Connecting predominantly with advertisers and publishers from the Crypto sphere. 
  • Multiple ad options like banner ads, sponsored articles, press releases and more          
  • Targeted audience of a younger generation and people already interested in crypto 
  • A requirement of little to no personal information
  • Faster campaign approval process.
  • Custom-designed crypto banners
  • Dedicated customer support 
  • Cryptocurrency payment methods

 

 Below are 3 prominent Cryptocurrency Ad Networks helping the industry grow. 

COINBOUND

While Coinbound’s ad network is one of the newer entrants in the field, the company backing it is a renowned name in the crypto marketing world that manages marketing for top cryptocurrency companies. Coinbound offers prime personalized services with a high degree of flexibility and one of the lowest CPMs of all networks.

  • Geo-targeting of the audience with specific interests, and other demographic data.
  • Multiple display ad-options.
  • Connecting only high-quality publishers, and advertisers in the crypto industry.
  • Free crypto banner Ad designs by an award-winning in-house design team.
  • Low CPM rates with high conversion and click-through rates.
  • Ability to target audience for specific sites and pages.
  • 24/7 support.
  • Press release issues and accessibility across top media publishers. 
  • Alexa Rank 248,912 at the time of this publication.

 

COINZILLA

Another ad network making its mark is Coinzilla. It was founded in 2016 and has strict rules regarding the quality of websites and content used in its network. It currently promotes over 200 brands with 500 publishers in its ranks. 

  • Multiple advertising options such as native advertising, CPM, pop-up/under, etc.
  • Only high-quality websites, older than 3 months, with optimal site speed and Alexa rankings.
  • Strict adherence to rules on ads, with instant bans to faucets, giveaways, false promises, etc.
  • Allows casinos, ICOs, exchange promotions, affiliates, etc.
  • Alexa Rank 27,739 at the time of this publication.

 

MARKETHIVE

To add to the mix we now have a decentralized option, and that is exactly where Markethive trumps the other ad networks. Taking away the middleman, the social market network connects advertisers and publishers directly to offer a transparent, cost-effective, and censorship-resistant ad platform. 

  • A complete ecosystem that is free to join.
  • Decentralized with delivery to multiple domains.
  • Markethive blockchain capable of managing a global advertising industry and instantaneous micropayments.
  • Payouts in MHV coins.
  • Censorship resistant, with publisher retaining full control on what to display on their website.
  • Suited for both big and smaller players due to low barriers of entry, yet safe and reliable network.
  • Banner Impressions eXchange – (BIX). First of its kind where you can purchase impressions from a Markethive associate at very low CPM rates. 
  • Detailed and reliable analytics.
  • Alexa Rank 5,649 at the time of this publication.

 

Coming Up In Markethive… 

Markethive is making great headway to incorporating a press release and sponsored article platform as well as social newsfeed boost, newsletter sponsorship, and gamified video advertising which enables you to build powerful campaigns. These are all part of the cottage businesses within Markethive that are designed to be facilitated by the members, not the corporate body, with the purpose of generating an income for the users. 

CEO and Founder of Markethive, Thomas Prendergast is behind the scenes working tirelessly along with the engineers preparing to launch these unique platforms;

“So we have just made a major turn in our system and have a lot of work to do. A landing page to sell/buy our impressions from an exchange, to make that page a template in the Page Maker for your use, and gearing the system for the next Entrepreneur Two direction building the Press Release exchange. Producing several Press Releases to promote our new Digital Media Impressions Exchange. This is also a time for you to get a head start sharing this.”

 

A Perfect Opportunity

Markethive Entrepreneurs have a perfect opportunity right now to reach out to 3rd party sellers to meet with and discuss getting their impressions listed on their sites. Sites like the ones mentioned above. Collaboration will result in creating a monster of an ad network that will be immune to the idiosyncratic and censorship behavior of the tech giants. 

Also, in the interim and as an introductory offer in celebration to the newly launched BIX, you as Markethive Entrepreneurs have the ability to advertise your Markethive referral page and offer free banner ad impressions for joining you at Markethive.

 

The Prime Objective Of Alexa Ranking

The Alexa ranking measures traffic on any given website from subscribers and visitors that have the Alexa Extension installed. Alexa rank is a measure of website popularity. It ranks millions of websites in order of popularity, with an Alexa Rank of 1 being the most popular. 

Alexa rank is calculated using a proprietary methodology that combines a site's estimated traffic and visitor engagement over the past three months. Although every website’s goal is to achieve a low Alexa ranking, it has no bearing on the number of digital impressions a site generates so there is no negative effect on banner impression sales.

Sites that have Alexa ranking like Chronicle of around 16,000, charge $66 CPM, and estimating their impressions from Worth Of Web, we can estimate they are receiving 13 million impressions per month with a potential income over $8.5 million. 

AMBcrypto has an Alexa rank of 53,893 and charges $5,500 to run a banner duration for a month. They average about 100-200 banner ads per month displayed based on IP address, time, and random rotation.

However, if you have not installed the Alexa Browser extension, please do so. It does help to give Alexa more accurate data with visitors.
https://www.alexa.com/toolbar

 

Crypto Advertising Market Growing

There are quite a few more crypto ad networks catering to the crypto sphere such as Bitmedia, Ad Shares, Cointraffic, Ad Dragon, Coin Ads, Mellow Ads, Propeller Ads and now we can add Markethive to the list with its Banner Impressions eXchange operating live now.

Markethive with its BIX Banner Impressions Exchange has created a non-fungible impressions token that is now traded in an open market assuring all purchases and set by the free market insuring you pay the right rates for advertising. You might call it free enterprise we call it a fair market for the entrepreneur from Markethive.

Conclusion

Connect with entrepreneurs, techies, crypto nerds, artists, innovators, musicians, and professional members both subscribers and traffic. You can get the first-mover advantage by advertising your product or service on Markethive and Markethive subsidiaries. The average user comes to Markethive to learn how to build an Inbound Marketing campaign, promote their services, connect with other members, and discover services to purchase.

Markethive, the complete market network on blockchain, provides a valuable inbound marketing platform, commerce portals, and a social network where users can learn, engage, expand markets, and be introduced to trusted providers. Markethive provides education, mentoring, direction, and professional services all the while earning MHV coin through its micropayment faucet system. This is just the beginning of the next-generation network built for the crypto-preneur.  

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE ON YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS?

HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE ON YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS?

MARKETING HAS EVOLVED OVER THE LAST 100 YEARS, SO WHAT'S NEW?

I came across an interesting theory by Mark Schaefer, Blogger, and Keynote Speaker of all things marketing, and I thought it was quite on point. This puts a broader perspective on how we conduct our marketing efforts and how things have changed over the last 100 years. 

The role of marketing is changing dramatically. We are in the third rebellion where consumers are now in control. The customers are telling our stories. The customer is the marketer.

Back in the 1950s, advertising was a promise to consumers. An extraordinary promise and generally people just took the advertisers at their word. They’ve believed their claims. Advertising started to heat up and as the competition became more fierce, these claims became more remarkable until they became just lies. So the first consumer rebellion was "the end of lies". 

 

The advent of the second rebellion came around the mid-’90s by the sound of a phone line dial tone connecting to the internet signal. It was the dawn of the information age and enabled by technology, where anybody could gather info on any company or government that left the companies terrified. Now the consumers can do their own research, compare products and claims. This was the second rebellion, led by technology, "the end of secrets".

Now we’re in the third rebellion, "the end of control". Today we are experiencing that consumers are now in control. They are a lot more skeptical about what they’re are being told through bold advertisements, so now what? What does a business do to win over a customer these days? 

Before the internet, we mostly kept our brand experiences to ourselves. Maybe we told a few people in our innermost circles. Only a minority of people were motivated to complain or compliment the brand, wrote, or called the company. Once the internet arrived, a few more emailed companies their thoughts.

Then came social media.

Image by contentgroup 

 

In the mid-2000s as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube launched, marketers discovered that not only could they advertise there, but consumers could express their feelings and share their experiences with brands there. Suddenly consumers had the same kind of broad media platform that brands had enjoyed for years. Social media reversed the communication flow of brand messages and turbocharged it.

Social media is producing little pockets or groups of consumers engaging and sharing positive or negative information about their experiences of any given brand or company.  Markets are now conversations and customers are in control of those conversations. Businesses can no longer buy their way in, they need to be invited and that’s what marketing is about today. 

 

How Can We Connect With Potential Customers?

We can go to the core of where our customers are who are sharing their thoughts or grievances with their peers. By listening and engaging more on channels such as social media, customer support, forums, and the like, we can experience and understand the consumers’ point of view. 

Connecting with them through writing blogs and articles, consistently, of interesting and relevant information will create an authoritative presence, perhaps meet a customer’s need and provide a solution that perhaps can’t be recognized in a short advertising message. This is otherwise known as content marketing which can create conversations and is a good way to be invited into the consumers’ hearts and minds. 

We can’t always control what people think of our brand, but we are able to influence it and reduce any negative experiences by being present and mindful of consumers’ perspectives. It’s a known fact that solving problems can have a greater impact on the individual who will sing your praises and even become a loyal advocate. The humanity that causes consumers to brand experiences also promotes understanding, forgiveness, and enthusiasm. 

BE MORE HUMAN in everything you do and every engagement you make. It’s about building relationships and connecting at an authentic and genuine level. The most human company wins. 

  • It’s not just about our “why.” It’s also about their “why.”
  • What is their “purpose”? Many people only buy based on their beliefs.
  • Technology should be used to help your company be more compassionate, receptive, fascinating, and useful.
  • Marketing isn’t about making promises. It’s about keeping promises.

 

Content Marketing Of All Types Still Rule

There are many different forms of Content Marketing, such as blogging, video tutorials, digital media, email newsletters, white papers, free reports, etc, and yet many people are confused about the entire concept. 

Content Marketing means creating and sharing valuable free content to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers or loyal followers. The type of content you share is closely related to what you sell, whether it’s a product, a belief, a cause, or a corporate or personal brand. In other words, you’re educating people so that they know, like, and trust you enough to do business with you. 

All businesses are now coming online as part of the next normal searching for different and various ways to not only make their presence known but also to offer the best experience for their prospects. Content marketing is a proven way to build an audience that builds your business. Here are some basic principles to note;

  • People generally don’t want “advertising” when making purchasing decisions, they want valuable information. 
  • It’s content that people desire and seek out, and it’s great content that Google wants to rank well in the search results so those people can find your business. 
  • It’s content that spreads via social networks, generating powerful word-of-mouth exposure for savvy content marketers. 
  • It’s beneficial content that is the best way to achieve what advertising is supposed to achieve but doesn’t do so well online getting people to know, like, and trust your brand.

 

Remember, content drives the Internet, and consumers are looking for information that solves a problem, not an immediate sales pitch. Think about how to create content that makes your customers’ lives better, then the trust, credibility, and authority that content marketing creates knocks down sales resistance, all while providing a baseline introduction to the benefits of a particular product or service. 

If your content looks like an advertisement, it will be overlooked or thrown away. Make your “advertising” too valuable to throw away by wrapping it in wonderfully beneficial, readable content.

The individuals and businesses that are having the most success online tend to have a high ratio of valuable content that seemingly has no sales agenda, and mixed with periodic promotional messages. They tend to build on a number of blogs answering any questions or allaying any objections they feel a reader or prospective buyer might have even before they realize they need or want to buy a product or service. 

You will still need a strong call to action to close the sale, the trick is to keep the balance right. Use your content to build a desire for your product and create a steadfast relationship with your audience, then ask for the sale. 

Producing stellar content for your marketing is great, but that’s only one part of the equation…

 

The Other Part Of The Equation

Your content must then be properly leveraged to help you acquire customers. Even great content doesn’t distribute itself. It needs a vehicle for people to pass it along or share it, discuss its merits, hash over its controversies, blog it, mash it, tweet it, and even swipe it. 

Social media is a prime platform to distribute your content along with digital media, and the vehicle to get your content out to multiple platforms across the internet is the next generation inbound marketing platform and social network, Markethive. But blockchain-driven Markethive is more than just a vehicle, it’s a place to call home when writing your content. It’s your property and cannot be confiscated.   

As Markethive moves forward with its integrations, and upon joining, you receive a (CPanel), control panel, and WordPress system built into your assigned domain, a subdomain of hivesfeed.com AKA username.hivesfeed.com. This way you control all your content, without the worry or hassles of government overreach, and anti-freedom regulations designed to stifle the start-ups and the small entrepreneur. And let’s not forget digital sharecropping…

Digital sharecropping is a term coined by Nicholas Carr to describe a peculiar phenomenon of Web 2.0.

“One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.”

In other words, anyone can create content on sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, but that content effectively belongs to the company. The more content we create for free, the more valuable the company becomes. We do the work, they reap the profit. So effectively, these companies become your landlord.

What if you moved all of your marketing to a site like Facebook? It’s local, it’s free to sign up, and it makes businesses feel like they’re doing something avant-garde.

But what happens when Facebook thinks you’ve done something that violates their terms of service and deletes your account? Or changes the way you’re allowed to talk with your customers?

“If you’re relying on Facebook or Google to bring in all of your new customers, you’re sharecropping. You’re hoping the landlord will continue to like you and support your business, but the fact is, the landlord has no idea who you are and doesn’t actually care.”

 

Build Assets You Can Control

Many content creators and bloggers have put millions of hours into their craft only to find it deleted and their internet presence and followers wiped out… myself included. But providing you have a safe haven to create and publish your content, then platforms like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and many more search and social sites are all superb tools to add to your marketing mix.

The thing is you will want to spend most of your time and creative energy building assets that you control.

 There are three assets you should be building today and should continue to focus on for the lifetime of your online business or creative passion you want to share and continually build a following, which Markethive can help you with…

  1. A well-designed website or storefront with your own domain.
  2. An opt-in email list with a high-quality autoresponder
  3. A reputation for providing impeccable value

 

Free System – Free Speech – Autonomy

What makes Markethive different is that it’s built on a transparent blockchain system, the platform is completely decentralized delivering on our principles of privacy, transparency, autonomy, and free speech. Markethive is not spying on you, shadow banning you, or terminating accounts because of your opinions or beliefs. 

Whether you’re a Trump supporter or cryptocurrency enthusiast Markethive has no hidden agendas. We are a collaborative community that wants everyone to succeed in their own right. Furthermore, with the KYC and wallet coming into play soon, fake and hacking accounts that can result in the termination of an unwitting and innocent individual along with years of their hard work, will be a thing of the past and left behind with the social media of Web 2.0. 

 

Monetizing Your Personal Brand On The Internet

Monetizing your personal brand can take a considerable amount of time. Many aspiring bloggers and podcasters have the misconception that they can make money from their newly created blog or podcasting platform in a matter of weeks or months, but you need to build a sizable audience that cares about you and that just can’t happen overnight. 

Successful people across a wide range of industries have stated it takes tenacity, persistence, and resilience and you need to adopt a three-year mindset to achieve meaningful success with your personal brand. You just establish your voice, create that content, and keep grinding it out, year after year. Eventually, if you work hard and stick with it, you can gain enough critical mass to monetize an audience. It’s not that easy.

 

Monetizing Your Personal Brand On Markethive

By utilizing Blockchain Technology, Markethive is able to reward the hardworking content creators by paying you for writing and publishing your blogs instantly and continuously. This is all part of the micropayment faucet system within Markethive. Additional benefits include receiving MHV Coin by your readers which adds more value to bloggers who have increased subscriber levels.

Furthermore, Markethive pays you to sign up, it pays you to use the social media platform with every post and activity you perform. It also pays you to promote it. Remember Markethive is built on the Blockchain and this is why they can pay you and offer you the security and privacy other platforms don’t. This makes it so much easier to earn an income online while furthering your influence and building your personal brand with no fear of ever having it taken away from you. 

Go sign up, it is free to use all the marketing and blogging tools, get paid 500 MHV Coins on joining and enjoy the tipping feature. Yes, that’s right, we at Markethive “Tip” Instead of “Like”. It stands to reason if they tip you they like you. This is creating universal income for all entrepreneurs who are active.

The Complete Social Market Network of Web 3.0

Markethive, The Complete Social Market Network that is built for the people, is becoming well-known for its generous Infinity Airdrops and continuous micropayments faucet system so it really does PAY to be active and engaged. 

By joining Markethive you build relationships with thousands of other like-minded individuals who are actively building a business, blogging, researching, building an audience and their personal brand, etc. basically being “entrepreneurs” and advancing their businesses. You can join with these people as friends, group members, and subscribers of theirs via Blog Casting, Blog Sharing, and Blog Swiping. 

The Markethive Community is exploding and at the heart is a collaborative and supportive ethos that gives a real helping hand to those that are just starting out and is a treasure trove of new technology revenue-generating systems for the seasoned marketer. 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

Resources: Mark Schaefer; Copyblogger

 

 

Business Gift Card Opportunity

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