Take Your Mobile App Marketing Campaigns to the Next Level With Deep Linking

What separates a successful mobile app from an unsuccessful one? Design, ease of use, demand, effectiveness, etc. all play their part.

The truth is, however, that effective marketing can make a huge difference between an app that is a commercial success and one that gets lost amongst the ever burgeoning crowd of daily released apps.

In addition to putting some marketing effort behind you app’s promotion, it's incredible how many app developers and marketers aren't aware of capabilities of mobile app such as what mobile deep linking is, never mind how to use it to benefit their marketing campaigns

Let's take a quick look at a few steps you can take to significantly enhance the success of your app through smarter marketing with deep links.

How is Deep Linking Different for the Web and Mobile Apps?

Deep linking is a common term and concept in the online marketing world. Every online marketer knows how to grab the URL for a page within their website or a specific landing page and use them as the destination page for their marketing campaigns.

Mobile app deep linking allows users to click links to view specific content within your app, or download your app, depending on if they have your app installed. If a person doesn’t have your app installed and clicks on a deep link, they will automatically be directed to your app’s page in the App Store so they can download your app before proceeding to your deep link destination.

Both have a similar philosophy behind them, but the technology is different.

When used on websites, deep linking refers to using a hyperlink that links to the address of a specific piece of content (http://example.com/signup) rather than a homepage address (http://example.com).

In mobile deep linking, URIs (uniform resource identifiers) addresses are used to lead to other areas of your app (rather than URLs) to take users to specific screens within your app.

The benefit of using deep links for mobile apps is the ability for marketers to bring users directly to a specific location within the app.

Imagine only being able to use a homepage link for all your marketing campaigns. You wouldn’t dare!

 Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2326163/Take-Your-Mobile-App-Marketing-Campaigns-to-the-Next-Level-With-Deep-Linking

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2014 AdWords Wishlist

Enhanced campaigns, image extensions, third party reviews... the list goes on. Fantastic features that have improved performance for search marketers.

But we always want more, don't we?

What do we hope that 2014 will bring from Google to make us really happy?

What We Want

The lists below aren't sorted by importance or even feasibility. This is speculative stuff.

Targeting

More and better demographic data. Demographic data in search is a tricky business, but if anybody can solve this it's Google. Their data quality has come a long way in the last couple of years but it still has the scope to get better.

Third party data in search. If I have a cookied list of people who have made a phone call to my business, I want to be able to adjust my bids and targeting for those users. In fact, I'd like to be able to buy third party data and apply that to my search targeting. There's a lot of it out there I can use on my display campaigns, and think how great the performance could be on search!

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2325345/2014-AdWords-Wishlist

Author Bio :

Peter Doguly has explained in this article about the wishlist for adwords. Also he would like to write more about the clone script products like thumbtack clone script, kickstarter clone script,etc...

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6 SEO Predictions for 2014

For those that thought that the digital marketing landscape would see dramatic change in 2013, the year didn't disappoint. Last year I made 6 predictions, and it is time for me to give it another shot. But first, let's see how I did last year!

Scoring My 2013 Predictions:

1. We'll get confirmation that steering anchor text in links you get is bad. Score a full point for this one. Google now discusses this in their Webmaster Guidelines
2. The relevance of a linking page will carry increasing weight. Well, no proof of this one. I maintain it is true, and that belief certainly is impacting the content marketing work we do with our clients. I will take a half point here.
3. People will finally accept that +1's aren't treated by Google like a link. I think the proof of this one is available, but there are still more people who believe that +1's are a ranking factor than not. With some reluctance, I will take a half point for this one, too.
4. Rel=author will become a ranking signal. Another area that people debate heartily. Many will say that I should take a full point here. However, I will take a zero instead, because I don't think it has become a ranking signal. For people who think I gave myself too much credit on #2 or #3, we can call it even, OK?
5. Google+ will begin to show some of its true influence in search results. Definitely happening. I take a full point here.
6. The industry will start to talk about the role of landing page optimization in SEO. People have been talking about bounce rate for some time, but that isn't what I mean here. I was talking about real management of the customer experience. Well that has in fact begun to happen. The driving factors for this one will be Semantic Search and Hummingbird. However, not as broadly as I had thought it would, so half a point.

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2325063/6-SEO-Predictions-for-2014

Author Bio :

Mr. Peter Doguly is an energetic and enthusiastic digital marketer who loves to write about seo,sem and clone scripts like kickstarter clone, thumbtack clone, etc... 

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Exceptional Clone Script Products For Business

GroupDeal – exceptional in every way possible

GroupOn introduced the concept of collective buying in the online world. Various entrepreneurs wish to create a website like GroupOn, but the development cost is sky high. Agriya took an extra mile and developed GroupDeal. It is an affordable script which assists you to create a website like GroupOn in a short span of time.

This script provides you expressive web designs, malware-free SEO optimized codes, numerous revenue options and lots of exceptional features. It has launched over 1500 GroupOn clone websites in the online world.

SFPlatform – Powered with excellent features

Crowdfunding is an industry that will prosper till the human race exists on this earth.  It is a recession free industry which can give you more returns than expected. The capital of developing a crowdfunding website like Kickstarter is about $ 10,000. In order to reduce the cost and provide a quick way to launch crowdfunding websites, Agriya specially developed SFPlatform. It is a script which will help you to quickly start a crowdfunding website.

From the web designs to the powerful admin interface, the features of this script will collectively help you to operate the crowdfunding website flawlessly. One of the websites developed by this Kickstarter clone script is also featured in times.com

360Contest – Provides more benefits than expected

Design is the most attractive form of art, which is turned out to be a good business. This has raised the demands of new and exclusive designs, which have the ability to communicate with people. This evolved the design contest industry. You can also start a 99designs clone website by using a design contest script.

Agriya’s 360Contest is the best script available online. It has 50+ features and new revenue options. This script will provide you with all the elements required to develop a design contest website.

Getlancer –A dynamic way to develop freelance websites

Generation Z likes to be their own boss. That’s one of the reasons they are turning towards freelancing website. Their demands were met by various freelancing websites like oDesk, elance and freelancer. You can use this concept and create a freelance job portal by using an Elance clone script.

Amongst all the scripts present in the online world, Getlancer meets the expectations of entrepreneurs and webmasters. It has crystal clear designs, powerful admin interface, classy user dashboard, payment options and numerous revenue options.

BuySell – Crafted for constructing online shopping malls

Online shopping is the trend of the era. Now users can buy and sell products online simultaneously. Websiteslike Etsy, eBay, Amazon have implemented this concept and achieved great success. Now you can also create an online shopping mall using Agriya’s etsy clone script– BuySell.

This script has the ultimate power to create online marketplace website quickly. It will act as a backbone of your etsy clone website. It will also help you to manage, monitor and maintain the entire website easily. It is one of the champion clone scripts in online world, which has developed more than 500 websites.

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Google Search Results Add Details About Notable Websites

Google has announced a change that lets searchers find a little bit more information about the source of a link in the search results before they actually click through to it. This new feature intended to help searchers decide if a site contains the type of information or credibility they are looking for before clicking through to the landing page.

For example, here's what it looks like for Search Engine Watch:

 

Google made the change for sites that they feel are widely recognized as being a notable resource, whenever there is enough information to show the searcher or when they feel the content would be “handy” for the individual searcher.

The information Google displays is actually information coming from Google’s Knowledge Graph. Searchers can learn things such as anything known about the site’s ownership or creation date, awards it has won, and the type of site it is (e.g., if it is a wiki site or nonprofit organization).

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2324815/Google-Search-Results-Add-Details-About-Notable-Websites

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31 Link Building Tactics Discovered From Competitive Analysis

On the Moz blog there's always been a large discussion around competitive analysis. From how to conduct competitive analysis using Google docs to in depth articles about competitive link analysis using Excel, or even just the fact that Moz has Open Site Explorer, one of the ultimate analysis tools for competitive backlink analysis. The fact of the matter is competitive analysis can be a very worthwhile exercise to help you determine the best strategy for your online efforts. This is especially true with link building.

Over the years, I've seen hundreds of thousands of backlinks while analyzing for opportunities (as well as looking for bad links to disavow or prune). Most recently, my analyses have inspired me to write this post, because common opportunities continue to reveal themselves, and they're worth sharing. Have you discovered some great link building gems in addition to those listed below? Share them with us in the comments.

Contests

It's no secret that giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes are great ways to attract links. Some of the recent contests I've observed driving links for authoritative sites include the "Draw My Favorite Teacher" contest by StorageMart, a competitor of a storage chain client of mine. Natural links from news organizations and authoritative blogs are often a result of a contest that is unique like this.

A hacking contest by Rackspace, a competitor of our global hosting provider client, also drew in quite a few links we observed after they partnered with this NFC Ring kickstarter project. The NFC Ring partner then helped promote the contest too for some added link juice. These are both great examples of contest-driven link earning.

EDU link building strategies

Some of the most authoritative links my team and I have ever built are on university and college websites. When conducting competitive analysis be on the lookout for your competitor's .edu TLD earned links. Expert tip: Do a find & replace for the characters ".edu" in Excel, and format it to fill any cell with a color that has ".edu". See the screenshot below for more information.

Housing and residence life "helpful links"

Recently I conducted some competitive analysis on three separate industries: storage facilities, national cable providers, and automotive insurance. In all three of these industries, I discovered a plethora of link opportunities on housing and residence life FAQ pages for students. Students who move into campus housing often have to find extra storage, thus the storage links. Additionally students moving to a new state or country for school may need to find cable providers/utilities or new insurance providers, thus the cable TV and auto insurance links. Some example opportunities are provided below. Be on the lookout for these types of link building opportunities.

• School of the Art Institute of Chicago Housing & Residence Life: FAQs
• Yale School of Medicine "Living in Connecticut" helpful links
• South Dakota School of Mines & Technology useful links section
• University of the Incarnate Word helpful links
• University of Florida College of Dentistry helpful links for students

Read More : http://moz.com/blog/31-link-building-tactics-discovered-from-competitive-analysis

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5 SEO Trends Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2014

"Is SEO dead?" It's a common question within the online marketing world today.

If you're an entrepreneur relying on a strong online presence to connect with customers, you're right to pay attention. It's undeniable that the SEO landscape is changing.

For instance, Google is taking a hardline approach. Shady link-building tactics (think Rap Genius), poor quality content and bad design are just a few of the factors causing websites to get penalized. So what's worked for your business in the past may no longer work, and in fact, could actually hurt your business now.

Today, successful SEO strategies have to incorporate diverse components including brand building, mobile optimization, content marketing and social media integration. It's time to adapt your strategy to address these realities. Here's a closer look at five trends that will shape your SEO success in the year ahead.

1. Effective SEO has three pillars. A strong SEO strategy has three core components: links, content and social media. What's become more pronounced in the last year is the relationship between these elements. Content must be laser focused on your audience's needs and honed to drive specific profit-generating actions. Social media amplifies your reach, signaling to search engines that users find your content valuable. Links from high quality sites also reinforce that you're a solid, trustworthy site. A virtuous cycle is starting to emerge that all begins with writing great content.

2. The rise of content marketing moves toward digital maturity. Content marketing was the top marketing buzzword of 2013, and it's a trend that's here to stay. Brands need to become savvy about telling their own stories and creating content that resonates with audiences. As the initial fascination with content marketing wears off, marketers are now demanding more return on investment, or ROI. Content marketing is maturing, and as a result we're better able to effectively target content, measure performance and correct course to improve results.

3. Mobile optimization is no longer optional. With the release of Google's Hummingbird updates, it's getting harder for sites without a mobile strategy to rank well. This includes both a responsive design and a mobile content strategy. Realistically, it's time to invest in this anyway from a business perspective: Half of Americans own smartphones and more than a third own tablets according to Pew Internet. Responsive design ensures that your site looks great across a range of mobile devices. A mobile content strategy targets your content to the context, needs and behaviors of mobile users. To learn more about post-Hummingbird mobile optimization, read The Key Ingredients to a Winning Mobile Content-Marketing Strategy.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230937

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3 must have revenue options in a Kickstarter clone script

Unity is power, why not use this power to raise funds. Well that’s exactly the concept of crowdfunding. This concept has matured into an industry. You can easily step in this industry and start a crowdfunding website by using a Kickstarter clone script.

What is Kickstarter clone script?

These are ready made script which are designed, coded and tested to launch a website like Kickstarter in a short span of time. They have all the features and revenue options built in them. So when you opt this script, every feature and revenue option will be replicated in your website.

Inbuilt revenue options

These scripts should have the following revenue models in them. This will help you to earn from your website easily. 

• Membership fee
• Project listing fee
• Pledge commission

Let’s see them in detail.

Earn money when a user registers on your website

Whenever a user registers on your website, he has to pay a dedicated amount of fees to you. This revenue option ensures that your website doesn’t have any kind of spamusers. Only genuine users will be a part of your website.

Fetch revenue when user lists a crowdfunding campaign

Each user wants to evolve his idea into a potential business. He will like to put his campaign on your website. You can charge him a small amount of listing fees for displaying his campaign to the online world and helping him to arrange the funds as well.

Read more : http://www.crowdsourcing.org/article/3-must-have-revenue-options-in-a-kickstarter-clone-script/29692

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Do You Have the Entrepreneurial 'X Factor?'

There's a mysterious "X factor" shared by entrepreneurs around the world. Fledgling entrepreneurs reach for it, while the successful seem to wear it effortlessly. But what is this elusive entrepreneurial element? Is it a learned skill, or is it genetic? Can entrepreneurship be taught, or is it something that's just in your blood?

The truth is that while many skills shared by great entrepreneurs can be learned, two elements are traits that entrepreneurs are born with.

The traits entrepreneurs possess

In my experience, the entrepreneurial "X factor" comes down to a dichotomy of two innate traits. The first being creativity, which is the ability to discover and develop viable new business ideas. The second is intuition, or the gift of knowing who will benefit from a new idea and how to sell them the idea.

These two elements work in tandem: They lend the uncanny ability to see around corners and create true vision. If you don't have these two elements, you will most likely not succeed as an entrepreneur. That doesn't mean you can't run a successful business, but it will not be a truly entrepreneurial venture.

And even if you did win the genetic lottery, for this powerful duo to be used to their full potential, they must be harnessed with four other learned skills.

1. People skills. Understanding how to build and inspire a team could be an entire concentration of study within academia. The art of getting people to do what you want them to do requires a lot of practice and many failed attempts before getting it right.

2. Ability to focus resources. Often, entrepreneurial ventures suffer from organizational ADD. Symptoms include the inability to focus on critical details necessary for project completion and the pursuit of rabbit trails. A successful entrepreneur must learn the logic behind building a business and realize when they're over-innovating to the point of wasting resources.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230873

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Who Needs Kickstarter And IndieGoGo? Crowdfund Yourself

After a crowdfunding site made big promises to filmmaker Stuart Acher, then reneged on those promises, he was left with two days until his film #Stuck would launch with no crowdfunding in sight. So, he and his partners at FilmBreak built one from scratch.

FilmBreak believes that it is simply too expensive to use existing platforms and the there’s not enough value exchange. Most platforms charge a 7 to 12% fee to host a crowdfunding campaign but offer little to no marketing help or discoverability. While it is arguable that these platforms do not help you enough, FilmBreak is aiming to reduce costs and increase marketing and distribution help, at least for filmmakers.


Crowdfunding, as many Forbes articles point out, is a wildly successful and perhaps world-changing phenomenon. Here are a few stats from CrowdSourcing.org 2013 report as well as the fees from the big players directly.

• There were 452 active crowdfunding platforms globally (as of April 2012)
• An estimated 1 million campaign were funded in 2012
• Platforms raised $2.7B in 2012, an 81% increase from 2011
• Industry expected to grow to $5.1B in 2013

Kickstarter clone fee for successful projects is 5%, Amazon fee is 3-5% on top of that. IndieGoGo gives you two options: Flexible funding is 9% if goal is not reached, 4% if goal is reached, then 3% for credit card processing. Or, you can choose Fixed funding where you, as the creator set the goal. You will only get funds if the goal is reached: 4% if goal is reached, 3% for credit card. FundAnything: offers the same deal as IndieGoGo. CrowdTilt has a 2.5% fee if the goal is reached plus 2.5$ for credit card processing.

Read more : http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2013/12/23/who-needs-kickstarter-and-indiegogo-crowdfund-yourself

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3 Ways to Boost Your 'Executive Presence' While Pitching for Funding

Having "presence" and a personal brand are must-have attributes in our noisy me-too world of neck-and-neck competition. Alas, it's often not enough to clinch the deal or make the sale. 

Even with a proven track record and a well-established reputation, an entrepreneur has precious little time to convince anyone -- not just the skeptics -- that they and their ideas are the real deal.

Here are three strategies that have served thousands of entrepreneurs and corporate managers in selling their ideas and proposals to even the most critical audiences. Combine them and boost your chances for funding, no matter how high the stakes.

Offer real value right away. With adult attention spans maxing out anywhere from eight seconds to 20 minutes, presentations that fail to capture interest immediately and sustain it through the critical parts have a slim chance of winning converts.

Say you're the flip-flop wearing nerd with a comic-con T-shirt and a haircut that says "past-due," and you really have no business addressing more civilized audiences, except that you're a genius and you have something to offer that would change lives for the better. Your look may give you some "Silicon-Valley street cred," but that's going to expire like yesterday's milk unless some really good stuff comes out of your mouth from the start.

More than anything else, influential decision-makers want to know how you think, whether your ideas make sense, whether you should be trusted, whether you have the confidence to pull it all off, what the numbers really mean to them and the company, and most importantly, what the business outcome is if your proposals are accepted and turned into projects. They have a lot of questions on their minds and the quicker you answer them, the more they'll like you, dirty fingernails and all.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230803

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11 Reasons 2014 Will Be A Breakout Year For Women Entrepreneurs

While women in the upper echelons of corporate America are singing the same old  tune, “Still No Progress After Years of No Progress,” female entrepreneurs have something to rejoice about.

The number of $10-million-plus women-owned firms increased by 57% — a growth rate nearly 50% more than $10-million-plus firms overall, according to Growing Under the Radar: An Exploration of the Achievement of Million-Dollar Women-Owned Firms.

While the number is still small —  nearly 20% of angels in 2012 invested in women-led businesses — the percentage grew more than 40% from the previous year, according to the Center of Venture Research, which studies early-stage equity financing for high-growth ventures. Even venture capitalists have increased their support of women-led companies. It’s still paltry, but the percentage of VC deals going to women-led businesses was 13% in the first half of 2013. That’s nearly a 20% jump over 2012, according to Pitchbook, a venture-capital research firm.

There is room for improvement, but the U.S. ranked #1 among 17 countries on having the conditions that foster high potential female entrepreneurship, according to Gender-Global Entrepreneurship Development Index (GEDI). These conditions include entrepreneurial environment, entrepreneurial eco-system and entrepreneurial aspirations.

Woo hoo for women entrepreneurs! They will lead the way for women in other sectors to shatter their ceilings. Some of the 11 reasons women entrepreneurs will crack glass in 2014 are common to all women and others are unique to entrepreneurs.

1. Women have the right stuff :

Women make better leaders than men, according to research conducted by Zenger Folkman. “They build better teams; they’re more liked and respected as managers; they tend to be able to combine intuitive and logical thinking more seamlessly; they’re more aware of the implications of their own and others’ actions;  and they think more accurately about the resources needed to accomplish a given outcome,” said  Jack Zenger and Joseph Folksman in Forbes. Women on the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO) 50 Fastest Growing Women-Owned/Led Companies in North America know that you have to nurture your staff  in order to sustain rapid growth. That growth doesn’t happen without employees who are willing and able to deliver excellent products and great customer service.

“Two of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree — taking initiative and driving for results — have long been thought of as particularly male strengths,” Zenger and Folkman continued.

Twenty-first-century leadership skills, such as cooperation, communication, and sharing are more commonly associated with women, according to John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, authors of The Athena Doctrine: How Women (and the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future. Luan Cox, Crowdnetic, is helping pioneer a new industry, crowdfinancing. She’s working with all the players in the industry to provide the data it needs to be transparent and accountable. Cristina Mariani-May, Banfi Vintners, a family winery, credits her success to her ability to build relationships by listening.

Read more : http://www.forbes.com/sites/geristengel/2014/01/08/11-reasons-2014-will-be-a-break-out-year-for-women-entrepreneurs/

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4 Local Search Tactics That Will Matter More in 2014

One of the more interesting aspects of seeing local search mature over the past seven years has been how little the algorithm driving local search results on Google has shifted.

For example, while Google has made significant changes to which queries trigger local results and how those results display, its stance on citation building and cleansing/optimizing Google Business/Places/Maps/Plus Local listings has remained consistent since day one.


Some of the more recent factors like traditional organic signals are occasionally prominent as Google tests ideal ways to present merged local and organic results in the search engine results pages (SERPs). On the other hand, while review and social media signals are being spoken about frequently and starting to be incorporated in SERPs, the weight of those factors when it comes to local rankings is still fairly limited at this time.

Yet despite Google's consistency in the past, we can expect the importance of certain local factors to grow in the year ahead. Marketers should focus their energies on these key tactics in 2014.

1. Improving Brand/Domain Authority

The shift from keywords to context that started with the Panda updates in 2011 and culminated, most recently, with the Hummingbird update last August have had a clear impact on domain and brand authority, major facets of SEO. These two factors now matter more than ever.

Targeting micro sets of tail end keywords with thin content pages is a tactic that lost a great deal of effectiveness with the Panda release, and with the Hummingbird update, the tactic is poised to go the way of other previously killer SEO techniques that eventually became ineffective like microsites and PageRank sculpting with nofollow tags.

What will matter more is how authoritative searchers and Google view a site relative to any given topic.

Does the site offer the information searchers need? Will it keep visitors on the site after their initial visit? Will they visit again based on the content? Or does the site simply contain pages just to manipulate the search results?

These are the types of questions Google is trying to answer as it orders its search results, and it gets better at this every year.

Read more : http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2321848/4-Local-Search-Tactics-That-Will-Matter-More-in-2014

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Why Every Employee At Your Company Should Use LinkedIn

Having your entire workforce use LinkedIn could become your company’s rocket fuel. Yet many employers block company computers from accessing LinkedIn. They’re afraid employees will look for a new job, be poached by a recruiter or waste precious work time socializing online. According to a recent study by Statista, 10% of U.S. employees are not allowed to use LinkedIn in the workplace because access is blocked. These companies are missing out on major opportunities to build business, increase loyalty and fortify employee engagement. Here’s how your company can benefit from a focused program that encourages employees to use LinkedIn … every day.


1. Increased Visibility for Your Brand.

LinkedIn’s Best Practices Blog states that “Employees are 70% more likely to engage with your company updates.” When your employees “like” and “share” status updates, they make them visible to their contacts. This is living proof that every employee is a brand ambassador. The more views your company page has, the more potential followers. A study by BrightEdge backs this up: “Companies that have a greater proportion of their employees on LinkedIn have more followers on their company pages. In fact, 9 out of the top 10 brands with the most followers on LinkedIn have at least 60% of their employees on LinkedIn.” And when employees comment on your communications, the visibility of that item increases. The more company page followers, the higher your page will rank in LinkedIn search results, sparking greater reach and potential interaction with your content.

When your staff selects your company from the LinkedIn list when creating or updating their Experience, they automatically show up on your company’s LinkedIn page. And your company logo shows up on their page with a link back to your company page. They also become automatic followers of your company.

Your company also benefits when your employees point to your web site in one of the links in their contact info. Their impressive profile becomes another vector to your place on the web and, even better, they create inbound links to your homepage – giving it more Google value. Multiply this times your number of employees and you can quickly see what a tremendous boon LinkedIn is.

If you don’t have your employees on LinkedIn and you aren’t encouraging them to share your content – articles, promotions, videos, press releases – you’re limiting the reach of your communications. Don’t miss out on these effective opportunities to be visible to your target audience.

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Want to Turn Huge Startup Profits? Here's Why You Need to Be Patient

What most entrepreneurs don't realize is that a new product takes a long, long time before it’s profitable. Figure about three years -- more than 1,000 days.

The last new product my company took on was a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. The CRM application was developed by someone much smarter than me and we signed on as a partner to sell and implement the system. We added it to the mix of our existing CRM applications. I’ve done this before. And I’ve learned something: You don’t just add a new product. You invest in one.

For starters, the unlucky person in your company who you’ve volunteered to learn this new product will need to become an expert. This takes a long, long time. It requires sitting for certification exams, attending vendor classes, testing internally and then dipping your toes into the water with a new client, pretending you know what you’re doing, while you struggle to keep your own nausea under control. Because you don’t really know what you’re doing for a while. Becoming an expert in anything takes years, not months.

And becoming an expert requires money -- not just the fee you’re paying to the vendor for the privilege to sell their product (yes, if you can believe it, there is a fee). It’s the additional costs of the certification classes, the training, the seminars, the webinars and the partner conferences you’re required to attend. It’s the cost of time spent learning all this new stuff and the opportunity cost of that lost billable time. It’s the testing labs, the new server, the additional software that needs to be integrated that no one mentioned before.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229499

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10 Best States for Starting a Business

To encourage residents to start their own businesses, U.S. states are investing in entrepreneur mentorship programs and pumping up their high-tech workforce.

Maryland, Colorado and Virginia are the three states most supportive of innovation, according to the fourth annual Enterprising States report out this week from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Washington, D.C., based business advocacy organization.

The study measured five aspects of policy including exports and international trade, entrepreneurship and innovation, business climate, talent pipeline, and infrastructure. U.S. states were ranked for their performance in each category. Also, the study measured and ranked overall economic climate and growth in each state. Utah earned the title as the top performing state overall for fostering business growth and creating jobs. It ranked in the top 10 of every policy ranking and came in third overall in economic performance.

As part of the report, the Chamber of Commerce prepared an interactive map where you can click on any state to see how it stacks up in each category and why.

Here are the top 10 states ranked for entrepreneurship and innovation, as measured by the number of high-tech businesses in the state, programs that support entrepreneurs, and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) job concentration. Each state that made the list has something unique to offer resident entrepreneurs.

Maryland: The Maryland Entrepreneurs Resource List is a networking tool for connecting experienced tech executives with young startup entrepreneurs. The University of Maryland Baltimore County's ACTIVATE initiative, supported by the state's Technology Development Corporation, gives female entrepreneurs over a year of support and guidance as they launch their tech startups.

Colorado: In addition to attracting hikers and bikers, the Western state is a hotbed for high-tech businesses and ranks fourth in the country for the number of new businesses born. Also, it has a relatively high concentration of STEM jobs and in the last two years has bolstered its high-tech workforce with an additional 1,100 software programmers, 840 engineers, and 675 science research jobs.

Virginia: In addition to having the highest concentration of STEM jobs of any state in the U.S., Virginia has been home to the Center for Innovative Technology since 1985. The CIT's mission is to promote technology-based economic growth in the state and is focused on getting money to more entrepreneurs in the very early, seed round of funding.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226521

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Bank Lending to Small Business Slips, Crowdfunding on the Rise

New York-based crowdfunding platform Kickstarter broke its previous record for the most any single project has raised in April with Pebble, a watch that synchs with your smartphone. So far (the funding round is not over yet), the watch has raised more than $9 million from over 61,000 backers. And while alternative funding appears to be on the rise, loan approval rates at banks across the nation have slipped, according to the most recent analysis from Biz2Credit, an online marketplace that matches small and medium sized businesses with lenders.

Banks with more than $10 billion in assets approved 10.6% of loans in April, down from the 10.9% approval rate in March, according to the report released today from New York-based Biz2Credit. That also marks a continuing decline from January and February of this year, when big banks approved 11.7% of small business loans.

Smaller banks, or those with less than $10 billion in assets -- recently the bright spot in an otherwise challenging lending market for small businesses -- approved 45.9% of loans last month, down from the 47.6% in March and February this year. Approval rates at credit unions also dipped slightly to 57.4% in April from 57.9% the previous month.

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7 Ways Entrepreneurs Will Ride Crowdfunding's Ripple Effect

The new crowdfunding law passed as part of the JOBS Act, which allows companies to sell pieces of their business for cash, won't be finalized until early next year. But many entrepreneurs are already champing at the bit to deliver on the services they think this new marketplace will want.

Here's a look at several industries and jobs being developed as part of the trickle-down effect of crowdfunding, according to David Marlett, Executive Director of the National Crowdfunding Association, an industry trade group that has been involved in discussions shaping this new genre of startup financing.

The Portals. Thus far, crowdfunding has been primarily a way for artists to raise small donations from lots of people (the crowd) in exchange for rewards, such as CDs or other project-related gifts. Now, entrepreneurs are moving in to create similar online platforms for companies wanting to offer pieces of their business (think Kickstarter clone, but for equity). Marlett estimates there will be approximately 100 portals ready once the new crowdfunding rules take effect, although many are likely not to survive the first year of competition.

A New Breed of Analysts. As with any new product, there will be a demand for a ranking of the portals, says Marlett. Investors and entrepreneurs will want to know which portals have had the highest success rates. In the same way that there are analysts of financial data, there will be analysts of the various crowdfunding portals, says Marlett.

Specialized Software. With all the new crowdfunding portals, Marlett expects a slew of new software entrepreneurs to create a variety of applications, that handle everything from allowing you to crowdfund from your mobile phone to allowing investors to research a business.

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/223565

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10 Signs You're Not Cut Out to Be an Entrepreneur

About half of Americans dream of opening their own businesses, according to a recent survey by the UPS

Store, but with 50% of small businesses failing within the first five years, how do you know if you're an entrepreneur ... or a "wanna-preneur"?

"When we go through recessions and people lose their jobs or are offered buyouts, many decide it's their impetus to launch their own company," says entrepreneur and business coach Daniel C. Steenerson. "But just because you can start a business doesn't mean you should."

Before you take the leap, Steenerson suggests taking an honest inventory of your skill set. He offers these ten clues that you're not cut out to launch a business:

1. You can't stand the heat.
Before you jump into self-employment, Steenerson says you need to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

"Every day you'll need to try something new for the first time," he says. "Growth happens at edge of comfort zone. If you're unwilling to go there, you may not be cut out for being an entrepreneur."

2. You're on the quest for quick cash.
While profit is the result of successful business, it shouldn't be why you are in business, says Steenerson, who in 1997 launched Disability Insurance Services, a provider of disability insurance products, to fill a gap in the marketplace.

"You start a business to solve problems and serve others," he says. "If you do that the cash will follow, but it can take time."

3. You have professional ADD.
Starting a business isn't about chasing the latest shiny thing; it's about picking a dream and staying with it even when times get tough.

"Being an entrepreneur requires unwavering laser focus," says Steenerson. "If you don't have patience and are unwilling to push through the tough times, launching a business might not be for you."

Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230471

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