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Creating Compelling Content in Video Marketing

Not all video content is created equal. If you decide to pursue video marketing you will want to focus on building high quality and highly targeted material. Much like your website, YouTube viewers decide whether they will keep watching your video within the first few seconds. So you not only need to retain their attention throughout your video but you need to make sure the first moments are captivating. Your content should speak directly to your audience.

If you are skewing towards younger generation humor is a great approach. Whereas an older generation might be more interested in an authentic and authoritative tone. Some of the best content answers, questions your target audience is already asking.

As you create your videos avoid building sales pitch and instead share the unique aspects of your product or service that can’t be told with text or pictures. What makes you unique? What are you proud of? What do you highlight when you share your business offerings with others? These are some great questions to help you find what content to create first. As you build this content keep the following in mind: Your video should be short. Less than two minutes is an ideal starting point and if you plan on using your video like a paid commercial less than 30 seconds. When you go to create your content be sure to use a very high-quality camera.

How to Get Started with Video Marketing

Focus on good lighting, invest in a tripod or a way of keeping the camera stable and if you do end up shooting with an iPhone remember to turn it horizontally. Talk directly to your audience and keep it natural slightly informal and personal. The values of your brand, your tone, and your visual style should all be evident in your content. And keep future videos consistent so as not to create confusion when users watch more and more of your material. Now, most the viewers will only make it through about 70% of your video and that is even pushing it. The shorter your video the better the likelihood users watch it to the end.

Include a call to action in the middle of your content and again towards the end and leverage annotations to make the messaging interactive. For more details and best practices, I would definitely check out the YouTube Playbook at YouTube.com or Playbook. Now if you are strapped for ideas consider reaching out to an agency that specializes in building video content. If you are doing it yourself consider renting quality lights and video equipment from a company like Borrowlenses.com and as always explore the library here on Lynda.com for more in-depth tutorials on video production.

Promoting videos on YouTube

Beyond gaining video views organically, you might want to run some paid video promotions. You can do that either by running your video as an Advertisement in front of other videos, or as a recommended video in search, or after someone watches selected content. Now, you will run your advertisements via AdWords so you need to start by adding the YouTube video that you want to promote, to your YouTube account. Then you will visit your AdWords account, here at Adwords.google.com. I am in the Campaigns tab and the first step of this process is to select the down arrow next to Campaign and choose an online video, which is the last option on the list.

The first thing that Google is going to do is provide us with the opportunity to set up our new video campaign. A video campaign is very similar to the campaigns that we set up for our search Ads, or our display Ads. The first thing that you should do, before you start with your campaign, is to select the Linked YouTube accounts option, here on the left-hand side, under the Shared library heading. It is here that we will have the option to link our YouTube channel to our AdWords account, which will give us even more features and some specialized reporting.

We will do that by selecting the Link YouTube channel option, here on the right-hand side. Next, we need to select the option that makes the most sense for us. We can either link a YouTube channel that we own, or we can link a YouTube channel that someone else owns. In this case, we own the YouTube channel that we are linking, so I am going to leave the first option selected, then choose Go to YouTube. I have already logged into my YouTube account so it is going to drive me right into this page that is going to ask me to link the AdWords to this account. The first thing that we need to do is give this a name in case we were linking it to multiple AdWords accounts.

I will go ahead and add in H+ AdWords Account. For the Permissions option, all three are preselected. I prefer this as it gives us the most visibility into our View counts, into our ability to Re-market, and into Engagement metrics. You can review each of these and deselect any that you are not comfortable with. Once you have done that, choose Finish, in the bottom right-hand corner. We can verify that the account is linked by scrolling down and looking under the Account name heading, and see that our account is listed with our Customer ID and our Permissions.

Once that is in there, you can close this tab to go back to AdWords, and then you will choose done from the prompt that is available. Now, in this list down here, we can see that that account, that channel, is listed. Here we have the channel H+ Sports and the visible Permissions. Our YouTube account is linked to our AdWords account. To get started with creating our first Ad, I will go back and choose the all video campaigns option from the navigation on the left-hand side. Depending on how you have AdWords setup, you might either go right back into the Campaign option, or you are going to arrive at an All video campaigns view.

If you do arrive at this view, simply choose +Campaign in the bottom left-hand corner. That will take you back to the new video campaign wizard. Just as we did with our search and our display campaigns, we will give this a name, something descriptive, and set a budget. I will set a budget for $25 per day. With YouTube, your budget will determine how many views your video gets. So you will be paying on a cost per view basis, typically $.06 per view, so you will need to figure out the right budget per day to make sure that you get the number of views that you are hoping to see.

Next, we can choose from a variety of YouTube Networks. The first is YouTube Search, in which someone is actively looking for a video. We have YouTube Videos, which will show your Ads before other videos, or on the recommended video platform. You can also include the Google Display Network, which are sites other than YouTube. You can leave these all checked, or if you want to start simple, start with just YouTube Search. Next, pick your Locations, and, as always, being more specific is better than doing something too broad. So if your audience is in a certain location or a region, you can enter that in the box below, and Google will filter it to that specific location.

I am going to leave this as the United States and Canada, just for the purpose of this demo. You can set the language, and then, finally, you will have the option of creating the video Ad that you want to be displayed. You will do this either by searching for a video on YouTube, or you can paste in the URL that you found on your YouTube video page. I have already copied the URL, so I am going to paste it in this view. YouTube will load the video; we can confirm that this is the one that we want. If it wasn’t, we can use the Change video option. Next, we will select Ad formats.

Here we can use the default ones or we can use them formatted from mobile application promotions. Since this is not a mobile app, I will use the default format. As we scroll down, we will have the option of displaying our video in multiple manners. The first is an in the stream video display. This is one that happens when someone goes to watch another video, and before that video loads, your commercial will play. You are only going to pay if someone watches 30 seconds, or to the end of your Ad. Thirty seconds is the longest Ad that you probably want to start with when doing in-stream advertising.

You can run this commercial before videos that are related, or to audiences that are going to be interested in your product. I am going to disable the in-stream advertising because when you are just getting started, the best type of Advertising is really, an in-display ad. I will leave that selected, which is the second option. The In-display Ad will show up when someone is searching for your particular keywords. You will create an Ad, so you will have a Headline and a Description much like your search Ad. You can even choose a Thumbnail that comes from the screenshots of the video that you have uploaded.

You will enter in your Headline and your Description, and you will want those to be very descriptive and relevant. Then you will select the Landing page. That could be the channel page on YouTube so you could land someone on the channel which will show all of your videos, or the actual video watch page, which will let them start watching the video right away. I recommend starting with the video watch page as someone who is searching for a video is most interested in watching that video right away. Then you will pick your Ad name, then you will choose to Save and continue.

From there, it is much like the other Ads that we created before. You will set your targeting options, and launch your Ad. Promoting YouTube videos can bring some really great results. Be sure to use the right targeting, start with a small market, and as always, continue testing until you find the winning combination.

Meaningful video marketing metrics

As you expand your video marketing efforts, it is important to evaluate your performance by looking at your video metrics. You will find your YouTube Analytics by visiting the Creator Studio and then selecting Analytics from the menu on the left-hand side. Once you have done that, you will arrive here which is your Analytics overview. Now, this view defaults to the last 28 days and we can see that with the option in the upper right-hand corner. From this drop-down, we can select different date periods or you can choose from the calendar option to customize the date range to suit your needs. Also in this upper right-hand corner, you can download the complete report or use this comparison option to search for two pieces of content and view how their data relates.

I am going to choose Cancel comparison and then scroll down the page to show you some of this data. So what we are looking at here at the top is the performance of our account over the last 28 days, because that is the date range that is pre-selected. You will see how many views you have had, how many minutes of content people have watched, and any gains or losses in subscribers. You will also look at engagement, likes, dislike, comments, and so on, and then below that we will see the Top 10 Videos and their views, the estimated minutes watched, and any likes they have earned.

Scrolling down further, you will have a chance to review demographics, so you can see where your views are coming from, and Discovery where you can see where your content was watched, in this case, 95% of our content was seen on the YouTube Watch Page, where just under 5% was embedded players on other websites, meaning someone embedded the YouTube player on their site and someone watched it. On the right-hand side, we can see the Top Traffic Sources, and this is how people arrived at our YouTube video. 43% came via Search, 22% found the link directly, and that is YouTube is guessed, that is why it is listed as Unknown, and then 17% watched it on an external website.

And then there is the other tab, which is really unknown. Now if you wanted to look at a specific video, you can either search for the content here at the top, or you can click into that video if it appears in the list. In this case, let us drill into the H+ Sport commercial. Once I select that, we can look at their performance of just this video. So we will see how many views have been had in the last 28 days, how much time has been watched, the same information that we were looking at as our entire account, but now specific to this video. Now one thing that I really like is to look at the Audience retention information, and you will find that here on the left-hand side at the very bottom of the Views report heading.

Audience retention is neat because it shows you over time how viewers are retaining, so in other words, how many of them are watching it at three seconds in, how many of them are still watching it at 15 seconds in, in this case 91% and you can continue through your content to see when people start dropping off. Here they drop off at the end because this video is only 30 seconds long. Now most videos you will see this drop off about halfway through and if you are using a really long intro, maybe you have a five or seven second logo overlay, you might see that you have a steep drop off in retention early on in your content, which might indicate that you should rethink what is the opening hook of your video.

Now you can also look along this side for other information, traffic sources, subscribers, all of that is specific either to the video that you have selected or to your entire account if you deselect a video. Familiarize yourself with the Analytics interface and refer to it often to better understand what your user is interacting with, how they are finding your content, and what areas you might need to improve.

Steps to become a millionaire in your 20’s

’20s is the golden age. You have just graduated from college and ready to face the financial world. You have a lot of dreams in your eyes. Today everyone wants to be rich but not everyone is rich. Earning wealth is easy than maintaining wealth. I am going to tell you tricks that can improve your life and can help you in gaining wealth.

Start working on yourself

This is the best time to work on your skills and your personality. In the ’20s, your mind is curious to learn new things which are a difficult task for an older person. Always focus on learning new things as much as you can because learning never goes waste. Open your mind to new things, learn from everyone around you, read books, read informative articles, ask the right questions and increase your knowledge.

Most of the people spent their entire life with limited knowledge and never try to learn new and important things and then wonders why they are not getting rich. You have to avoid this mistake, you have to update your knowledge and skills regularly to stay in the competition.

Burning desire is the key

Getting rich requires a strong will and burning desire from inside. You have to understand the difference between a dream and a goal. For most of the people getting rich is the dream but for you, it should be your goal. The biggest difference between these is the mindset. A dream is something for which you work for when you are free but a goal is something, towards which you work at every point in your life to achieve that goal.

Burning desire comes from the first point in this article that is by reading and understanding rich people’s life and their story. Get inspiration from people, you would like to become one day. Be a millionaire in your mind, then only you will understand what it takes to be a real millionaire. By this, I did not mean start spending like them but start acquiring the habits that make them rich.

Come out of Home

One cannot get rich simply but sitting at home and reading stuff. You have to gain a lot of experience. Try to get 30 years experience in 3 years if you to be rich and especially in your 20’s. Come out of home and start exploring different opportunities. Understand the market and observe their need. Meet with a lot of people, interact with them and make friends that will help you in your mission. You have to be strong in influencing people if you want to be rich because getting rich requires strong marketing skills.

Travel as much as you can, this will open your mind and you can explore more. Travel and try to interact with different types of people to understand how the market actually works and you can sell your product or services to them.

Never settle

Settle at a place is for the people who want comfort in their life if you want comfort give up the goal of getting rich because Rich never settle. You may earn a good income from your job one day, but remember one income is never going to be enough for you. Never settle for one income source only. Generate different sources of income and make your cash flow. Make your cash flow positive so that you can save some money after paying all your bills and invest the rest.

In the future, there will come a time when you have enough money with you and you become lazy in working. Here comes the hard part, maintaining wealth is the biggest task. Remember never settle, no matter how much you are earning. Always try to expand more because market out there has a lot of opportunities, you just have to see and grab them and at right time.

Don’t spend, Invest

Everyone spends their hard earned money for some temporary pleasure like clubbing or partying. Most people buy new phones and luxurious as soon as they have some money. You have to be careful about that. Before spending your hard earned money on these things, invest it in upgrading your skills and expanding your business. Once it is done save some money for the bad times(which will come one day) and you can enjoy with the rest of the money.

Always prioritize investing money rather than spending money because the more you invest, the more you can earn and the more you will earn, the more you can enjoy with the last saving.

Keep a positive attitude

This is is the most difficult part of the journey of getting rich. Generating a good amount of cash flow is time taking task. Our young generation is so impatient that they want everything in the blink of an eye. But this can’t be possible when it comes to money. Most of the people don’t have enough patience that is required to build wealth and hence give up without achieving their goal.

Nobody remembers nobody can get rich quickly and those who get, are mostly scams. If you want to build wealth and maintain that wealth for a long time, you have to learn patience. Start maintaining a positive attitude in every single point in life. No matter if the things are going against you, no matter if you are working hard and not getting results, remember one day you will get that.

At every moment in your life where you refuse to give up, you move one step closer towards your goal.

Do You Want To Transit From Job To Business? Here’s how:

“What would you like to do” – “A business or A job?” Obviously 9 out of 10 times the answer will be – “A business” Whether you’re doing job or unemployed.

But I’ll suggest that before leaping into any business first try to work for the relevant industry to gain some knowledge and experience so that it’ll help you manage your business more successfully.

There are certainly some pros of having a job before like you can have insight into the industry, can get knowledge about how the market is running, how to get things done from employees and so forth. The more you explore, the more you get to know that industry.

Below are a few things you should consider before starting a business:

1. Find your niche

Once you decide to start a business, ask yourself, “what interests you?” If it is something that interests you then it’d be great to run the business more smoothly. To find a niche, you could do some research on that.

As I’ve mentioned before, if you have somewhat experience in your industry then it’d be great, so try to find accordingly.

Let’s say you’re in, “Marketing and Sales” for XYZ company then you should find business based on your previous experience.

Nowadays, finding information is not that hard, search the idea on the web and give a shape to it according to your experience and interests.

2. You don’t quit a job until you’re ready to launch business fully

Though it’s important to have some experience on relevant business, it is also vital to have a job alongside, the reasons are many; one of the most important is, “What will you do if you ran out of money, amidst?”, “How will you manage your finances?” Hence, part-time allows you to play around with market and experiment, which you want to do while starting an industry.

Starting a business while having a part-time will test your mindset, you’d survive the industry to get things done or not. People with entrepreneurship mindsets can survive this industry easily, some get it in-built while some needs to build it.

3. Ready to fail

You’re not going to eat fruits and nuts from the very first day of your business, so be prepared for failure for around 2 years, as you have to pass through many ups and downs, which sometimes makes you desperate to leave a business. This is the hidden rule of entrepreneurship when people talk about their success they don’t tell you how they went through during the past.

Launching a business means there’ll be days, weeks or years of frustration and having no income and having no friends and family, yet you’ve to be committed towards it because you want to be successful in it.

4. Get feedback before start

This is one important factor, get a review from different people, which extremely helps you to save quality time and money, which you can use somewhere else.

Try to get answers for questions like; “How is your idea different from other businesses”, “How is the market for the niche?”, Try to find out competitors and so on.

Try using different social media and figure out all queries by asking people, this will help you to get an overall idea of your business plan and you’ll get to know the potential of your business.

Never be afraid of taking people’s opinions and suggestions, even if they’re not in that business and have an opinion, you’d be surprised by having various opinions from different people.

Learn to communicate, many of us don’t give much attention to this, which helps you to be more effective and productive.

5. Do market research and understand the target audience

It is better to know about the market for your industry; know your market’s ins and outs. Start analyzing your strengths and weaknesses.

There are plenty of ways through which you can reach to your customers, there are some who wants to reach through Facebook, some through Instagram or Google advertisement and so on. Understanding of clients is a key part of all business plans, without which you can’t sell your service or products.

At the starting phase, you’ll want to try different advertising platforms so that you can find from where you are getting your potential customers. There are different research tools available on Google, by using it you can target the customers.

6. Find a partner

It is not that easy to handle business solely while having a job on the other side, so it is better to find the right partner with perfect skill sets which would help you to launch a business. You need people that have the right skills to handle different departments. This so-called co-founder could bring enormous value to your business, you ever imagine if you choose the right person.

7. Be dedicated

It is important to know how badly you want this, there will be a time where you get into trouble, which will make you stressed because you are not able to accelerate the gas-pedal of your business. If starting a business while working then you are not the only one who wants to do this. Growing a side business will be an extremely challenging experience, you need to be motivated and dedicated towards the business.

Top 3 digital marketing mistakes by big brands

Have you wondered how digital marketing is carried out in big companies? From outside it might look like they have the perfect digital marketing strategy. But they do a lot of mistakes and leave out a lot of opportunities along the way.

A close friend of mine have worked in more than 5 organizations as a Digital Marketing Manager including Practo, Razorpay, Instamojo, Exotel, MoEngage & more…

And as a digital marketing agency, we have a lot of clients like Nikon, HDFC, Mercedes-Benz and more. And in almost all the big companies, I see some big digital marketing mistakes that are being repeated time and time again. And my work in all these companies is to get them to have a good digital marketing strategy that works in the 21st century.

Learn about these mistakes, so that you don’t do it for your business. Or you can help other companies as digital marketers to help them overcome these mistakes.

Mistake #1: The internet is another advertising medium

A lot of companies think that the internet is just another advertising medium. They think that just like there are eyeballs in other mediums, there are eye-balls on the internet also. But they are wrong. Very wrong. They used to advertise in Newspapers, TV, Radio, and Magazines.

Now they are advertising on the internet, and they are treating it like other channels. But there is a huge difference between the other mediums and the internet. You see, all the other mediums are a one-way communication medium. They are broadcast mediums. There is no way to interact with the ads on TV, newspapers, and Magazines. You just see them and ignore them. But the internet is not a broadcast or an advertising medium. The Internet is a two-way communication medium. (I am messaging you on email, and you can also reply to this email).

But companies continue to treat the internet like a billboard. Print ads in newspapers have become banner ads on websites. Video ads on TV have become YouTube ads. Radio ads have become podcast ads. But such blind advertising is not gonna work any+more. In other mediums, people had no option but to consume the ad. The best they could do is change the TV channel, and they still had to pay attention to the ads – because almost all channels keep running ads. But now, people have a lot of distractions online. And a lot of options.

People on the internet have 10 browser tabs open on their laptops. 10 apps open on their mobile phones. As soon as we get a Whatsapp message, we check it. We ignore banner ads (No wonder banner ad click-throughs are as low as 0.2%). We use popup blockers. We do EVERYTHING possible to ignore commercial messages and brand’s advertising on our faces.

But brands are just trying harder.

They are jumping into our screens with video ads, banner ads, HTML emails, Instagram ads, and even popups. You cannot cut through the clutter by adding more to the clutter. You cannot be heard in a room full of noisy people shouting their brand message – and you cannot (and should not) try to shout louder. So if this is the mistake that brands do, what is the correct way?

The correct way is to treat the internet as a two-way communication medium. You see, the internet is a place where two people can connect with each other, through the constraints time and space. You are sitting in your home or office. You are probably reading this on a mobile phone or a laptop. We are separated by space. We are also not communicating in real time. You are probably reading this email at a different time than I wrote it.

We are separated by time. We are still communicating. The internet makes it possible for us to have a conversation. It is not just one-way communication. You can also reply to this email and I would read it. This is the power of the internet.

Brands have to use the internet as it is meant to be used. Leverage 1-to-1 and 1-to-many communication. I also call this concept “Deep Marketing” and I am writing a book on it. On the internet, people pay attention when other people communicate. On the internet, people ignore messages from a brand. If I had sent this same email from my company’s brand “PixelTrack”, you would have ignored this message. You are reading it because I am a real person, and I am communicating with you, 1-on-1. As a friend.

Now you get the idea? Imagine all the emails that you have got in your inbox. Most of the messages from brands – are irritating, adds no value, waste your time, and you just ignore them. (Unless they are transactional emails). Imagine how much of undivided attention you are paying to this email I am writing to you. Have you ever spent so much time reading an email from a brand? I don’t think so. I write an email like I would write it to a friend.

If your friend writes you an email, this is how he/she would write it. No fancy graphics, no HTML emails, no brand logos, and no registered trademarks. Personal brands are very powerful, and in the age of the internet, people want to hear from other people, not brands.

So I think that’s what companies should do. They should leverage their personal brands. A brand like Mercedes-Benz can advertise all over the world. They can get their brand out.

But on the internet, someone would pay more attention to the CEO of Mercedes-Benz who talks about the plans he has for the next year than an email for a Merc test drive or a YouTube ad which shows a fake actor having a jolly good time with his brand new Mercedes-Benz model.

A blog post from Nikon’s CEO about the history of the Nikon brand would get far more attention than a page listing all Nikon’s products.

Did you know that Nikon is a global player with spectacle lenses? Did you know that when Nikon started with their company more than 100 years back, they started with lenses for people’s specs than with cameras? But no one talks about that.

They just slap ads of the latest products where-ever they can – because that’s what they have done for more than 100 years. They never told a story, because there was no channel to tell a story before the advent of the internet.

I am not saying that one should not advertise on the internet. They can. People need to know about the catalog of products that a company has. But I am saying that the conversation should be initiated by a person, rather than a logo. Because when a person talks, people listen. When a logo talks, people ignore it. Companies and brands somehow know that you need a face. That’s why they hire brand ambassadors to endorse them. Like BYJU’s has SRK as its brand ambassador. Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Priyanka Chopra – all these people take the money and endorse brands. And they get into trouble when the brand fails the people.

And everyone knows that these celebrities are paid for their endorsements. There is no trust and no authenticity. Imagine how funny it would be if I hired a hot actress to promote my digital marketing courses. It might look interesting, but everyone knows that it is fake. Authenticity, 1-to-1 communication, and personal branding through value creation is the future of marketing on the internet and other digital mediums. So that’s mistake No.1. Whenever you see a brand trying to sell you something, think about how it can be done better with a story, coming from a human being.

Now let’s look at Mistake #2…‘

Mistake #2: It’s all about Reach and Frequency

You don’t need an MBA in marketing to understand reach and frequency. It’s pretty simple actually. When you drive down the road, what do you see on the divider of the road? Airtel, Airtel, Airtel, Airtel, Airtel, Airtel. It’s there on the signboards in the middle of the divider. Then maybe… Hyundai, Hyundai, Hyundai, Hyundai, Hyundai.

Then you switch on the TV. Colgate Ad, some content. Colgate Ad, some content. Colgate Ad, some content. Then…Maruti Suzuki Super Awesome Car that will make you happy forever. Some content. And then the same ads again.

What are they trying to do? Everyone knows that people don’t remember something if it is shown only once. People remember something only if they come across it multiple times. Even when we learned things in school, we had to repeat our learning several times before we could write an exam.

So that repetition is Frequency. If my target audience is 100,000 people and if it costs me ₹10,000 to show an ad for 10 seconds to all the 100,000 people, I cannot spend that 10k and expect any returns. If people see the ad only once, they will forget about it. My investment in 10k would be wasted.

I have to show the ad at least 10 times for people to remember the brand. So I have to spend ₹1,00,000 to show the ad 10 times for 10 seconds to all the 100,000 people. And I have to pay media channel owners to reach these people. They are the middlemen between my products and the customers.

So here, the reach is 100,000 and the frequency is 10. If I want a frequency of 20, I can reach only 50,000 people with the same budget. Brands usually have an optimum level of frequency vs. reach and they try to get the maximum ROI from their spend. So big brands with big budgets always aimed for more reach, and more frequency. But there is a problem here. Because showing the ad to many people, many times is not how normal relationships work.

And this day and age, there are just too many brands trying to slap their products and services on our face. Relationship building takes time, and it cannot be always based on frequency. Imagine you are looking for a partner in marriage.

How would you approach it? You will first connect with them online or offline, and exchange contact details. Then you will meet and have a conversation. Then you will know and trust each other. You let the relationship build over time by adding value to each other. And then one day may be, you can propose marriage.

Imagine how stupid and idiotic it would be if you ask for a marriage to 1000 people, in the very first conversation. That’s a lot of reaches. Imagine how even more stupid it would be if you asked the same 1000 people, 10 times if they would be ready to marry you.

A lot of reaches, a lot of frequency, but probably 0 conversions. Brands aim to reach and frequency because there was no way to build a communication sequence with traditional marketing. A brand cannot identify a single user on TV or newspapers. A brand doesn’t know if they are seeing the message for the 1st time or the 7th time. So all they did was reach and frequency. Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff, Buy my stuff. This is what they always do.

They used to do it with traditional marketing, and now they are doing it with digital marketing. (Remember Mistake #1) But now with digital marketing, there is a better way to do marketing. Just like normal human relationships, you can have a sequence of messages which delivers value and builds trust over time. Combine it with the power of personal branding, and natural communication, you would get attention of people, without having to pay a huge sum for it. Think about how you got here. I did not ask you to buy my digital marketing courses the first time you came across me online.

Yes, you probably have heard from me many times before (frequency is there so brand recall is there), but it was not an irritating ad with a jingle, running over and over again. It was natural human communication from one human (me), to another human (you). I advertised one of my blog posts, or the free digital marketing course, that delivered value. I had to pay for advertising only for the first time. Once you opted in, it doesn’t cost me anything to reach you the 2nd time, 3rd time, or the 50th time (like this email). You gave me your email ID. Then I delivered the free course. I delivered a free eBook.

Digital marketing gives the power to setup messages

I am communicating with you like a friend. And in fact, you are my friend, though I might not have met you in person, yet. Digital marketing gives the power to setup messages in a sequence. With ads, you now have the power of sequential advertising.

With funnels, you can build a customer journey. With emails, you can have drip marketing sequences which deliver messages in a period of time.

With Facebook Messenger, you can have a sequence of messages. You can also setup a sequence of messages with SMS. But a very few digital marketers are using this power. Most brands are still not using the power of sequential communication. And that’s the second biggest mistake they are doing.

Mistake #3: Keep pumping money into ads as long as sales are coming

In traditional advertising, it was very difficult to measure the performance of the communication. If you ran an ad in a local newspaper, you have no idea how many people saw the ad, and how many people bought your products because of the ad. You had the problem with TV, Hoardings, Magazine ads and almost every channel pre-digital era. People allocated a specific budget to marketing. Like 10% of revenue or 20% of revenue.

But why?

People were afraid to scale their marketing spend to something like 50% of revenue, because they did not know if it will give an ROI in the future. With digital marketing, you have data to work with. You can split test ads, email subject lines, landing page headlines, and almost every part of the communication online. You can also personalize and customize the ads based on who is seeing your ad. You see, we can never tell based on intuition which messaging will work. People are varied, and their choices are complex.

We need to test, test, test. A marketer who doesn’t experiment is not a marketer, he is just a campaign manager. Have an intuition, and test it out with experiments. Intuition cannot be a replacement for data. “In God we trust, all others must bring data.” by W. Edwards Deming And that’s the third mistake brands are doing. They are not data driven, and they are not experimenting all the time.

If there are 10 stages of the funnel, and if you improve the conversion on each stage of the funnel by 10%, your results would 2.6x of your original result because of the compounding effect.

1. We build communication focused on personal brands than logos.

2. We setup the communication in a sequence.

3. We are data driven.

How to Get Started with Video Marketing

One of the best places to start your video marketing effort is on YouTube. But before we start setting up an account, let us take a look at what we will be creating. I have gone ahead and pulled up the lynda.com YouTube channel. This is much like a profile page on other social media networks. Here you can see content that lynda.com has posted. We can choose the About tab to see information about lynda.com, along with links to other pages. We can see discussions, look at the entire channel, view playlists, or see an entire list of just the videos that a user can sort very easily. Now, most YouTube users won’t be interacting with your channel page until they subscribe.

They will do that by choosing the Subscribe option here on your channel, or on an actual video page. I will show you a video page by choosing on this video here about a GoPro. Here, we can also see the Subscribe button just below our user name. A user can also read information about this video. Here is another chance to add links back to your website, as well as introduce content that has keywords that your user is going to be searching for. Most users will find your content through YouTube search, and you will find that here at the top of the screen.

If we were looking for a video, say how to roast coffee, I could type that into search, and then I am going to get a list of results. Here at the top, we have some paid Advertisements from Starbucks Coffee and a company called We Are Stars. Below that, we have organic listings, from a variety of publishers, all about roasting coffee. A user can sort by choosing these filters, and they can look for content based on its regency, based on features, or even its duration. So to get started and set up your account, you will want to choose Sign In in the upper right-hand corner.

We will go ahead and sign in with the Google account that we have created earlier. Now, right away, Google is going to automatically sign us up for YouTube, it is that simple. But we have a very generic profile, which I will show you by selecting My Channel, here on the left-hand side. Now, since we are new, YouTube is actually going to offer us the chance to set up our channel and make some changes, where we can add our photo, edit how our name appears. If we want to use a business, which is definitely what you are looking at doing, choose the Click Here option, and then you will follow the steps to create your business channel.

So I am going to start one here for H+ Sports. I will choose a category from the drop-down and then agree to the terms. Then I will choose done, and there you go. Now we have created a channel page. Google is going to offer us a tour, and I am just going to choose the X button in the upper right-hand corner. Now, the first thing that you want to do when you set up your channel is added your profile photo and your channel art. Your channel art is very much like the cover photo that you have on Facebook, as well as the cover art that you have on Twitter.

To edit your profile photo, you will hover over it, and choose the pencil icon in the upper right-hand corner. Now, one thing that is really interesting about YouTube is that YouTube is actually connected to your Google+ account. So as a brand, you will likely have, or you should set up a Google+ account. Your channel icon, along with your brand name, will come from your Google+ account. So you will have to go to edit on Google+ to make those changes. I am just going to click cancel now. Now, once you have done that, you can come back and choose the Add Channel Art option.

Here you can upload a photo, or look through a gallery of images that are available to you. You can select one. Google is going to show you how it appears on the desktop, on TV, and in mobile. Once it looks right, or if not, you can adjust the crop here with the option on the left, rescale it, and then choose Select. And our cover art will now appear. Next, we should Add some information about your brand, and you will do that by selecting the about tab, and then clicking on the Channel Description option where you can insert a channel description.

I recommend that you describe your brand very accurately, and include any relevant information that you want to display to a user. You can also click the + icon next to email for business inquires, and leave an email Address where you can be contacted. Now, if I go back to our page, I will click on H+ Sports. When I hover over in this white area, you will notice a plus icon in the upper right-hand corner. If I select that, we can change the navigation, or even edit our channel settings. So if I clicked on Channel Settings, it is going to take me into what is called the Creator Studio.

You will know we are in the Creator Studio because, in the left-hand side, you will see this heading, Creator Studio, along with various navigation options that are specific to how we will manage our YouTube account. Now, at any time, anywhere on YouTube, you can get to your Creator Studio by selecting on your profile icon in the upper right-hand corner, and then choosing the Creator Studio button that displays here. Here, under Channel, we can look at these various options, and browse the settings that are available to us, and configure them how they need to be for your brand.

You can also view your Video Manager, and this is where all the videos you have uploaded will be seen. To upload a video, we will choose Upload in the upper right-hand corner, and then here you can drag and drop your video files, and then YouTube is going to walk you through the steps to provide a name and a description. Now, we will talk more about creating compelling content later, but at this point, we have looked at the high-level overview of YouTube.

The impact of video marketing

Video marketing is another relatively new component of online marketing. It involves producing video content and placing it on sites like YouTube. Now, you might be asking, “Why is it worth producing “video content for sites like YouTube?” Well, if I were to ask you what the second largest search engine next to Google is, what would you say? Yahoo? Bing? It is actually YouTube. This makes YouTube an incredibly valuable resource for driving brand awareness and traffic to your website. Video marketing can be used to show off your location, your products, or even help customers through their buying decision.

You might make a video to tell your brand story or create your own commercial and use it to advertise on top of related content. A well-titled and described video can appear in Google search results as well, driving yet another opportunity for people to discover your brand. Now there are several companies whose success was hinged on viral videos, but two come to mind. DollarShaveClub.com and Blendtec. Dollar Shave Club is an online subscription for razor blades. The company saw impressive growth after they posted a comedic viral video on YouTube. Within the first 48 hours of posting the video, they had over 12,000 new customers.

And in the first three months, they racked up over four and a half million video views. The video went on to generate press mentions, social media shares, and even case studies like this one. The fact we are still talking about Dollar Shave Club reinforces the potential value of the video. Now, Dollar Shave Club orchestrated the effort, they planned the entire video out and designed it to resonate with their target market. Instead of a typical short video about their product, they told the story through an unexpected video montage. They hired the right team to produce it because the quality was paramount.

Another brand that you may have seen on YouTube is Blendtec. The founder created a YouTube video series called, “Will it blend?” Here, he puts everything from bricks to golf balls in his blender to prove it is one of the best blenders you can buy. The videos were a direct response to customers curious if the Blendtec would blend things well, and so he created a video series that answered their question. And he jumped onto trends as well. When the new iPhone was released, he made sure it was dropped straight into the blender. Tom keeps putting items into his blender and now has over 750,000 subscribers to his channel.

These fans continue to share videos with their friends and engage with the brand by suggesting what should be blended next. There is a huge potential to build video content that will resonate with your audience, and your focus does not have to be to go viral. You may decide video marketing is ideal because it will help you along in your sales journey. Or maybe answering questions via YouTube will reinforce your brand is a commitment to customer service. It is possible customers or competitors are already making videos about your product or services. If that is the case, there is even more reason to jump in and leverage the power of video marketing.

The best impact of video marketing will come from building interesting and unique content. As we continue in this chapter, we will take a closer look at how to get set up on YouTube and the best practices for your video content.

Reasons Your Job Cannot Make You Rich

You are working hard for that appraisal that you will get once a year. Sometimes you are so confused that you are working hard as much as you can and still cannot make much money. You have colleagues in your office that work less than you but got more appreciation and appraisal. The more hard you work and the more money you earn the more is the tax deduction by the government and you will get very little in hand.

Do you ever think about starting a business or getting some part-time job to earn some extra money but never did it? Maybe because you don’t have enough time for it or you are too busy working hard for your job in the hope to get a promotion. Let me tell you the harder you work the more will your organization earn and you will get your fixed salary and that too after a lot of deductions.

Jobs — Office life: business team during a meeting

A lot of startups is founded by people who quit their job and decided to build their own company. If you have enough money and skill with you, you are good to go. I will not suggest everyone build their own company, as it a very difficult task and not everyone can do it. I m just suggesting you don’t depend on your job too much if you want to gain wealth. Start doing some extra hustle that will extra money for you.

Start investing in Real Estate or shares and bonds or rent your extra room in your house, anything that will put money to your pocket. The best thing about this is the harder you work, the more you earn, there is no fixed salary in this and deductions on your income. But if this is this simple then who is stopping you? Why are you not rich yet?

Risk is too big

You think about it but the problem is that you just keep thinking but never did it. It is too risky, what if I lost all my money in it or this is not for me or I will do it once I have a lot of money. This type of thought comes to your mind whenever you think about investing in something. Believe me, this is very common and we all are afraid to take the risk.

But think like this, if this easy everyone is wealthy but it’s not the case. You should start taking the risk, stop being afraid and just do it. Soon you will find out it’s not that risky at all and already too many people are doing it.

Hard work does not always pay off

Most people think that working hard is the key to success. The harder you work the more success will you get? But this is not the case in a job. The harder you work the more your organization will earn and not you. This is the biggest reason you should start working for yourself now. Keep your daytime job but start a side hustle that will pay you and that too without deduction. Starting it is difficult because you have to focus on your job too but believe me it will be worth it and once you start earning enough money, you can leave your daytime job and become your own boss.

People will laugh at you

This is one of the most common misunderstandings among people. If you start a side business people will laugh at you and hence many never try it. If you are working long sometimes you have to miss a Friday party or gossiping long with friends, in that case, some people may laugh at you and that is very demotivating. But you have to understand that people are laughing at you because they did not believe in your goal, but you believed in you. Keep working hard and achieve your dream, Those same people will now appreciate you and want to talk to you. Just believe in yourself and your goal.

Too much time

Too many people never tried it or give up too early because it takes too much time and patience to build your side business. But think like this, you also start your job from the training level and master it by time. Learning everything takes time but once you learned it, once you get your reputation among your clients, it is just a piece of cake for you and earning is limitless because now you are your own boss. If you really think that it will take too much time to grow your business, start early so that you can take advantage of it when it starts making a profit. Be patient, dream big, achieve big.

Job is secure

A job is always a better option as it is more secure as well as provides comfort. But in order to become rich, you have to come out of your comfort zone or live the rest of your life being average like everyone else and become the part of the crowd.

A job can be a better option if you look for the short run but it is never a good option in the long run. Think like this you work hard all your life in your job, earn a good amount of money and one day you retire. Now, what are you left with?

Savings in your bank account which is the hard work of your whole life. You can spend this saving anywhere you want but this money is not working for you. Now, if you work hard all your life investing and building assets, you can retire early when you start generating enough amount of money through assets. Once you retire you are left with money generating valuable assets that will increase your growth with no or minimal effort. These assets can benefit your next generation, hence you will grow rich automatically.

11 Things You Should Consider Before Starting a Business:

Many people believe that you’re not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over this myth, that’s what I believe and which is one important thing to run a successful business. You’ll learn to accept yourself through all this because in order to make a profit every day you’ve to adapt to those things.

Here are a few things which I wish you should know before starting a business, I hope it would save some of your quality time.

1. Running a business should be your own responsibility

Success will come to you in terms of financially by taking leaps and bounds if you’re dedicated to running your business on your own rather than expecting on someone.

Businesses grow more if you properly manage employees. Which includes listening to them, correcting problems and assigning duties according to their level.

2. Always begin with a detailed plan of your business

To have a business plan is the key element to attract investors and also helpful for the success of any organization. There are a few points you should include while writing a plan:

Summary: Which includes details of your business

Company Description: Describes what you do

Service or product: Describes what you’re going to offer

Marketing strategy: Shows how you’ll market your business

Marketing analysis: Find out your potential competitors

Management: Shows your business management structure

Funding: How much money you’ll need for upcoming years, investors want to make sure that your business is going to make them money

3. Running out of money is common

I know you don’t expect it, because you’ve prepared for the long run. You got few investors or have a loan or have years of savings and planned accordingly. But all of sudden, your business failed and you’ll start feeling demoralized, where you’ll have two choices: either to quite a business or work like hell to get going and build it.

There’s nothing as good as running out of money and realizing that you are doing your work because you’ve guts to push yourself through the worst conditions.

4. Build side hustle to make extra money

There’ll be a question arises, what will you do when you’ll be running out of money to fund your business? In such cases side, hustle plays a vital role. Always try to have more than one source of income which will make you pleasant and help you get out of financial stress.

5. Spend less on research, more on doing

Reading, studying and researching while starting a business is considered as one form of resistance. In order to get work, you must act on it. Success doesn’t come unless you put it into practice, just apply it no matter how are you doing. Keep in mind sometimes actions speak louder than words.

6. Try to minimize distraction

You waste more time when you try to regain focus when you switch back to your work than you do engage in the distraction. Also, multitasking with your work reduces the productivity of work.

7. Keep your organization legalized (Company name and license)

First things first, make sure that the company name you’re going to choose is available with a trademark and online as well if you fail to find, it doesn’t mean it’s available to be taken, what if someone closed business on that name.

Try to make research to know-how rules, licenses, and taxes work for you, and consult with a lawyer and accountant to confirm, and structure your business to be in with laws.

8. How are you going to market your business

Make sure you’re well equipped with selling and marketing strategy, developing and implementing a strong marketing plan for the company is another point of importance for business owners. Ask yourself; how are you going to sell your service? Where will you go to find your clients and how will you present your business to them? From where you’re going to get leads?

Source: Google

What kind of marketing strategy will you use? Social media, website, ads, sponsorship or events? How much are you willing to invest in marketing? Will you hire someone or will you do it by yourself?

These are a few questions for which you should have answers ready before leaping into the business no matter what kind of business you’re doing; either service or selling.

9. Possible location

For businesses who are providing services, this factor plays a crucial role in the growth of any business. Make sure you choose the proper location for your business. It must be seen by your targeted customers.

10. Fund requirements

It is the requirement that you need to put in the business to get started and operate. To find out, enlist all the possible spending you’d be required to start, such as, equipment purchase cost, lease payment, operating cost and so on.

11. Hire a mentor or assistant

Starting a business all alone would be an arduous task and it’s never going to be easy to handle, no matter the type of business you do. Hiring an accountant will alleviate the chances of financial problems.

While on the other hand, it’s also important to have a mentor who could ensure that whether you’re going on the right or wrong way.

As said; “prevention is better than cure”, it’s often too late if you call help after trapping yourself into trouble, so it’s better to have someone who can closely track your ups and downs before you get trouble.

My Weight Loss Journey from fat to fit

“Get rid of that stubborn fat” “Easy ways to lose weight” “Are you not losing weight?” These are some headlines screaming out for your attention. You will find these on your FB feed, in a magazine, or a newspaper. Everyday. And like me, you may most likely read it thoroughly because this may just be that secret answer. But alas! They all talk similar stuff, without giving any names of secret pills.

I may have read some 200-300 such articles. They may have helped me in bits and pieces. But my weight loss journey has been entirely mine. My own experience has been so fulfilling and satisfying. I say that because I feel proud that I didn’t fall prey to get-thin-fast procedures like crash dieting or liposuction, etc. I did it little by little, bit by bit.

I will have to disappoint you here. If you were expecting that I lost 10/15/20 kgs and became fat to thin. No. I lost about 7 kgs. Over a period of a year. Gradually but long-lasting.

There have been a lot of learnings in the process. They may be mine but I am almost certain that they should work for most. Some of them are:

1. I choose between good food and bad. Not high and low-calorie foods. Good foods for me are fruits, vegetables, nuts, nut butter, buttermilk, tea and coffee in moderation (I am vegetarian). Bad foods are white sugar, too much bread ( white or brown), pasta, samosas, cakes, cookies, canned fruit juices, packaged foods. I don’t mind drinking sugarcane juices, eating bananas, mangoes, the so-called high-calorie foods. As long as they are natural foods. I have seen people eating biscuits and they claim these are healthy ones since they are made of atta. I stay away. It’s processed in all its glory.

2. Intermittent fasting works. 8 hours of eating. 16 hours of fasting. I stop eating at 4 pm. And have my next meal at 8 am. I follow this pattern since Ayurveda suggests not eating post sunset. So the timing I have chosen is healthy. Some people eat dinner at 12 am and fast like till 4 pm the next day. I don’t subscribe to that. Our digestive process slows down post evening. I use that period to fast. Not to eat.

3. The day I have to eat a heavy meal, let’s say a buffet spread, that’s my only meal for the day. if it’s lunch, it’s great, heavy meals eaten in the afternoon are easier on the digestive system. And that one meal, I will have EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN. No scrimping. I eat heavy so that I don’t feel hungry later on. Buffet dinners are never a great idea. Avoid.

4. Once a week, I do only fruit and vegetable diet. Everything in raw form day. But as much fruit and fruit juice ( fresh) and vegetables as I want to fill my stomach. I also add nuts. And nut butter.

5. I go out in the morning sun. I don’t avoid it thinking it will make me dark or give me cancer. I feel it nourishes me. After 14 hours of fasting, I go out for a walk and I absolutely feel that the sun adds me with more vigor and energy to go on for the next 2 hours to complete my 16-hour fasting cycle. It works wonders for me. Sun is not a villain. It’s absolute nourishment.

6. I have 6-7 glasses of water throughout the day.

7. I exercise every day. Not 3 days or 4. Everyday. All 7 days. But if I am tired because of a late night, I take a break without feeling guilty. My exercises are yoga and walking. There are a lot of great yoga videos on YouTube. They have been very helpful.

8. I cut down alcohol from 2-3 times a week to 1-2 times. I stick to 1 glass of red wine. Maximum 2.

9. I weigh myself almost every day. I do that so that I know what contributes to my weight gain. Also, measure belly fat regularly.

10. I kind of believe that belly fat is completely detached from other fat on my body. No amount of exercise will help you reduce it. Only cutting down on food will.

11. We don’t need the amount of food that we eat every day. Small portions are good enough. Once we reduce the portions we don’t need more. If I was eating a full plate, I reduced to half. And I stopped needing the higher quantity after some time.

12. Stress apparently adds to weight gain. I keep that at bay by thinking only positive thoughts. That is a discussion for another day.

13. I have been patient. Weight gain has happened over years of excessive eating. Don’t expect results in weeks. It’s a consistent effort. Keep at it.

These are the most basic things that I followed to lose some stubborn fat. These are all the things I adopted. You may or may not agree with my methods. So, use these at your discretion.

My biggest reward is moving from a size Medium to X-Small. It’s exhilarating to see yourself fit in all those beautiful clothes meant for thin people.

Happy losing!

Top Business Ideas To Make Passive Income

E-books Selling

E-books are gaining popularity nowadays, while some people still preferred printed books over e-books and others prefer e-books to read. There are ample subjects to choose to write a book ranging from Internet marketing to e-commerce business and so on – the subjects are never-ending.

To start this business one of the main important thing is to choose niche; first, always try to find out for what you’re passionate about by doing so you’ll more likely write much deeply for a specific niche.

The cost to start this business depends on which approach you take. If you want to develop your own e-books and have them purchased and downloaded from your site then cost will be almost negligible. If you want to become a reseller by reaching out to the online marketing outlets for e-books, the cost is a little lower to begin. You’ll spend on
website design, development, and hosting. This business can be started by one person who is organized and possesses an avid interest in reading and the supporting technology needed for e-books to be distributed.

To market e-books online, you should consider the target online and your niche. Spend time researching where the niche of e-books buyers are surfing and work to become advertised on the top sites you find there.

Focus on search engine optimization and participate in pay per click campaign.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is referred to as a way of making money or earn commission by recommending services or products for third-party to the people.

The amount you can make will vary from zero to millions as it is directly related to the way of promotion, how much traffic you get to the site (If you own a blog or site), some skill of SEO (search engine optimization), email marketing and social media marketing.

To jump into this first try to make a list of products that you think your audience can be benefited by using them.

There are different types of affiliate products available; Physical, Digital products and services.

If you’re interested in promoting digital products, I recommend you to go with the ClickBank affiliate program from where people are making some decent amount. If you are interested in physical products that are easy to sell then go for Amazon affiliates as it has the world’s largest affiliate program and once you sign up you get a link for any product on the site through which you’re going to earn a commission.

The commission for physical products is ranging from 1-10%, on luxury and fashion stuff you can get up to 10%, while on toys and video games you get as low as 1%.

In case you’re working with any specific service providers then it depends on what you’ve agreed with. There are some different ways such as:

Pay per sale: where you get a fixed percentage of the sale price
Pay per click: Where you get money for each visitor that you direct them through your affiliate site or link.

Vending machine business

If you’re the one who wants to own a business but doesn’t have lots of money to invest then this is a great platform for you to start vending machine business. The main reason is you don’t need a lot of money to invest upfront, which makes it possible for you to own a business.

The average starting cost of one machine is around INR 60k to 100k. The key to making a lot of money through this business is to try to increase business potential by purchasing more machines make sure that they’re at the perfect location to get good traffic.

Vending machine business — Source: Google

There are some pros in this business like:

You’re your own boss
Can start with little investment
Can scale easily
You’re not stuck in an office

If you’re not sure about, do some initial research before diving in.

Take a look at locations. Do people spend more time at that location? What type of vending machine they likely want?

The most common vending machines are beverages followed by candy and snacks. Though you can start something else if you’re interested.

Here are some places to consider placing the vending machine:

Schools
Government buildings
Hospitals
Factories
Health clubs
Airports

Amazon FBA

Amazon FBA is ‘fulfillment by Amazon’, which means Amazon looks after all of the seller’s stock. When a customer places an order, it passes altogether and goes straight to the FBA warehouse. Amazon then picks up the order and delivers it to the customers. Amazon FBA also handles most of the customer service and they process all the customer returns. There are different steps which you should consider while starting this business:

Step 1: Choose product

The first step is to choose the product, choosing the right product could be possibly turned out for your business. I recommend you start with what you’re passionate about, it’s the best way to delve into business as a beginner.

If you pick a product you’re passionate about, you’ll have a much easier time writing about it on a blog post.

Once you’ve figured out your choice of product or category, you can use Amazon’s resources to find fees associated with it, which depends on product size, shape and weight.

Step 2: Find suppliers

The next step is to find suppliers. Negotiate with the deal and ask for samples for quality assurance and you can create a brand name and logo for your product as well. Check for different suppliers and a common one is AliExpress. Before shipping the goods to the Amazon fulfillment center, get a quality check so that you can make your customers satisfied.

Step 3: Product optimization

The next stage is the optimization of products such as product review, description, image and so on.

Step 4: Marketing and advertising

The next step is marketing and drives people to your products for which you can use different social media. (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest)

Now I’m going to enlist some name of the businesses which are also some great way to start:

Rent out a room
Sell an online course
Dropshipping store
Create an app
Rent out your car
Stat an ATM business
Dividend-paying stocks
Put ads on your car
Start a carwash
Hire a virtual assistant
Sell print on demand t-shirt

Rich dad’s guide to become rich

“Rich Dad, Poor Dad is one hell of an amazing finance book of all time. The book, written by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter, has reportedly sold more than 32 million copies in 40 languages across 40 countries since it was published in 2002.

This book is the ultimate guide for people who wants to be rich but did not know how to start. This book will help you to set your mind about how the money actually works. This book will show you the difference in the mindset of a poor and rich and how exactly rich people think.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad is all about Robert Kiyosaki and his two dads. The “Poor Dad” is his biological dad who is highly educated and a government employee. The “Rich Dad” is his friend’s dad who is not much educated but he owns many businesses. Both dads teach him about money but their advice is conflicting.

The Rich Don’t Work for Money

The most important lesson from this book is “The Rich don’t work for money”. This poor or average people work for money but for rich their money works for them. Let me explain to you how this works.

Life doesn’t teach you with words, but by pushing you around. Average people let life push them around; others get angry and push back against their boss or their loved ones. But some people learn a lesson from it, and in fact, welcome life pushing them around because it means they need to learn something, these people have the potential of being rich.Money wouldn’t solve people’s problems. Many people who have high paying jobs still struggle with money problems because they didn’t know how to make money work for them. Lives of most people are controlled by fear and greed. Fear of being without money makes them work hard, and earn a paycheck, but once they have that money, greed gets them thinking about all the things they could buy. Which makes them need more money, which makes them spend more. It is called the Rat Race.

Financial Literacy

The main thing that creates the difference between poor and rich is “Financial Literacy”’. By Financial Literacy we mean the knowledge about how the money works and how to balance your account statement. If you want to be rich, you need to be financially literate.

It’s not how much money you make but how much you keep and how many generations you keep it. Accounting as a subject is boring, confusing- and absolutely crucial to financial success.

The first thing about financial literacy is you must know the difference between an asset and a liability and only buy assets. That’s all you need to know. But despite it being so simple, it’s something that many people don’t understand. The true definitions of “asset” and “liability” lie now in words, but in numbers.

“Asset adds to your income. They put money in your pocket”.

“A liability takes money out of your pocket”.

If you want to gain and maintain wealth, you must build your understanding.

Mind Your Own Business

Rich people mind their own business while poor people mind everyone business except their own. So many people work for everyone else; their employer(company), the government(taxes), and the bank(mortgage). But rich never spend their whole life working for someone else.

Too many people spend their lives minding someone else’s business and making them rich. In reality, you have to mind your own business, your business revolves around your asset column, not your income column.

Start minding your business. Keep your daytime job, but start working on something else(real estate, part-time job), but not invest on liabilities or personal effects that have no real value once you get them home.

The Rich Invent Money

We all have tremendous potential, and we all have self-doubt. Financial genius requires technical knowledge as well as courage. Take risks, be bold, let your genius convert that fear into power and brilliance. Those who have creative financial minds escape the Rat Race the fastest. Some people have lots of money but don’t know what to do with it.

Some people complain that they are not getting the right opportunities, some complain that they have the opportunity but don’t have enough money to grab it, others have the money have to opportunity but didn’t grab it at right time. Financial intelligence is simply having more options, figuring out ways to create opportunities or altering situations to work in your favor. Luck needs to be created, So go create yours. Millions can be made from nothing more than ideas and agreements. Save some money each month is a sound idea, but it can blind you to what is really going on and cause you to miss opportunities for much more significant growth.

“Would you rather work hard, pay taxes, and save from what’s left or take the time to develop your financial intelligence.”

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