General Motors and AvtoVaz of Russia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

General Motors and AvtoVaz of Russia - Essay Example Nonetheless, GM couldn't advertise their vehicles at this cost despite the fact that the organization had utilized various strategies on assembling and dispersion. Thus, AvtoVAZ, the biggest vehicle maker in Russia, had been battling with deals decays because of item quality issues and tax avoidance charges. Moreover, the firm had no adequate money to reconstruct their business in spite of the fact that it had inventive item structures including Niva. Consequently, either GM or AvtoVAZ was not in a situation to create and showcase the Niva without an outside help. At this point, they together chose to incorporate AvtoVAZ’s residential market predominance with GM’s specialized aptitude and market notoriety. Clearly, the proposed Joint endeavor (JV) is potential for the two associations. This JV technique will unquestionably increase the value of GM’ worldwide development vision since Russia is a possible developing business sector. From the contextual investigatio n, plainly GM neglected to work effectively in Russian market despite the fact that it had rehearsed the customary developing business sector approach of assembling total vehicles in its own plants and reassembling the deassembled parts in Russia with nearby work. The primary driver of disappointment of GM in Russian market was low salary levels of Russians that constrained the organization to fix incredibly less expensive costs for its items. In the event that GM works its plants in Russia, it can abstain from delivery charges and import obligations and at last utilize the economies of residential creation to set moderate costs for Russian clients. Besides, AvtoVAZ is the most driving player in Russian vehicle industry in spite of the fact that it at present battles with some quality issues. Along these lines, the JV will help GM to take points of interest of far reaching business domains just as profound Russian market understanding of AvtoVAZ. Likewise, the national dispersion or ganize set up by the AvtoVAZ vendors will be gainful for the GM to skip from the trouble of building up a seller arrange without any preparation. Henceforth, the proposed combination would advance worth creation, a procedure of recognizing serious choices to trim down expenses and in this way to give greatest advantages to clients. A large number of the financial analysts hold the view that business reconciliation would add to esteem creation because of operational efficiencies from an inward market and determination of wholesalers and providers (Means of corporate procedure, slide 6). In like manner, the case foundation unmistakably calls attention to that it would be hard for the firm to contend in Russian vehicle showcase. The Russian car area discernibly lingered behind other gigantic players in the business despite the fact that the Russian government had explicitly centered around the industry’ modernization and advancement. The case report mirrors that the Russian car industry’s â€Å"inadequate capital, helpless framework, and profound situated blunder and defilement brought about obsolete, temperamental, and risky automobiles† (â€Å"General Motors and†¦:, 2). Moreover, the flimsiness of Russian economy regularly makes issues vehicle produces because of surprising duty burdens and changes in guidelines. Serious policy driven issues in Russia antagonistically influenced the practical development of the country’s vehicle industry. Expanded pace of deformities in new vehicles was another issue, which convinced the individuals to blacklist Russian made cars. At last, higher crime percentages in the nation constrained the outside advertisers and

Market princples Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Market princples - Essay Example Promoting procedures are particularly significant in light of the fact that they help organizations in augmenting execution of existing items just as propelling new items into new markets. McDonald’s has figured out how to build up and keep up an assortment of showcasing standards and techniques that involves four principle components, which are adjusted to the advantage of the organization. The main area of the paper tends to the components of showcasing and the advantages of the method of direction that McDonald’s received. The third part explains the business condition while the fourth area examines the contrasts among worldwide and residential showcasing in close connection to McDonald’s. In conclusion, a finishing up articulation wraps the exposition with an outline of all issues secured in regards to McDonald’s. The advertising procedure can be characterized as the method of evaluating promoting openings, choosing markets to target, planning the showcasing blend, and the board of the showcasing exertion (Marketing and Supply Chain Management, n.d). this procedure fuses circumstance investigation, promoting system, advertising blend choices, and execution and control. Circumstance investigation incorporates a complete examination of a circumstance permits a business to distinguish the open doors that could be abused to fulfill unattended client needs and needs. Advertising system includes building up an arrangement that can be utilized in satisfying the recognized chance. Advertising blend choices fuse definite choices that are made for controllable boundaries in the showcasing blend and incorporate item improvement, valuing choices, dispersion agreements, and plan of limited time crusades. Finally, the execution and control step includes propelling of the item or the administration and close observing. As the market keeps on changing, the showcasing blend assets can likewise be acclimated to oblige any recognized changes in the market. The spot

Marketing report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Promoting report - Essay Example A portion of the significant discoveries from the report were that the business was not as forceful in promoting as a portion of the contender organizations, henceforth prompting the little piece of the overall industry of the worldwide market that the organization has. The staff inspiration was poor and the vast majority of them didn't feel acknowledged enough for their endeavors in the organization. Presentation The Kingsway gathering of organization is an association that manages imports and fares of new and utilized engine vehicles from Japan and Germany. For as far back as five years, the organization has developed from sending out just utilized Toyota and Mercedes models of vehicles to trading of all makes of vehicles that the two nations makes, likewise, the market has developed from Europe to practically all the six landmasses with Africa being the most serious market in the last quarter. Notwithstanding, these statics fall beneath the anticipated piece of the overall industr y, which required this report to audit on our powerless point and the chances and qualities where we can profit by. Strategy In thinking of circumstance examination of the organization, the report embraced to break down a few measurements that may affect the presentation of the organization; this was to guarantee that no factor that may have impact on execution was not dissected. A portion of the territories that were investigated incorporate contender, advertise, ecological, client, inner and SWOT examination. the initial phase in directing the circumstance investigation was to set out the sort of information that was required in each factor that should have been broke down, subsequent to getting these, we needed to search for the contact individuals who were familiar with our rival firms and how their organizations were composed both in their interior and outside market approach. Discoveries Competitor investigation The primary rivals in the Japan and Germany vehicles fare and imp ort business are Global Motors LTD, Motor World Services and the Kiyosaki Group. These organizations have a practically comparative way to deal with the market for vehicles all inclusive and the majority of their methodologies are to a great extent comparable. Present and future destinations 1. Worldwide Motors Global Motors has two goals that incorporate the expanding the assortment of the engine vehicles that they offer to their customers, the second is giving quality vehicles to their customers. This association has a few operators in the districts it works, which are principally in the American market; a gathering of business moguls from North America are the primary lenders of the gathering who have numerous associations in the business circles all around. 2. Engine World administrations This gathering of organizations has their fundamental target as sending out all models of vehicles in the engine vehicle industry and making them available to their customers particularly the v ery good quality shoppers. This gathering has a base in Finland and its procedure as selling the lavish vehicles at a moderate value, the majority of the game utility vehicles makers flexibly the organization with save parts for their items making it simpler for customers who purchase these vehicles to get to save parts or redo their recycled vehicles. 3. Kiyosaki Group This gathering, which is from Japan, has put its goals as providing the need of clients for recycled Japanese vehicles; the second goal of the organization is to give a less expensive method of turning into an engine vehicle proprietor through contribution serious costs for their Japanese vehicles. The technique that this

Visionary Idealism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Visionary Idealism - Essay Example For him, the procedure of aesthetic creation holds the capability of rising above the restrictions of the brain and all the more completely communicating the awesome soul. He additionally accepts that craftsmanship can incite inside the watcher a raised state wherein otherworldly conditions are achieved (Gray). In this article, I am going to cover a short history of his life, the movement of his specialty and exhibitions, where his craft is shown and has been utilized, and some positive and negative audits of his works. My motivation is to fundamentally study Alex Gray's masterful style and vision. Alex Gray was conceived in Columbus, Ohio on November 29, 1953. Being the center offspring of a white collar class couple, he endeavored to satisfy his dad by exceeding expectations in drawing. It was his dad, who was a visual architect, who found in him his remarkable ability and empowered his drawing capacity. As a little youngster he would gather creepy crawlies and dead creatures from around the area and cover them in the back yard. From his soonest drawings to his exhibitions, works of art and models, the subjects of death and amazing quality have been woven all through (Gray). During his high school years he carried on with a lone life in his very own universe creative mind that couldn't be effectively comprehended by others and didn't give a lot of worry to right or wrong. His specialty during that time shows how befuddled he was about himself, and about existence and otherworldliness. It drove him to communicate the destroying, the disarray, and the duality inside his being. He went to the Columbus College of Art and Design for a long time (1971-73), at that point dropped out and painted boards in Ohio for a year (73-74) (Gray). He at that point went to the Boston Museum School for one year to concentrate with the applied craftsman Jay Jaroslav (Gray). This is additionally where he met his better half Allyson, the craftsman. During this period he had a progression of entheogenically incited otherworldly encounters that changed his freethinker existentialism to an extreme introspective philosophy (Gray). He at that point went through five years at Harvard Medical School working in the Anatomy division considering the human body (Gray). True to form, the previous works of Alex Gray (both drawing and painting) are more straightforward and a greater amount of self depiction. His later works have indicated development and multifaceted nature, moving out of self yet at the same time concentrating on the human life structures. What stood out most about his initial works is the manner by which skilled and itemized his lines and highlights are, and how splendidly he has reproduced himself in his visual expressions. His later depiction of himself uncovers his own self acknowledgment and self realization, uncovering the inward battles and duality of his internal being. He can show his crowd what happens inside himself and the troubles he has been experiencing as he is started into the developing intricacy of his inward and external world. Likewise, his emphasis on the natural eye in a large number of his works uncovers an omniscient presence of someone, be it himself or God or some other notable individual in his life, which really influences him and an amazing entirety. One model is the Vision Mission. The eye is set above, which is accepted as the vision, while the hand with the pointing finger underneath may represent the mission. This drawing may have a profound ramifications and may have an a lot further significance based on what is really appeared. In addition, his

Freaks and Geeks (Themes) Free Essays

Oddities and Geeks: Pilot Episode Evaluation Persuasive Paragraph There are numerous media components that can portray the factions that existed once in secondary school, as they are presently far off generalizations. The network show â€Å"Freaks Geeks† has been upgraded by the utilization of media components, subsequently permitting the clubs to be handily observed by watchers. Right off the bat, the lighting is a component that really separates the factions that have been framed dependent on a cliché group. We will compose a custom exposition test on Monstrosities and Geeks (Themes) or then again any comparable subject just for you Request Now For instance, the lighting utilized in the start of the show by the producer truly shows the distinctions of levels on the secondary school evolved way of life. The movie producer begins the hotshot by demonstrating the regular muscle head and team promoter connections, the most noteworthy of the natural way of life, with splendid lighting and open spaces (Appatow 1999). At that point the lighting abruptly changes to underneath the seats in a dim and confined, yet defiant hang out spot for the Freaks (Appatow 1999). Subsequently, permitting the watchers to see the programmed distinction between the two cliché levels. Besides, the following component that improve the coteries shaped in the demonstrate would need to be the melodic contribution. Judd Appatow, the producer, picks melodies that consummately mirror the conduct, character, and likes of the various gatherings. The movie producer decides to play the individual; yet various tunes in the first place to permit the watchers to make sense of that there are contrasts in every club. First and foremost the Freaks are demonstrated tuning in to tunes like â€Å"Running with the Devil† by Van Halen (Appatow 1999), and the Geeks being spoken to by the melody â€Å"I’m Alright† by Kenny Loggins (Appatow 1999). This enables the watcher to achieve a superior comprehension of the gatherings. In conclusion, the utilization of indicating strife and tension as well, really show the contrast between the inner circles. The producer, Judd Appatow, switches scenes which show the split focal points of contention. Demonstrating the watcher that more than one clash situation shows up in the show. Judd Appatow changes scenes from the nerdy life of Lindsay Weir’s more youthful sibling Sam, and the issues he faces with menaces and squashes (Appatow 1999). At that point, changes to Lindsay’s steady fight with her previous lifestyle and the new life she made for herself (Appatow 1999). This develops the anticipation by giving the watchers much more clash to keep them on the edge of their seats. By tossing more clashes in the way of the two significant characters, the watchers will stay intrigued, and the anticipation of the choices made by their characters keep the watchers needing more. Subsequently, the employments of media components not just upgrade the general appearance of the show, yet in addition help the comprehension of the watcher in delineating the ‘cliques’ of the school. Works Cited: â€Å"Freaks and Geeks†. Dir. Judd Appatow. Perf. Linda Cardellini, John Francis Daley, James Franco, Samm Levine, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Becky Ann Baker, Joe Flaherty, Busy Philipps, Sarah Hagan. Fundamental Pictures Corporation (PPC), 1999. DVD. Step by step instructions to refer to Freaks and Geeks (Themes), Papers

CP18 Matthew Woodward Talks about SEO Building a Passive Income

CP18 Matthew Woodward Talks about SEO Building a Passive Income INTRODUCTION STORY OF MATTHEWWOODWARD.CO.UKMartin: Hi folks. Today we are talking about starting an online business and maybe you can become a blog entrepreneur yourself. Today we have on board Matthew, who build up a very decent online business himself. Hi Matthew, who are you and what do you do?Matthew: Hi guys, my name is Matthew Woodward, I am from the UK originally and I have been playing with things online since the age of around 13, and I am about to be 30. So, I have been doing this for quite a long time now. Before I even knew that you could use the internet to make money, I was writing articles and producing content on a volunteer basis. And over the past 15 years or so, I found myself in various positions in the digital marketing world.I had a very successful corporate career, running campaigns for some big global brands. And then around 6 or 7 years ago now I took the jump and went full time for myself building a range of affiliate sites and the blog that most people kno w me for, matthewwoodward.co.uk, which is my award winning digital marketing blog, that basically just shares my experience and knowledge with everyone free of charge.Martin: How did it all start with starting your own blog, and at what point in time did you think: Ooh, this is a worthwhile endeavor?Matthew: That is a great question because the blog was originally started as an experiment because I am really, what excites me is black hat SEO which is, it is a bit of a controversial topic at times. But really, that’s what excites me. And back then, we are going back 4 or 5 years ago, when Mark Cooks was in charge of the Google web spam team, he was always saying: Create high quality content, forget about SEO, forget about bad links and so on. So with that in mind that is kind of what I did. I decided: Well, if I was just to record the kinds of things I do every day as part of my affiliate marketing, that might be interesting and helpful to people, I am just going to record what I a m already doing and publish it and see what happens.It turned out people loved that and the feedback was absolutely awesome, so I just focused on creating content. That’s what I was doing everyday but also solved people’s problems that we see coming up on forums like warrior forum and black hat world and so on.Martin: What kept you motivated in pursuing this, because I imagine for the first 3 or 6 or maybe even 9 months you would have no real or big traffic but you are still spending time in writing and marketing your content. What kept you motivated?Matthew: Well, actually if you jump on the blog there is a page in the head of the income reports and you can actually see every month from day 1 how much traffic and how much money I had. So I don’t really want to focus on the amount of traffic and the amount of money too much, although I am going to tell you what those initial numbers were because one of the big mistakes many people make is focusing on how much money they have m ade or how much traffic they have got, which can actually be very demoralizing when there is no traffic and there is no money for a few months. Instead you guys should be focusing on how to get your first 100 subscribers before you even think about money.But for me,   I was very lucky, and also I had the fact that I have 15 years experience doing this. So month 1 was around 2000 visitors, I made about $600. Month 2 was around 4500 visitors but about $4000 profitMartin: Not bad.Matthew: And month 3 I actually jumped $7000 with 6000 visitors.So you can see on the blog in my income reports how all of that was done, but I don’t want people to really focus on those numbers too much because it can be very demoralizing. For me, if you just focus on first of all getting your first hundred subscribers and then just the feedback that you get, the quality of feedback , the people that email you and say: Thank you for helping, I had this problem you solved it, or I had a blog that was doing n o visitors and now it’s doing 100 visitors. Just those small micro bits of feedback is really what drove me to carry on working on the blog for so many years.ADVICE FOR YOUNG BLOGGERS FROM MATTHEW WOODWARDMartin: Matthew, imagine, somebody reads your blog and then he says: Oh, I want to start my own blog. What type of advice can you give him on how to find really a topic which he can blog on which is maybe even profitable over some months or years?Matthew: Okay, that’s quite a tough question because everybody is different.So take on board the advice I said, don’t really worry about the money, kind of forget about the money, forget anything about how am I going to make money from this. You really want to strip it back to play to your strengths or to your weaknesses and those are different for everyone, so it’s very hard to give specific advice here.But I have a small exercise that I get people to do and essentially what you want to do is to create 5 different lists, and you w ant to put around 5 to 10 different items on each of these lists.The first list you want to create is a list of things that you are good at. That’s going to be different for everyone.Then you want to create a list of things that you are bad at. And if you are anything like me, the list of things I am bad at is far longer than the list of things I am good at.Then you want to make a list of what you enjoy most. Some people enjoy video games, some people enjoy football, things like that, don’t be afraid what you might think is stupid during this exercise.The fourth list you want to do is what do you want to learn about, so things that have interested you. For me personally, I always wanted to learn another language, so I have been learning Spanish, but that would be on my list of things to learn about.And finally the fifth list, what problems do you have, what problems do you have in your day to day life, that could be anything from credit card debt all the way through to your car breaking down or anything.Writing those lists sounds easy but actually when you get down to doing it, it can be quite challenging to come up with things that you are good and bad at. And once you get those 5 lists, what you are good at, what you are bad at, what you enjoy   most, what you want to learn about and what problems you have, that really forms the basis to you r niche ideas.So once I have got my list of ideas, I always try and think about the bigger picture, and I also try and think about the smaller picture. So to tell you what I mean about that is I get a bunch of emails of people saying, “Oh I have built this site and its making no money, I have built this site and having this problem. The common mistake I find is people limit themselves from day 1. So someone might be like: Oh yeah, I have made an awesome affiliate website about iPhone 6 cases, and well, the problem there is they have not thought of the bigger picture, the iPhone 6 will be replaced eventually, which means that from day 1 they have set themselves up to fail. So if you found this awesome iPhone 6 case is niche, what you should think about is well what about the future? And instead you should make a website that specifically about phone cases or electronics protection in general. And then rather than just having topics about iPhone 6, you could also do things like, off the top of my head, the best water proof cases for your tablet, or how to protect your phone on a construction site, or I don’t know, the best cases to take under water photos with your phone. Something like that which then allows you to become the authority if you like on electronic device protection and cases, rather than just focusing on that smaller iPhone 6 cases picture. It allows you to broaden your reach and also extend the life of the business.Martin: Yes, definitely. I mean I have seen lots of entrepreneurs who are picking too small niche, or a niche that is depreciating over time like you described.Matt hew: Yes, it’s an easy trap to fall into because when you do your niche research and you see all the traffic numbers and the trends they look great, but okay, in a year, it’s going to be very different.On the other side of the coin, you can go too big of a picture; so you might go okay in your list what do you enjoy most, well perhaps you enjoy travelling. Well the problem is if you are just like okay I am going to build a travel blog, there’s thousands of travel blogs, they all do the same thing, it’s really boring. It’s not many travel blogs that have a unique twist or stand out to me. So if something you enjoyed was travel, okay well that’s too big of a picture, we need to look at a smaller picture. So you might think about looking at just music festivals and then you travel around looking at just music festivals, producing content reviews, etc. Or you might go create a travel blog about moving abroad or opportunities to work while travelling, and so then you are kind of niching down into something more specific.Another example of what do you enjoy most is food. I love food. Who doesn’t enjoy food? But again that is too broad of a niche, there’s so many food blogs out there, so many recipe blogs out there, it’s boring. So you need to think about niching down, and in food, I mean, I don’t know, cooking for single men would be a better niche to niche down into from food. So you don’t want to go stiff into ceiling but you don’t want to go so broad that you kind of fall into this big sea of blogs already exist. You’ve already got to kind of find that middle ground.Martin: Yes. From my point of view you always need to find some kind of value proposition why somebody visits and reads your blog. Because if you are just like any other food blog out there with the same kind of pictures and text, why should people visit your site and not other one thousand.Matthew: Of course, you have got to add that value somewhere. The cooking for single m en example, it sounds stupid but if you are a single man and you are going out to buy food and you look at a recipe online, the recipes are always 4-6 portions, so that means that you have got to eat the same thing all week or the ingredients go off. Or it’s very difficult to go into a supermarket, buy foods that create enough meals for the week without any leftovers. So just having that slight little twist on it really changes everything.Martin: And here is a very kind of free blog idea for you guys idea, just start a food blog and make the recipe conditional on some factors like the number of people or so.Matthew: Yes.SEO TRAFFIC TIPS FROM MATTHEW WOODWARDMartin: Okay cool. How do you build the traffic for your website mathewwoodward.co.uk, in terms of the content creation for example? How do you come up with these topics?Matthew: I had a very simple strategy at the start, and I still do it now. The content creation is above all the most important thing. You should not be think ing about traffic, backlinks or anything else until you have got content nailed. And I always try and focus on building content that helps people and solves problems.Problem solving content is great because when a new reader comes to your site and you are helping them, that kind of creates this sub conscious relationship between you and the reader, almost immediately without you having to try. They needed help, you helped them, it’s perfect. Problem solving content is often shared a lot as well, so I always focus on solving people’s problems, it’s my entire content strategy.How you find those problems, well it’s pretty easy because you can find forums in your niche, you can jump on QA sites like quora.com or yahooanswers.com which isn’t so much used anymore, or in Facebook groups, anywhere the people post questions. And that is where I go to hunt for my blog topic ideas and once I see regular kind of questions coming up or things where I think: Yes, I have got the perfect experience to answer that, that becomes the content strategy, that’s where all the ideas come from.Martin: Okay. Imagine you have written 100 or 200 blog posts and every week you publish again 2 or 3 blog posts, how are you going about this content marketing, and especially interested in your backlinking strategy because you said before that you are interested in black hat SEO as well.Matthew: Well, backlinking strategy we would talk about in a minute that would be an interesting talk.With the actual promotion of the content, well, I tried a couple of different things. So when I created content that solved people’s problems, I always add a social locker of some kind. And a social locker if anyone’s wondering is where you have t like share on Twitter or share on Facebook in order to unlock additional content. And that additional content for me is often just a PDF version of the post. So it takes like 60 seconds to create, put it behind a social locker, and any traffic that come s to your post will help you bring new traffic as they share the post to unlock the download.So that’s quite an important twist that I put on things because I want to maximize the value of the traffic that I get. And this is another reason why you shouldn’t focus on money because this is just purely focused on getting more traffic.With that said, I then go and promote the content in exactly the same place as I got the content ideas from. So the same forums, the same QA sites, the same Facebook groups, when I see people having problems, well, now I have just created content that solves that problem and I can introduce the solution to them if you like.Someone might be saying: How to index my backlinks? I will right them a decent   100-200 word answer, and then say: If you want to learn more about this subject, if you have any more questions, please see my more detailed post.And it’s really simple, a really simple form of content promotion but when I launched a blog, that’s exa ctly what I did, that’s exactly what I did to get 2000 visitors the first month, 4500 the next month, 6000 the month after that, that is exactly what I did. I was just balling on forums, QA sites, Facebook groups, anywhere where people were asking questions, I was there to answer it with my content.Martin: Cool. Now, we are learning something about your backlinking strategy. So how do you acquire backlinks that are relevant and uplifting you in terms of search topic?Matthew: So the great irony of the blog is that it’s an SEO blog that doesn’t use SEO. Because that was the experiment at the start. Matt Cutts was always banging on about, just create high quality content, forget about backlinks, etc. So that’s exactly what I did.And I have not actually done any keyword research on the blog, any link building or anything. All I have done is great content that solves people’s problems, and then go and engage those people with that content thats it, which I realize is very hypo critical.However, I wouldn’t recommend that approach to everyone. I mean, this was purely an experiment, it’s not how I would normally do things, you should not be taking that as a good example. Instead, you should be looking to do some basic keyword research for your posts. So if someone is asking how to generate traffic to their website, I would do a bit of keyword research to see what is actually the most common phrase that people use? It might be increase traffic to my website for example, and then I build the content around that keyword. That is the most important foundation you can put in.Then for backlinks Well, there are so many different ways to build backlinks. But one of the easiest ways if you are just starting out and you can kill 2 birds with one stone here is you can get, well actually 3 birds with one stone, you can get   traffic, backlinks and content by taking advantage of people’s egos.So, one of your first posts might be, make a list of the top 10 food blog s, or the top 10 blogs in your niche, and then just list of blogs write two or three hundred words about each blog and just reach out to the blog owners and let them know that you featured them. They usually share it with their audience, usually gives you a backlink, usually gives you traffic, and you have got a piece of content that your readers all love.Martin: One question regarding that, is the link juice that is coming from those let’s say 20 or 30 bloggers or so also applicable to the new content that you are writing.Matthew: It depends, some people are going to link to your homepage which ultimately is what you want to do, you want to drive the overall authority of the domain. Some people will link to the post itself, you get into conversations with people and you could just ask them to link where you would like them to link or they might even invite you to write a dedicated post on their site and then you have got free rein on where you link. It really opens a lot of doors and opportunities beyond just link building.Martin: So when I am starting out and I have written let’s say 20 or 30 posts, should I rather be promoting and getting backlinks for my homepage or am I trying to get back links for a single post.Matthew: If you have a single post that is targeting a specific keyword that you believe that you can easily rank for, and by all means build backlinks to that specific post. But in general for most people is better to drive the authority to the root domain because as you build links in authority to the root domain, it actually raises your authority of all the pages on the site.So I prefer that kind of wider approach where you build authority to the root domain which raises all ships, albeit, it raises them slower than if you were to build links to a specific page. So there is not a right or wrong answer there but personally I would prefer to build the authority of the root domain over building the authority of a specific internal page when yo u are starting out.Martin: And if you are, let’s say, in the process of having been in the business for 2 or 3 years, what would you have done then?Matthew: If you are at a stage where you’ve already built a significant amount of authority to the root domain, a great exercise that you can do is, you can use something like SEMrush to fund out which pages and which key words you are currently ranking for. You might have a key word that’s actually ranking on page 2 in position 12, but with just a few dedicated links to that page, it could be very easy to bring that into the top 5 results. So you are then essentially just leveraging the authority you have already built.If you have got a keyword at the bottom of page 1, ranks 8-10, you can usually bring that into the top 5 just by adding internal links to the page. You don’t necessarily need to go off site and build external links. But you will find as you build the authority to the home page, these opportunities will just come, you will be like: Whoa, I wasn’t expecting that key word to be on the first page, holy shit. And then you have to kind of: Okay well actually I am not using that keyword in the page title, so I could optimize the page title a little bit more, I could maybe increase the key word density, maybe add the keyword in a header and then add a couple of internal links from other pages. And then you will very quickly find pages like that moving to the top 5 or the top 3 and that’s when the real traffic starts to come.Martin: So you would rather focus on content optimization first and then getting additional backlinks to a specific article?Matthew: Yes, because when you are building content that solves problems for people and you are not really too focused on keywords, these opportunities just arise where you are just like: Whoa, I never expected to be ranking for that term. Well okay, now I know that I am ranking decently for it without trying, now I am going to try.Martin: But can you br eak something. For example, imagine I am having a really awesome article on fisherman’s, I don’t know, and now I see, actually I should be ranking fishermen’s nets in New York for example, and now I am changing the title, and my hypothesis was hey if I am adding this or changing these key words, I will be ranking higher, but actually no, I am ranking lower.So how do I really balance this kind of trade off on making this experiment, and is this repairable. So if I am making a mistake and the traffic drops, how fast am I seeing this and can I return it and then have the same results as before?Matthew: Okay, if you are making the home page changes and the internal links and everything, now, everyone needs to understand that SEO is nothing more than risk management. That is all that SEO is; it’s just managing risk. And this is what I would consider to be a very low risk task because you are in control of everything. So if you change a page title, change a key word density, add s ome internal links and the end result is actually drops in rankings, well you can actually reverse what you have done. And it would take a couple of weeks for you to see the increase or the decrease.When you are trying to recover from the drop, just because you change it back to how it used to be doesn’t always mean you are going to recover. It could be that you’ve done the damage and it’s not going to recover from that. In this case, I would then go out, I would put everything back how it was and then I would build some external backlinks from authorative sites in my niche and that would then bring it back to where it was or better.Martin: And how would you do that? So what type of step by step approach would you use to get these external backlinks?Matthew: Well, back to my statement about SEO is just risk management; some people might go the full black hat approach and build up a private blog network, which in some niches you just cannot compete unless you are running privat e blog networks, it’s impossible.But that in itself is a whole headache and scale to learn and it takes time and money, the easy approach would be perhaps leverage some of your relationships to do guest posting, that’s a very easy link building task for anyone to do, regardless of experience of you are new or you have been doing this for years, just leveraging relationships and doing guest posts on oversights is easy for anyone to do, and that carries very minimal risk.So depending on your level of experience and your knowledge   of SEO, you can either go high   risk, high reward, private blog networks or low risk but still a decent reward with guest posts.TIPS TO MONETIZING A BLOGMartin: Okay. Matthew, now assume we have built an awesome blog with lots and tons of traffic, and although we don’t start with the monetization in mind, now it’s time to monetize because we need to pay the bills. How do we monetize the traffic? And when I am looking at your incoming reports, you h ave different types of revenue sources for example, and I would be very interested in how did they develop over time and why did you choose especially the affiliate income revenue stream.Matthew: Okay, actually made a huge mistake with my blog from day 1, a mistake that I carried on making for 2 or 3 years. So I will tell you what that is in a moment.First I’d like to say, most of the earnings of my blog are based on affiliate earnings as you’ve just said and the reason for that is for me, affiliate payouts allow you to be the product owner without any of the hustle.For example, if you own a product, like let’s say Long Tail Pro, you have to deal with customer support, you have to deal with updating the product, fixing bugs and just a bunch of stuff. But as an affiliate, I can make a sale of that product and take half of the money recurring for life without any of those problems. So the money is split 50-50, the only difference is I have to deal with all of those problems. And that’s the case with 99% of affiliate programs, you get half of the money of the sale, certainly for digital products. If you are going into something like Amazon you can make 3-8% range, but still you don’t have to deal with any problems, you don’t have to deal with any time consuming tasks like customer support or fixing bugs or anything like that. So that’s why I really like affiliate based promotions.Martin: The alternative would be just putting Adsense or advertisement on my site and also I would not have this kind of hustle.Matthew: Yes, you can use Adsense links. But I have done some experimentation with this and once your site has got a decent amount of traffic, I found that it’s better to remove Adsense and replace it with your own banner ads that you sell. So you can use a wordpress plugin like OIO publisher which is a complete self serve banner advertising platform where advertisers can buy banner ads through Paypal and upload their banner and the plugin takes care of all of the headache for you. All you have to do is approve or deny ad. Or you can use something like BuySellAds which is a third party platform which essentially does the same thing but they have got a big market place of advertisers as well.Martin: What type of uplift did you experience in your experiments when you compare AdSense advertising versus your own hosted advertising?Matthew: Like 6 times increase.Martin: Wow.Matthew: Yeah. However you have to consider the, I can charge a premium for those ad spaces just because of how the blog is regarded in the niche, it adds a certain credibility to the people advertising on the blog, and I charge for that.So selling your own banner ads isn’t necessarily the best option for everyone. You should certainly be experimenting with it, even when just starting out, and you are getting less than 1000 people a day, ads and after that you want to look at selling your own banner advertisements.Martin: And Matthew for the future, what ty pe of revenue streams would you like to explore for matthewwoodward.co.uk?Matthew: Okay, in the future and back to the biggest mistake I made, which was actually not having my own product to sell. So while promoting affiliate products does avoid s lot of the headaches, it was also in other ways restrict you. For example, by not having my own products to sell, I was leaving a lot of money on the table, I wasn’t making the best use of my email list. There are lots of places for people to sign up to my email list all over the blog, and that could be better funneled into my own product. I would also then replace all of the banner advertising and AdSense advertising that I am selling with advertising for my own product, which would be far more lucrative and far more profitable. So when you are just getting your blog off the ground, it can be quite a big challenge to put out a product, but it doesn’t need to be anything sophisticated or special, it could be something that is just a qu ick $7 PDF cheat sheet for example, maybe a healthy eating cheat sheet or whatever niche you are in. You can usually create one-page PDF check list cheat sheet type of thing with tips and advice or whatever, and start a package and sell it for between 7 and 9 dollars, just a low barrier entry product.Martin: Did you experiment with this?Matthew: No, this is one of the big mistakes I made; I didn’t do that. That is something I regret heavily when I look back at it. I mean I am in the position of hind sight right now, so I can look back and sayMartin: But you could change it. What keeps you from doing this in the next 24 hours?Matthew: I wish I had time to do it in the next 24 hours, but I have since launched my own product. It was a bigger course, it was priced at $297, actually about private blog networks, I made it available for sale for 5 days and then took it off the market. The reason it was only available for 5 days is I wanted to launch it, I wanted to get students on board, it needed their amount of hands on coaching and helping people through the course when they had questions, so I don’t want it to be always open because I don’t want to always have that time commitment there. And also taken on and off the market really, it makes people buy it when it is available rather than making it available all the time.But that is the higher end of the market. $297-product it took me 6 months t make the product, and that’s a realistic investment of time and money for a new blogger.So looking back, what I should have done is spend a day creating a product that I can sell for $7 or $9 and that would really help me leverage my position earlier on.LIFE OF A BLOG ENTREPRENEUR MATTHEW WOODWARDMartin: Good. Matthew, right now you are in Costa Rica, and I would like for you to describe a day in the life of a blog entrepreneur. So what’s today like?Matthew: Okay, so a lot of people have the illusion that the blogging lifestyle is beach, laptop, deck chairs, ta king it easy, feet up. And honestly that is not the case.When you are just starting a blog, I mean when I started out I was doing 80-90 hour weeks. If I had time to go to the toilet, that was a luxury in life, like a real luxury. I quite often find myself quite desperate positions from starvation, eating in the toilet, shaking, really not looking after my health while I was growing the blog.So how does a day in the life of a blog entrepreneur look? Well, when you are first starting out, it is not fun, it is hard, grueling, difficult, long, winded, terrible experience; especially if you are trying to work a full time job at the same time, which I did for a while. I got home at 6pm, I’d have something to eat quickly, 6.30pm â€" 6.45pm I’d start working, I’d stop working at 2am, go to sleep, back to my job and I would just do that every day.A day in my life, even right now, it depends if I’ve got really aggressive goals and things I am trying to achieve, I will hit 12-16 hour d ays back to back without a day off until I reach that goal, I’m just like that. I go in with both feet, I bite down and I just get it done, no excuses, I give up everything, TV, friends, drinking, eating, going to the toilet, everything until I achieve the goal. I am like a dog with a bone. But, it’s also important to remember to enjoy the fruits of your labor. So this past month, for all of May, and this is a great position to be in, for all of May I was like: You know what, screw it, I don’t care, this month it’s about me. I am going to do the complete opposite, I’ve not   got a really big goal I am trying to achieve right now, so I slip into maintenance mode, I do the bare minimum to keep things to come over. Maybe a few hours a week I really enjoy the freedom of the dot com lifestyle, not just in terms of the money because everyone thinks: Oh yeah, blogging money, but also the freedom of time and the freedom of location. I am a British guy in Costa Rica right now. So I am either one or the other, I am either working until my fingers are bleeding or I’m in complete relaxation, I don’t have that balanced middle ground in my life.Martin: Great. Matthew, thank you so much for sharing your insights and I wish you lots of pleasure in Costa Rica, especially now as you are on the low season, you can enjoy the weather and maybe diving.Matthew: Yeah, free diving, spear fishing, that’s my love outside of digital marketing.Martin: Cool stuff. Thank you Matthew.Matthew: Thank you for having me and just a final bit of advice, if you are starting a blog, please don’t make the same mistake as everyone and focus on the money. I have seen so many great blogs come and after month 3, 4 or 5, they just die, they stop updating them, they get abandoned and when I speak to the people they say: Well you know, it wasn’t making any money. And if they would have just carried on for another 2 or 3 months, they would have reached that goal. So please if you are star ting out, forget about the money, your first and only goal should be to get you first 100 email subscribers. If you do that successfully everything else will follow in time, so please keep that in mind if you are just starting out.Martin: Good stuff. Okay, thank you so much, enjoy your time.Matthew: ByeMartin: ByeTHANKS FOR LISTENING! Welcome to the 18th episode of our podcast!You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Click here to subscribe in iTunes. INTRODUCTION STORY OF MATTHEWWOODWARD.CO.UKMartin: Hi folks. Today we are talking about starting an online business and maybe you can become a blog entrepreneur yourself. Today we have on board Matthew, who build up a very decent online business himself. Hi Matthew, who are you and what do you do?Matthew: Hi guys, my name is Matthew Woodward, I am from the UK originally and I have been playing with things online since the age of around 13, and I am about to be 30. So, I have been doing this for quite a long time now. Before I even knew that you could use the internet to make money, I was writing articles and producing content on a volunteer basis. And over the past 15 years or so, I found myself in various positions in the digital marketing world.I had a very successful corporate career, running campaigns for some big global brands. And then around 6 or 7 years ago now I took the jump and went full time for myself building a range of affiliate sites and the blog that most people kno w me for, matthewwoodward.co.uk, which is my award winning digital marketing blog, that basically just shares my experience and knowledge with everyone free of charge.Martin: How did it all start with starting your own blog, and at what point in time did you think: Ooh, this is a worthwhile endeavor?Matthew: That is a great question because the blog was originally started as an experiment because I am really, what excites me is black hat SEO which is, it is a bit of a controversial topic at times. But really, that’s what excites me. And back then, we are going back 4 or 5 years ago, when Mark Cooks was in charge of the Google web spam team, he was always saying: Create high quality content, forget about SEO, forget about bad links and so on. So with that in mind that is kind of what I did. I decided: Well, if I was just to record the kinds of things I do every day as part of my affiliate marketing, that might be interesting and helpful to people, I am just going to record what I a m already doing and publish it and see what happens.It turned out people loved that and the feedback was absolutely awesome, so I just focused on creating content. That’s what I was doing everyday but also solved people’s problems that we see coming up on forums like warrior forum and black hat world and so on.Martin: What kept you motivated in pursuing this, because I imagine for the first 3 or 6 or maybe even 9 months you would have no real or big traffic but you are still spending time in writing and marketing your content. What kept you motivated?Matthew: Well, actually if you jump on the blog there is a page in the head of the income reports and you can actually see every month from day 1 how much traffic and how much money I had. So I don’t really want to focus on the amount of traffic and the amount of money too much, although I am going to tell you what those initial numbers were because one of the big mistakes many people make is focusing on how much money they have m ade or how much traffic they have got, which can actually be very demoralizing when there is no traffic and there is no money for a few months. Instead you guys should be focusing on how to get your first 100 subscribers before you even think about money.But for me,   I was very lucky, and also I had the fact that I have 15 years experience doing this. So month 1 was around 2000 visitors, I made about $600. Month 2 was around 4500 visitors but about $4000 profitMartin: Not bad.Matthew: And month 3 I actually jumped $7000 with 6000 visitors.So you can see on the blog in my income reports how all of that was done, but I don’t want people to really focus on those numbers too much because it can be very demoralizing. For me, if you just focus on first of all getting your first hundred subscribers and then just the feedback that you get, the quality of feedback , the people that email you and say: Thank you for helping, I had this problem you solved it, or I had a blog that was doing n o visitors and now it’s doing 100 visitors. Just those small micro bits of feedback is really what drove me to carry on working on the blog for so many years.ADVICE FOR YOUNG BLOGGERS FROM MATTHEW WOODWARDMartin: Matthew, imagine, somebody reads your blog and then he says: Oh, I want to start my own blog. What type of advice can you give him on how to find really a topic which he can blog on which is maybe even profitable over some months or years?Matthew: Okay, that’s quite a tough question because everybody is different.So take on board the advice I said, don’t really worry about the money, kind of forget about the money, forget anything about how am I going to make money from this. You really want to strip it back to play to your strengths or to your weaknesses and those are different for everyone, so it’s very hard to give specific advice here.But I have a small exercise that I get people to do and essentially what you want to do is to create 5 different lists, and you w ant to put around 5 to 10 different items on each of these lists.The first list you want to create is a list of things that you are good at. That’s going to be different for everyone.Then you want to create a list of things that you are bad at. And if you are anything like me, the list of things I am bad at is far longer than the list of things I am good at.Then you want to make a list of what you enjoy most. Some people enjoy video games, some people enjoy football, things like that, don’t be afraid what you might think is stupid during this exercise.The fourth list you want to do is what do you want to learn about, so things that have interested you. For me personally, I always wanted to learn another language, so I have been learning Spanish, but that would be on my list of things to learn about.And finally the fifth list, what problems do you have, what problems do you have in your day to day life, that could be anything from credit card debt all the way through to your car breaking down or anything.Writing those lists sounds easy but actually when you get down to doing it, it can be quite challenging to come up with things that you are good and bad at. And once you get those 5 lists, what you are good at, what you are bad at, what you enjoy   most, what you want to learn about and what problems you have, that really forms the basis to you r niche ideas.So once I have got my list of ideas, I always try and think about the bigger picture, and I also try and think about the smaller picture. So to tell you what I mean about that is I get a bunch of emails of people saying, “Oh I have built this site and its making no money, I have built this site and having this problem. The common mistake I find is people limit themselves from day 1. So someone might be like: Oh yeah, I have made an awesome affiliate website about iPhone 6 cases, and well, the problem there is they have not thought of the bigger picture, the iPhone 6 will be replaced eventually, which means that from day 1 they have set themselves up to fail. So if you found this awesome iPhone 6 case is niche, what you should think about is well what about the future? And instead you should make a website that specifically about phone cases or electronics protection in general. And then rather than just having topics about iPhone 6, you could also do things like, off the top of my head, the best water proof cases for your tablet, or how to protect your phone on a construction site, or I don’t know, the best cases to take under water photos with your phone. Something like that which then allows you to become the authority if you like on electronic device protection and cases, rather than just focusing on that smaller iPhone 6 cases picture. It allows you to broaden your reach and also extend the life of the business.Martin: Yes, definitely. I mean I have seen lots of entrepreneurs who are picking too small niche, or a niche that is depreciating over time like you described.Matt hew: Yes, it’s an easy trap to fall into because when you do your niche research and you see all the traffic numbers and the trends they look great, but okay, in a year, it’s going to be very different.On the other side of the coin, you can go too big of a picture; so you might go okay in your list what do you enjoy most, well perhaps you enjoy travelling. Well the problem is if you are just like okay I am going to build a travel blog, there’s thousands of travel blogs, they all do the same thing, it’s really boring. It’s not many travel blogs that have a unique twist or stand out to me. So if something you enjoyed was travel, okay well that’s too big of a picture, we need to look at a smaller picture. So you might think about looking at just music festivals and then you travel around looking at just music festivals, producing content reviews, etc. Or you might go create a travel blog about moving abroad or opportunities to work while travelling, and so then you are kind of niching down into something more specific.Another example of what do you enjoy most is food. I love food. Who doesn’t enjoy food? But again that is too broad of a niche, there’s so many food blogs out there, so many recipe blogs out there, it’s boring. So you need to think about niching down, and in food, I mean, I don’t know, cooking for single men would be a better niche to niche down into from food. So you don’t want to go stiff into ceiling but you don’t want to go so broad that you kind of fall into this big sea of blogs already exist. You’ve already got to kind of find that middle ground.Martin: Yes. From my point of view you always need to find some kind of value proposition why somebody visits and reads your blog. Because if you are just like any other food blog out there with the same kind of pictures and text, why should people visit your site and not other one thousand.Matthew: Of course, you have got to add that value somewhere. The cooking for single m en example, it sounds stupid but if you are a single man and you are going out to buy food and you look at a recipe online, the recipes are always 4-6 portions, so that means that you have got to eat the same thing all week or the ingredients go off. Or it’s very difficult to go into a supermarket, buy foods that create enough meals for the week without any leftovers. So just having that slight little twist on it really changes everything.Martin: And here is a very kind of free blog idea for you guys idea, just start a food blog and make the recipe conditional on some factors like the number of people or so.Matthew: Yes.SEO TRAFFIC TIPS FROM MATTHEW WOODWARDMartin: Okay cool. How do you build the traffic for your website mathewwoodward.co.uk, in terms of the content creation for example? How do you come up with these topics?Matthew: I had a very simple strategy at the start, and I still do it now. The content creation is above all the most important thing. You should not be think ing about traffic, backlinks or anything else until you have got content nailed. And I always try and focus on building content that helps people and solves problems.Problem solving content is great because when a new reader comes to your site and you are helping them, that kind of creates this sub conscious relationship between you and the reader, almost immediately without you having to try. They needed help, you helped them, it’s perfect. Problem solving content is often shared a lot as well, so I always focus on solving people’s problems, it’s my entire content strategy.How you find those problems, well it’s pretty easy because you can find forums in your niche, you can jump on QA sites like quora.com or yahooanswers.com which isn’t so much used anymore, or in Facebook groups, anywhere the people post questions. And that is where I go to hunt for my blog topic ideas and once I see regular kind of questions coming up or things where I think: Yes, I have got the perfect experience to answer that, that becomes the content strategy, that’s where all the ideas come from.Martin: Okay. Imagine you have written 100 or 200 blog posts and every week you publish again 2 or 3 blog posts, how are you going about this content marketing, and especially interested in your backlinking strategy because you said before that you are interested in black hat SEO as well.Matthew: Well, backlinking strategy we would talk about in a minute that would be an interesting talk.With the actual promotion of the content, well, I tried a couple of different things. So when I created content that solved people’s problems, I always add a social locker of some kind. And a social locker if anyone’s wondering is where you have t like share on Twitter or share on Facebook in order to unlock additional content. And that additional content for me is often just a PDF version of the post. So it takes like 60 seconds to create, put it behind a social locker, and any traffic that come s to your post will help you bring new traffic as they share the post to unlock the download.So that’s quite an important twist that I put on things because I want to maximize the value of the traffic that I get. And this is another reason why you shouldn’t focus on money because this is just purely focused on getting more traffic.With that said, I then go and promote the content in exactly the same place as I got the content ideas from. So the same forums, the same QA sites, the same Facebook groups, when I see people having problems, well, now I have just created content that solves that problem and I can introduce the solution to them if you like.Someone might be saying: How to index my backlinks? I will right them a decent   100-200 word answer, and then say: If you want to learn more about this subject, if you have any more questions, please see my more detailed post.And it’s really simple, a really simple form of content promotion but when I launched a blog, that’s exa ctly what I did, that’s exactly what I did to get 2000 visitors the first month, 4500 the next month, 6000 the month after that, that is exactly what I did. I was just balling on forums, QA sites, Facebook groups, anywhere where people were asking questions, I was there to answer it with my content.Martin: Cool. Now, we are learning something about your backlinking strategy. So how do you acquire backlinks that are relevant and uplifting you in terms of search topic?Matthew: So the great irony of the blog is that it’s an SEO blog that doesn’t use SEO. Because that was the experiment at the start. Matt Cutts was always banging on about, just create high quality content, forget about backlinks, etc. So that’s exactly what I did.And I have not actually done any keyword research on the blog, any link building or anything. All I have done is great content that solves people’s problems, and then go and engage those people with that content thats it, which I realize is very hypo critical.However, I wouldn’t recommend that approach to everyone. I mean, this was purely an experiment, it’s not how I would normally do things, you should not be taking that as a good example. Instead, you should be looking to do some basic keyword research for your posts. So if someone is asking how to generate traffic to their website, I would do a bit of keyword research to see what is actually the most common phrase that people use? It might be increase traffic to my website for example, and then I build the content around that keyword. That is the most important foundation you can put in.Then for backlinks Well, there are so many different ways to build backlinks. But one of the easiest ways if you are just starting out and you can kill 2 birds with one stone here is you can get, well actually 3 birds with one stone, you can get   traffic, backlinks and content by taking advantage of people’s egos.So, one of your first posts might be, make a list of the top 10 food blog s, or the top 10 blogs in your niche, and then just list of blogs write two or three hundred words about each blog and just reach out to the blog owners and let them know that you featured them. They usually share it with their audience, usually gives you a backlink, usually gives you traffic, and you have got a piece of content that your readers all love.Martin: One question regarding that, is the link juice that is coming from those let’s say 20 or 30 bloggers or so also applicable to the new content that you are writing.Matthew: It depends, some people are going to link to your homepage which ultimately is what you want to do, you want to drive the overall authority of the domain. Some people will link to the post itself, you get into conversations with people and you could just ask them to link where you would like them to link or they might even invite you to write a dedicated post on their site and then you have got free rein on where you link. It really opens a lot of doors and opportunities beyond just link building.Martin: So when I am starting out and I have written let’s say 20 or 30 posts, should I rather be promoting and getting backlinks for my homepage or am I trying to get back links for a single post.Matthew: If you have a single post that is targeting a specific keyword that you believe that you can easily rank for, and by all means build backlinks to that specific post. But in general for most people is better to drive the authority to the root domain because as you build links in authority to the root domain, it actually raises your authority of all the pages on the site.So I prefer that kind of wider approach where you build authority to the root domain which raises all ships, albeit, it raises them slower than if you were to build links to a specific page. So there is not a right or wrong answer there but personally I would prefer to build the authority of the root domain over building the authority of a specific internal page when yo u are starting out.Martin: And if you are, let’s say, in the process of having been in the business for 2 or 3 years, what would you have done then?Matthew: If you are at a stage where you’ve already built a significant amount of authority to the root domain, a great exercise that you can do is, you can use something like SEMrush to fund out which pages and which key words you are currently ranking for. You might have a key word that’s actually ranking on page 2 in position 12, but with just a few dedicated links to that page, it could be very easy to bring that into the top 5 results. So you are then essentially just leveraging the authority you have already built.If you have got a keyword at the bottom of page 1, ranks 8-10, you can usually bring that into the top 5 just by adding internal links to the page. You don’t necessarily need to go off site and build external links. But you will find as you build the authority to the home page, these opportunities will just come, you will be like: Whoa, I wasn’t expecting that key word to be on the first page, holy shit. And then you have to kind of: Okay well actually I am not using that keyword in the page title, so I could optimize the page title a little bit more, I could maybe increase the key word density, maybe add the keyword in a header and then add a couple of internal links from other pages. And then you will very quickly find pages like that moving to the top 5 or the top 3 and that’s when the real traffic starts to come.Martin: So you would rather focus on content optimization first and then getting additional backlinks to a specific article?Matthew: Yes, because when you are building content that solves problems for people and you are not really too focused on keywords, these opportunities just arise where you are just like: Whoa, I never expected to be ranking for that term. Well okay, now I know that I am ranking decently for it without trying, now I am going to try.Martin: But can you br eak something. For example, imagine I am having a really awesome article on fisherman’s, I don’t know, and now I see, actually I should be ranking fishermen’s nets in New York for example, and now I am changing the title, and my hypothesis was hey if I am adding this or changing these key words, I will be ranking higher, but actually no, I am ranking lower.So how do I really balance this kind of trade off on making this experiment, and is this repairable. So if I am making a mistake and the traffic drops, how fast am I seeing this and can I return it and then have the same results as before?Matthew: Okay, if you are making the home page changes and the internal links and everything, now, everyone needs to understand that SEO is nothing more than risk management. That is all that SEO is; it’s just managing risk. And this is what I would consider to be a very low risk task because you are in control of everything. So if you change a page title, change a key word density, add s ome internal links and the end result is actually drops in rankings, well you can actually reverse what you have done. And it would take a couple of weeks for you to see the increase or the decrease.When you are trying to recover from the drop, just because you change it back to how it used to be doesn’t always mean you are going to recover. It could be that you’ve done the damage and it’s not going to recover from that. In this case, I would then go out, I would put everything back how it was and then I would build some external backlinks from authorative sites in my niche and that would then bring it back to where it was or better.Martin: And how would you do that? So what type of step by step approach would you use to get these external backlinks?Matthew: Well, back to my statement about SEO is just risk management; some people might go the full black hat approach and build up a private blog network, which in some niches you just cannot compete unless you are running privat e blog networks, it’s impossible.But that in itself is a whole headache and scale to learn and it takes time and money, the easy approach would be perhaps leverage some of your relationships to do guest posting, that’s a very easy link building task for anyone to do, regardless of experience of you are new or you have been doing this for years, just leveraging relationships and doing guest posts on oversights is easy for anyone to do, and that carries very minimal risk.So depending on your level of experience and your knowledge   of SEO, you can either go high   risk, high reward, private blog networks or low risk but still a decent reward with guest posts.TIPS TO MONETIZING A BLOGMartin: Okay. Matthew, now assume we have built an awesome blog with lots and tons of traffic, and although we don’t start with the monetization in mind, now it’s time to monetize because we need to pay the bills. How do we monetize the traffic? And when I am looking at your incoming reports, you h ave different types of revenue sources for example, and I would be very interested in how did they develop over time and why did you choose especially the affiliate income revenue stream.Matthew: Okay, actually made a huge mistake with my blog from day 1, a mistake that I carried on making for 2 or 3 years. So I will tell you what that is in a moment.First I’d like to say, most of the earnings of my blog are based on affiliate earnings as you’ve just said and the reason for that is for me, affiliate payouts allow you to be the product owner without any of the hustle.For example, if you own a product, like let’s say Long Tail Pro, you have to deal with customer support, you have to deal with updating the product, fixing bugs and just a bunch of stuff. But as an affiliate, I can make a sale of that product and take half of the money recurring for life without any of those problems. So the money is split 50-50, the only difference is I have to deal with all of those problems. And that’s the case with 99% of affiliate programs, you get half of the money of the sale, certainly for digital products. If you are going into something like Amazon you can make 3-8% range, but still you don’t have to deal with any problems, you don’t have to deal with any time consuming tasks like customer support or fixing bugs or anything like that. So that’s why I really like affiliate based promotions.Martin: The alternative would be just putting Adsense or advertisement on my site and also I would not have this kind of hustle.Matthew: Yes, you can use Adsense links. But I have done some experimentation with this and once your site has got a decent amount of traffic, I found that it’s better to remove Adsense and replace it with your own banner ads that you sell. So you can use a wordpress plugin like OIO publisher which is a complete self serve banner advertising platform where advertisers can buy banner ads through Paypal and upload their banner and the plugin takes care of all of the headache for you. All you have to do is approve or deny ad. Or you can use something like BuySellAds which is a third party platform which essentially does the same thing but they have got a big market place of advertisers as well.Martin: What type of uplift did you experience in your experiments when you compare AdSense advertising versus your own hosted advertising?Matthew: Like 6 times increase.Martin: Wow.Matthew: Yeah. However you have to consider the, I can charge a premium for those ad spaces just because of how the blog is regarded in the niche, it adds a certain credibility to the people advertising on the blog, and I charge for that.So selling your own banner ads isn’t necessarily the best option for everyone. You should certainly be experimenting with it, even when just starting out, and you are getting less than 1000 people a day, ads and after that you want to look at selling your own banner advertisements.Martin: And Matthew for the future, what ty pe of revenue streams would you like to explore for matthewwoodward.co.uk?Matthew: Okay, in the future and back to the biggest mistake I made, which was actually not having my own product to sell. So while promoting affiliate products does avoid s lot of the headaches, it was also in other ways restrict you. For example, by not having my own products to sell, I was leaving a lot of money on the table, I wasn’t making the best use of my email list. There are lots of places for people to sign up to my email list all over the blog, and that could be better funneled into my own product. I would also then replace all of the banner advertising and AdSense advertising that I am selling with advertising for my own product, which would be far more lucrative and far more profitable. So when you are just getting your blog off the ground, it can be quite a big challenge to put out a product, but it doesn’t need to be anything sophisticated or special, it could be something that is just a qu ick $7 PDF cheat sheet for example, maybe a healthy eating cheat sheet or whatever niche you are in. You can usually create one-page PDF check list cheat sheet type of thing with tips and advice or whatever, and start a package and sell it for between 7 and 9 dollars, just a low barrier entry product.Martin: Did you experiment with this?Matthew: No, this is one of the big mistakes I made; I didn’t do that. That is something I regret heavily when I look back at it. I mean I am in the position of hind sight right now, so I can look back and sayMartin: But you could change it. What keeps you from doing this in the next 24 hours?Matthew: I wish I had time to do it in the next 24 hours, but I have since launched my own product. It was a bigger course, it was priced at $297, actually about private blog networks, I made it available for sale for 5 days and then took it off the market. The reason it was only available for 5 days is I wanted to launch it, I wanted to get students on board, it needed their amount of hands on coaching and helping people through the course when they had questions, so I don’t want it to be always open because I don’t want to always have that time commitment there. And also taken on and off the market really, it makes people buy it when it is available rather than making it available all the time.But that is the higher end of the market. $297-product it took me 6 months t make the product, and that’s a realistic investment of time and money for a new blogger.So looking back, what I should have done is spend a day creating a product that I can sell for $7 or $9 and that would really help me leverage my position earlier on.LIFE OF A BLOG ENTREPRENEUR MATTHEW WOODWARDMartin: Good. Matthew, right now you are in Costa Rica, and I would like for you to describe a day in the life of a blog entrepreneur. So what’s today like?Matthew: Okay, so a lot of people have the illusion that the blogging lifestyle is beach, laptop, deck chairs, ta king it easy, feet up. And honestly that is not the case.When you are just starting a blog, I mean when I started out I was doing 80-90 hour weeks. If I had time to go to the toilet, that was a luxury in life, like a real luxury. I quite often find myself quite desperate positions from starvation, eating in the toilet, shaking, really not looking after my health while I was growing the blog.So how does a day in the life of a blog entrepreneur look? Well, when you are first starting out, it is not fun, it is hard, grueling, difficult, long, winded, terrible experience; especially if you are trying to work a full time job at the same time, which I did for a while. I got home at 6pm, I’d have something to eat quickly, 6.30pm â€" 6.45pm I’d start working, I’d stop working at 2am, go to sleep, back to my job and I would just do that every day.A day in my life, even right now, it depends if I’ve got really aggressive goals and things I am trying to achieve, I will hit 12-16 hour d ays back to back without a day off until I reach that goal, I’m just like that. I go in with both feet, I bite down and I just get it done, no excuses, I give up everything, TV, friends, drinking, eating, going to the toilet, everything until I achieve the goal. I am like a dog with a bone. But, it’s also important to remember to enjoy the fruits of your labor. So this past month, for all of May, and this is a great position to be in, for all of May I was like: You know what, screw it, I don’t care, this month it’s about me. I am going to do the complete opposite, I’ve not   got a really big goal I am trying to achieve right now, so I slip into maintenance mode, I do the bare minimum to keep things to come over. Maybe a few hours a week I really enjoy the freedom of the dot com lifestyle, not just in terms of the money because everyone thinks: Oh yeah, blogging money, but also the freedom of time and the freedom of location. I am a British guy in Costa Rica right now. So I am either one or the other, I am either working until my fingers are bleeding or I’m in complete relaxation, I don’t have that balanced middle ground in my life.Martin: Great. Matthew, thank you so much for sharing your insights and I wish you lots of pleasure in Costa Rica, especially now as you are on the low season, you can enjoy the weather and maybe diving.Matthew: Yeah, free diving, spear fishing, that’s my love outside of digital marketing.Martin: Cool stuff. Thank you Matthew.Matthew: Thank you for having me and just a final bit of advice, if you are starting a blog, please don’t make the same mistake as everyone and focus on the money. I have seen so many great blogs come and after month 3, 4 or 5, they just die, they stop updating them, they get abandoned and when I speak to the people they say: Well you know, it wasn’t making any money. And if they would have just carried on for another 2 or 3 months, they would have reached that goal. So please if you are star ting out, forget about the money, your first and only goal should be to get you first 100 email subscribers. If you do that successfully everything else will follow in time, so please keep that in mind if you are just starting out.Martin: Good stuff. Okay, thank you so much, enjoy your time.Matthew: ByeMartin: ByeTHANKS FOR LISTENING!Thanks so much for joining our 18th podcast episode!Have some feedback you’d like to share?  Leave  a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please  share  it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post.Also,  please leave an honest review for The Cleverism Podcast on iTunes or on SoundCloud. Ratings and reviews  are  extremely  helpful  and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.Special thanks  to Matthew for joining me this week. Until  next time!

Professor of the Year Awards 2017 Dr. Gonzalo Chavez

Hults practitioner faculty come from over all over the world and range from CEOs and consultants to PhDs and entrepreneurs. In this series we interview each of the 2017 Professor of the Year award winners, as voted for by Hult students, to get a glimpse into what makes them exceptional at what they do. Dubai—Executive MBA program Boston—Masters in International Business program The Professor of the Year Award for our  Executive MBA  program, Dubai campus, and Masters in International Business program, Boston campus, was awarded to Professor of Finance  Dr. Gonzalo Chavez. Gonzalo teaches on Hults EMBA, MBA, and Masters programs across the Boston, Dubai, Shanghai, and New York City campus locations. Professor Chavez has worked as a consultant in firm valuation and has counseled interest groups on the use of derivative instruments for risk hedging purposes.  His teaching experience spans the U.S., Latin America, Europe, the Gulf Region, Asia, and Australia. He has been affiliated with the Instituto Tecnologico de Mexico, Universidad Adolfo Ibanez in Chile, Instituto de Empresa in Spain, Babson College in the U.S., and now teaches full-time at Hult.  Professor Chavezs research focus has resulted in published work that covers both practitioner and academic journals. Recent work includes transparency and financial crises in emerging and developed marke ts, and the resilience of microfinance institutions in crises conditions. Hi Gonzalo. Congratulations on this teaching award! What would you say constitutes an effective teaching style? In my view, an effective teaching style combines enthusiasm, intuition, and the use of technology to support learning. The professor needs to be the most enthusiastic person in the room. Being passionate about what youre teaching encourages others to get excited too. Im also a strong believer in Hults emphasis on putting theory into practice. Formulas can be memorized or looked up, but their correct application can only be considered useful once they are intuitively understood. What would you say are the key lessons that business school students need to master today? Adaptability is a necessary skill for almost any endeavor, whether you work for yourself, for others, are a student or a teacher.  It is immensely enriching to be exposed to and to try to understand different points of view and realities. Hult covers many cultures and realities.  And the fact that we have a real global presence through our campuses makes for a deeper and more meaningful multicultural learning environment—for both students and professors. Hult covers many cultures and realities. And the fact that we have a real global presence through our campuses makes for a deeper and more meaningful multicultural learning environment. -Dr. Gonzalo Chavez, Professor of Finance And how is this important in the context of Hults diverse global classroom? Hult personifies adaptability. Any educational experience has the potential to expand a persons knowledge and capabilities. Now think about how much more can be achieved if this same educational experience is provided with a global footprint. Every time we are exposed to a new and different culture or point of view, our horizons are enhanced in unforeseen and exciting ways. Lastly, how would you describe Hult students? Our students are interactive, pragmatic, and enthusiastic. They are always very willing to improve themselves and make the most of their learning experience.  Working with students from over 150 different nationalities and cultures makes for a challenging—and truly wonderful—opportunity to re-learn how to teach! We couldnt agree more! Many thanks Gonzalo! More about Gonzalo Chavez Courses Gonzalo teaches at Hult Financial Management Corporate Finance International Finance Quantitative Methods Research Methods Gonzalos academic and notable achievements PhD in Finance   University of Houston MBA Undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering Academic and applied research published in many international journals, including: The Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Journal of Accounting and Organizational Change, Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice. Case reviewer for the Journal of Financial Education Mel Cloney is a staff blogger working in London, and is passionate about the Hult journey. Her writing focuses on faculty, academics, and student and alumni experiences. She’s a food, scuba, and running junkie with a penchant for all things French. Accelerate your financial career and boost your earning potential with a Masters in Finance from Hult. To learn more, take a look at our blog What can you do with a Master degree in Finance? or get into wider business with a Masters in International Business instead. Download a brochure or get in touch today to find out how Hult can help you to explore everything about the business world, the future, and yourself. Mel Cloney Mel is a staff blogger working in London, and is passionate about the Hult journey. Her writing focuses on faculty, academics, and student and alumni experiences. She’s a food, scuba, and running junkie with a penchant for all things French. Related posts Academics Beyond (narrow) business concepts: â€Å"Soft† skills turn out to be critical skills News Building success: Dual Degree students win at USASBE Community How going beyond business at Hult helped me launch my company Admissions Accepted Students Weekend: A weekend to remember Careers Career mapping: How to become an executive in the next 5 years 0 Thought leadership How to prepare for an uncertain future in a world of AI Instagram Hult Rotation offers you a chance to study in a truly global way. Our rotation program allows you to study and be immersed in some of the finest cities in the world. 📠¸: @jasminmanzano . Hult Rotation offers you a chance to study in a truly global way. Our rotation program allows you to study and be immersed in some of the finest cities in the world. 📠¸: @jasminmanzano . Each year, Hult seeks to enroll a talented and ambitious incoming class from all over the world. We look for diverse students with a wide range of experiences, perspectives, and interests—students who will thrive in our unique educational atmosphere. Are you ready for a truly global experience? 📠¸: @iambrunadiniz . Each year, Hult seeks to enroll a talented and ambitious incoming class from all over the world. We look for diverse students with a wide range of experiences, perspectives, and interests—students who will thrive in our unique educational atmosphere. Are you ready for a truly global experience? 📠¸: @iambrunadiniz . We’re excited to start 2020 on a ranking high! Hult is proud to have been placed #28 in Poets Quants 2020 rankings for Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the US. Taking a huge leap of 32 places from our 2019 position, we’re also very happy to have secured top positions in key categories like: life-changing experience, practicality of the degree, and global immersion. . With five global campuses, a student body of over 130 nationalities, and a learn-by-doing approach—Hult offers a student experience like no other. . We’re excited to start 2020 on a ranking high! Hult is proud to have been placed #28 in Poets Quants 2020 rankings for Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the US. Taking a huge leap of 32 places from our 2019 position, we’re also very happy to have secured top positions in key categories like: life-changing experience, practicality of the degree, and global immersion. . With five global campuses, a student body of over 130 nationalities, and a learn-by-doing approach—Hult offers a student experience like no other. . â€Å"I’m from an engineering background and needed a whole new skill set for the industry I wanted to switch to. I learned a lot about myself and how I deal with being out of my comfort zone. I learned both soft and hard skills, from how to work in very diverse teams to key accounting metrics and strategy. I was surprised by how weak I was at certain tasks in English or how strong I actually was in other areas. Hult gave me opportunities to try new things and meet people from places I never thought I would have friends. . My internship experiences gave me the chance to broaden my view of different cultures and different companies. I had the opportunity to work and live with people whose values differed from people in my home country. I thought that this would be difficult, but it gave me the chance to reflect on my own values and assess if they were a result of my home country environment or if they were intrinsically mine. . Diederick ter Kulve (@diederick.terkulve) Netherlands Masters in International Business . â€Å"I’m from an engineering background and needed a whole new skill set for the industry I wanted to switch to. I learned a lot about myself and how I deal with being out of my comfort zone. I learned both soft and hard skills, from how to work in very diverse teams to key accounting metrics and strategy. I was surprised by how weak I was at certain tasks in English or how strong I actually was in other areas. Hult gave me opportunities to try new things and meet people from places I never thought I would have friends. . My internship experiences gave me the chance to broaden my view of different cultures and different companies. I had the opportunity to work and live with people whose values differed from people in my home country. I thought that this would be difficult, but it gave me the chance to reflect on my own values and assess if they were a result of my home country environment or if they were intrinsically mine. . Diederick ter Kulve (@diederick.terkulve) Netherlands Masters in International Business . Say a big hello to our Bachelor of Business Administration program cover star, Elisa Orus Plana âÅ" ¨ . â€Å"I’m excited for the future—especially that I cant predict whats going to happen. Maybe Ill end up in Mexico working for a trading company or maybe in Africa, developing my own business. Everything is possible, and the options are constantly changing. I love the idea that Im never going to be stuck doing the same job until the end of my life if I dont want it to be like this. . Hult really supports me and my ambitions and truly believes that we deserve to be considered as professionals as well as students. Here, I get to express not just my opinions but all elements of myself. From my creative side with the Fashion Society to my finance and business sides in Trading Club and the Management Consulting Club. We get a different type of learning here. Not just essential knowledge and theory, but practical skills and mindset. The school is always evolving. We’re encouraged to innovate and to always look for new ways of doing traditional things. We learn how to be more confident and become aware of how we can impact our environment. The school aims to help you become a better version of yourself and to stand out from the crowd.â€Å" . Elisa Orus Plana French Bachelor of Business Administration Class of 2021 Say a big hello to our Bachelor of Business Administration program cover star, Elisa Orus Plana âÅ" ¨ . â€Å"I’m excited for the future—especially that I cant predict whats going to happen. Maybe Ill end up in Mexico working for a trading company or maybe in Africa, developing my own business. Everything is possible, and the options are constantly changing. I love the idea that Im never going to be stuck doing the same job until the end of my life if I dont want it to be like this. . Hult really supports me and my ambitions and truly believes that we deserve to be considered as professionals as well as students. Here, I get to express not just my opinions but all elements of myself. From my creative side with the Fashion Society to my finance and business sides in Trading Club and the Management Consulting Club. We get a different type of learning here. Not just essential knowledge and theory, but practical skills and mindset. The school is always evolving. We’re encouraged to innovate and to always look for new ways of doing traditional things. We learn how to be more confident and become aware of how we can impact our environment. The school aims to help you become a better version of yourself and to stand out from the crowd.â€Å" . Elisa Orus Plana French Bachelor of Business Administration Class of 2021"> During the final days of 2019, you probably reflected on what you’ve accomplished this year—and even this decade—and what you’d like to achieve in 2020. Let us know in the comments below. During the final days of 2019, you probably reflected on what you’ve accomplished this year—and even this decade—and what you’d like to achieve in 2020. Let us know in the comments below. â€Å"The first time we did group work on the program, I went head-to-head with a colleague. It taught me a lot about how I see people, how people see me, and how conflict can be resolved in a kind and productive way. The best feedback you get, when delivered constructively, is the most critical because it really feeds into how you lead. I’ve completely reversed my leadership style—the result is so much richer and more powerful when you lead from behind and lead with strength. . Studying in tandem with working, whilst challenging, gave me the perfect platform to directly apply learning concepts into my business environment, the competitive landscape, and the real-estate industry as a whole. When I started the program, I was very happy in my corporate role. But my courage and aspirations grew to the point that I took on a whole new direction. Having my career coach, Joanna, as a sounding board allowed me to really be strategic and get to know myself. She coached me thro ugh all the interviews, the research, and the questions. It went in parallel with what I was doing academically and after six months everything just clicked. . I went into the EMBA knowing I had nothing to lose and I’ve come out with everything. Great strength, global friends, amazing learning, mentors from professors, a job I love, and the knowledge that I can set my mind to achieve anything and with the right support and resources I’ll get there.† . Kashani Wijetunga British, New Zealand Sri Lankan Associate Director Senior Strategy Consultant CBRE EMBA Class of 2019 . â€Å"The first time we did group work on the program, I went head-to-head with a colleague. It taught me a lot about how I see people, how people see me, and how conflict can be resolved in a kind and productive way. The best feedback you get, when delivered constructively, is the most critical because it really feeds into how you lead. I’ve completely reversed my leadership style—the result is so much richer and more powerful when you lead from behind and lead with strength. . Studying in tandem with working, whilst challenging, gave me the perfect platform to directly apply learning concepts into my business environment, the competitive landscape, and the real-estate industry as a whole. When I started the program, I was very happy in my corporate role. But my courage and aspirations grew to the point that I took on a whole new direction. Having my career coach, Joanna, as a sounding board allowed me to really be strategic and get to know myself. She coached me thro ugh all the interviews, the research, and the questions. It went in parallel with what I was doing academically and after six months everything just clicked. . I went into the EMBA knowing I had nothing to lose and I’ve come out with everything. Great strength, global friends, amazing learning, mentors from professors, a job I love, and the knowledge that I can set my mind to achieve anything and with the right support and resources I’ll get there.† . Kashani Wijetunga British, New Zealand Sri Lankan Associate Director Senior Strategy Consultant CBRE EMBA Class of 2019 . â€Å"It was now or never. I knew that I’d have likely stayed in my neighborhood for years to come if I didn’t take this opportunity. I’d not lived or studied outside of the U.S. before. So I left my job as a global strategist at an advertising agency and moved halfway around the world. I’ve come back a more culturally aware, well-versed person. I’ve realized that everything is a learning experience and an opportunity for growth. Ill definitely carry this mindset with me into the future. Technology and social media allow us to be different people in several places at once. Im excited to see how I can establish myself in whatever city Ill be lucky enough to call home and still maintain deep connections with people all over the world. I’m inspired by my classmates every day. Hearing some of their life stories and how getting this degree fits into their greater mission has been very humbling. My biggest challenge has been finding the ‘right’ path for me. There have been rooms Ive felt like I shouldnt be in, but now Im proud to feel as though I truly belong, wherever I am.† . Dwayne Logan, Jnr. American MBA Class of 2019 . â€Å"It was now or never. I knew that I’d have likely stayed in my neighborhood for years to come if I didn’t take this opportunity. I’d not lived or studied outside of the U.S. before. So I left my job as a global strategist at an advertising agency and moved halfway around the world. I’ve come back a more culturally aware, well-versed person. I’ve realized that everything is a learning experience and an opportunity for growth. Ill definitely carry this mindset with me into the future. Technology and social media allow us to be different people in several places at once. Im excited to see how I can establish myself in whatever city Ill be lucky enough to call home and still maintain deep connections with people all over the world. I’m inspired by my classmates every day. Hearing some of their life stories and how getting this degree fits into their greater mission has been very humbling. My biggest challenge has been finding the ‘right’ path for me. There have been rooms Ive felt like I shouldnt be in, but now Im proud to feel as though I truly belong, wherever I am.† . Dwayne Logan, Jnr. American MBA Class of 2019 . Happy New Year, Hultians! . Happy New Year, Hultians! .