Strategy  to Get 5 Million Customers with Zero Ad Budget

Ryan Holmes  -CEO at Hoot-suite

Successful customers strategy

A little while back, I wrote a post about how new startups may be better off focusing less on buzz and marketing and more on product quality and building organic support. After all, we’ve seen so many super hyped, promising new businesses fall flat lately, especially in the tech world.

To illustrate my points, I used the story of how my company, HootSuite, went from 0 to 5 million users with barely any advertising budget.

As usual, many of you left interesting and insightful comments on the topic, including Khaled Kobrosli who asked: “How did you reach 5 million users in 3 years; how did you let people know about your product?”

And Kundu B.S. who followed up with: “What were some of the specific techniques you used to get from, let's say 500,000 (at which point you probably know it works) to 5 million (when you probably know it's fine-tuned)?”

While there’s no simple answer, I have identified two key secrets behind my company’s early and explosive growth on a very limited budget. Here’s the first:

Give it away for free: Freemium users first; monetization later.

In 2008, we offered HootSuite to the world as a freemium product. The overwhelming majority of users—and we very quickly had hundreds of thousands of them—paid absolutely nothing for the service. Companies who wanted beefed up functionality and extra support paid a monthly fee, from as little as $10 to $1,000 and up.

Strategy  to Get 5 Million Customers with Zero Ad Budget

And, it worked. Having to satisfy all those free users and grow our user base kept us honest. Having to cater to free users forces your product to be accessible, intuitive and—above all—useful. Free users have no vested stake in you, no long-term contract. If you don’t deliver, they’ll move elsewhere. The Internet has no shortage of fantastic free apps and cloud-based services vying for users’ eyeballs.

Meanwhile, those same loyal users provided a steady stream of leads for our sales team. Forget about cold-calling. Free users were premium, paid users in waiting. In many cases, a handful employees at a particular company would begin using our service for free and loving it. Ultimately, the boss would take notice and upgrade to the premium version. Suddenly we had a new client.

In the end, only a tiny percentage of free users will actually convert, but the point is that a steady, predictable percentage do. To this day, over half of our paying customers—including some of HootSuite’s biggest enterprise clients, with six-figure contracts—were once non-paying, free users.

Freemium isn’t at all a new or novel concept though. Companies like Skype, Spotify, Dropbox and Evernote are all built on freemium. Many of these companies tend to be cloud-based, SaaS models, so it costs them very little—practically nothing, at a certain point—to bring on free users.

The basic premise is simple, yet deceptively powerful: Put your energies into developing an irresistible product and loyal user base. Worry about making money later. I can’t imagine doing business any other way.

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China overtakes the US – a symbol of shifting global economic power 

Author: John Hawksworth, Chief Economist, PwC UK 

According to one measure of economic size, GDP at purchasing power parities (PPPs), China could overtake the US as early as 2014 according to new estimates by the World Bank published last week. This is three years earlier than projected in our own World in 2050 study in January 2013, and five years earlier than previous IMF estimates.

The reason for this earlier overtaking date is not, however, that China is growing faster than expected or that the US is growing slower. Rather it reflects new estimates of the relative price levels in the two countries, suggesting that average price levels in China, compared to the US, were comparatively lower in 2011 than had previously been estimated.

As a result, the purchasing power of Chinese national income (GDP at PPPs) is now estimated to have been around 87% of US levels in 2011, compared to previous estimates of just under 70% of US levels in that base year. Since Chinese real GDP growth has been around 7-8% per annum since 2011, with US growth only around 2-3% per annum, calculations by the FT suggest that China could narrowly overtake the US on this measure as early as 2014, with a clear gap emerging in 2015.

This is all rather technical, and if we were to use current market exchange rates, rather than PPPs, to compare GDP levels, we would find that the Chinese economy is only around 60% of the size of the US, with takeover unlikely to happen until the late 2020s. Since businesses have to operate with market exchange rates, rather than PPPs estimated by economic statisticians, this means that the size of the Chinese market in dollar terms will still be quite a lot smaller than the US for a decade or more to come.

Furthermore, since China’s population is more than four times as great as the US, its average income levels (even measured using PPPs) are less than a quarter of those in the US. While there are increasing numbers of wealthy individuals in China, as well as a burgeoning middle class, it’s still not a rich country and may not reach current Western levels of average incomes until the middle of the century.

These caveats are important to note, but they don’t change the bigger picture that global economic power is shifting to the East, as documented in our recent megatrends analysis. This isn’t just about China as these new GDP at PPP estimates also show that:

• India has risen to third place in the world rankings on this measure, overtaking Germany and Japan since 2005
• Indonesia has risen to tenth place, only narrowly behind France and the UK and ahead of Italy.

Three other emerging economies (Brazil, Russia and Mexico) also now rank in the top 12 economies in the world on this measure, driven in part by strong demand from China for their exports of oil, gas, food and metals. This is likely to continue to keep global commodity prices high and volatile for some time, though it will also stimulate new sources of supply such as shale gas and shale oil in the energy sector.

It’s also clear that several emerging economies have run into turbulence recently, which is a reminder that these are still relatively high risk places to do business. Businesses and other investors therefore need a nuanced approach to assessing these risks based on a deep understanding not just of economic factors, but also a broader range of social, political, regulatory and cultural dimensions.

This is what we aim to cover in our ESCAPE index, which was published for the first time in February. This index shows that economies like India, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, Mexico and Nigeria, despite their great long-term potential, still have a long way to go to get their social, political and legal institutions up to the level needed to graduate to the advanced economy club.

So, yes, global economic power is shifting, but this will not be a smooth, linear process. Businesses need to develop appropriate strategies to tackle the opportunities and the risks presented by China and other emerging markets.

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Do you know that you can organize a team and walk in large groups in order to raise money for a community, charity or someone in need? see how it works .,  .

Do you wanna raise money, then read about Fundraising Ideas Click here : Myazpiration

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Can oil prices really fall to… $20 per barrel?

Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oil industry leaders have dismissed talk of the price of crude hitting the $20 lows predicted by analysts, who warned that believing that "oil prices will be with us forever may not be the right way of thinking."

Goldman Sachs stirred energy investors last month when its head of commodity research warned of rising risks of oil prices falling as low as $20 per barrel, in a message that was reiterated on Tuesday.

"The risk of $20 is driven by what we call a breach in storage capacity, meaning that you have supply above demand, you fill every storage tank on planet earth and then you have nowhere to put it," Jeff Currie, head of commodity research at Goldman told CNBC from the annual Oil & Money conference in London.

"(Then) supply has to come down in line with demand. The only way you get that correction is prices crash down to cash costs, which for a U.S. producer, is somewhere around $20 a barrel."

However, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), told CNBC on Tuesday that low prices would prompt U.S. producers to cut output, creating upward price pressure.

"When we look at the next few quarters, we expect U.S. oil production to decline because of low oil prices and in Iraq, production growth will be much slower than in the past. And the demand is creeping up," Birol told CNBC on Tuesday from the Oil & Money conference.

"So therefore, to think that oil prices will be with us forever may not be the right way of thinking."

Symbol	Price		Change	%Change	Volume
OIL	48.19		-0.34	-0.70%	291599
BRENT	51.94		0.02	0.04%	198409
NAT GAS	2.489		0.019	0.77%	77748
RBOB GAS	1.4059		-0.0303	-2.11%	26903

The U.S.-led revolution in the extraction of shale gas via hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" has pushed more oil into the market. At the same time, the OPEC group of oil-producing countries have stood firm in the face of international pressure to cut prices. Meanwhile, Iraq has increased production, while demand growth for energy has slowed, largely due to the deacceleration in the Chinese economy. 

This has helped catalyze an historic collapse in the price of crude oil, with both Brent and WTI trading below $50 per barrel, down from around $110 per barrel until June 2014.

Whether or not U.S. shale players will cut production in response to ongoing low prices is a moot point however. They could instead respond by increasing production in order to satisfy creditors eager for results. Plus, against some odds, shale producers have managed to lower productions costs, although these remain high in comparison to conventional oil production.

Despite its warning, Goldman Sachs said there was a less than 50 percent chance of oil falling to $20 per barrel. Instead, its base case scenario for 2016 was $45 per barrel—a level that Birol said was still too low for U.S. shale producers to maintain current production.

"It is proven it is a very resilient type of production, but this level of prices, $45, $50 is not good enough to induce reinvestments and for production to continue to grow. Therefore, we expect as of next year, production growth will decline in the United States," Birol told CNBC.

OPEC will 'cooperate with anybody…even US'

The secretary general of OPEC, Abadall El-Badri, also forecast that oil production from countries outside his group would fall next year. 

"All I can tell you is that we see improvement," he told CNBC from the Oil & Money conference in on Tuesday.

"We see that non-OPEC supply is declining and in 2016, we see there is an increase in demand … so in a nutshell, there is a balance in the market in 2016. How much this will reflect on the price I really cannot tell," he later added.

El-Badri added that he was open to discussing production concerns with the U.S., or any other non-OPEC country.

"In general, OPEC, as far as I can say as secretary general, we have no problem with cooperating with anybody. Even with the United States producers. If they want to talk to us, we are willing talk to them, because now the situation is really affecting almost everybody. United States, OPEC, non-OPEC, everybody," he said.

S&P takes ratings action on 14 energy firms

Standard & Poor's (S&P) appeared more bullish on oil prices than Goldman, forecasting on Tuesday that Brent oil would average $55 per barrel in 2016, up from an average of $50 for the remainder of this year. 

Nonetheless, the weak price environment saw the ratings agency take ratings action on 14 oil and gas exploration and production companies on Tuesday.

S&P cut the ratings on EnQuest and Tullow Oil to "B" and "B+" respectively and placed BP, Eni, Nostrum, Repsol, Statoil and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic on "CreditWatch Negative."

"Actual and forecast financial results in 2015 are typically weak or very weak," said S&P on Tuesday.

"Correspondingly, credit metrics are likely to be at or below our guidelines for ratings and we see very substantial negative DCF (discounted cash flow) for European oil and gas majors in particular."

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Source: Katy Barnato  .,   ACNBC

Also Read : Walking helps you improve your  memory

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Source: Charles Ekweruo.,and Myazpiration

To support a charity, project or raise funds   see  Myazpiration

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US & UK to play financial 'war game'

Chris Giles  Financial Times

project financing

Jason Hawkes | Iconica | Getty Images

Britain and the US will stage the first transatlantic simulation of a crisis in a large bank on Monday, in a sign of growing confidence that the authorities can now deal with the failure of large institutions.

All of the main players who would need to be involved in a failure of companies such as Bank of America, Goldman  Sachs, Barclays or HSBC will gather in Washington DC to make sure they would know what to do, who to call and how to inform the public.

The move reflects the authorities' view that they are getting close to solving the "too big to fail" problem, even for cross-border banks, outside a full-blown system-wide crisis.

George Osborne, UK chancellor, announced he would be taking part in the "war game" along with Jack Lew, US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, head of the Federal Reserve, Mark Carney, Bank of England governor and other senior officials from both countries.

The simulation will not mimic any particular banks but the authorities will run through the procedures they would follow if a large UK bank with US operations failed and those for a significant US bank with a British presence. Unlike domestic war games held before the financial crisis, Mr Osborne pledged to publicise the results.

Speaking to journalists on the fringes of the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington, Mr Osborne said: "We are going to make sure we can handle an institution that was previously regarded as too big to fail ... and this demonstrates the distance we have come over the past few years to build resilience and learn the lessons of the financial crisis."

He added that the simulations should reassure taxpayers that it was unlikely the governments would have to bail out banks in future as they had to in the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Six years ago, the US and UK authorities fell out over Lehman Brothers, both before it crashed and afterwards in the chaotic bankruptcy that followed. When faced with a real crisis, previously good relations between the two governments and regulators broke down.

Asked whether the war game could come close simulating the stresses in a real crisis, the chancellor, admitted that the exercise was not trying to recreate a crisis in real time. "It is an opportunity to make sure our different, but similar, domestic arrangements work."

Mr Osborne said the purpose of the exercise was to make sure every player, including politicians knew their own responsibilities and who needed to act, which creditors would have to take a hit and how to communicate the authorities' actions to the public.

"No war game is like war itself," the chancellor said, "but it will mean that we are far better prepared and the principals will have asked themselves the difficult questions."

US & UK to play financial 'war game'

The war game comes at the start of a series of international events in banking regulation including new stress tests for British and European banks later this month and the G20 summit in November, which faces a deadline to come up with durable proposals to end the too big to fail problems.

IMF data published at the meetings showed that Britain had to spend 10.5 per cent of national income propping up its financial sector in 2008-09 and has subsequently recovered only about a quarter of that money. In contrast, the US support amounted to 4.5 per cent of its gross domestic product and it has already recovered the lot.

Some countries had a much greater burden, however, with Ireland having to increase debt by 41 per cent of GDP and Greece 34 per cent.

Lets start the discussion....

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 Chris Giles  Financial Times .,  Charles Ekweruo., Myazpiration.,  Healthy living  US

Note: If you are an entrepreneur (create your own business) , creative (projects )or need money for an important cause (hospital bills, school fees, birthdays parties, funeral, marriage etc) you must understand how to raise funds via social network see Crowdfunding sites