SEO Checklist: What are the things that matter to get number one rank on Google.

No clicks required: Artificial-intelligence is changing how we shop, Boxed CEO says

A day where shoppers don't even have to think about what they need to purchase — let alone push a button — is quickly approaching, Chieh Huang, Boxed co-founder and CEO, said Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The machine learning algorithm is getting better and better" in being used in e-commerce, he said.

Boxed, started in 2013, is a bulk-items e-retailer currently working on rolling out new features that are primarily being tested in a business-to-business capacity, for now. The website has more than 1,400 SKUs, ranging from Pepsi products to paper towels to General Mills' Cheerios. And everything is sold in bulk, at a discount.

Similar to Amazon's Dash Button, Boxed is working on its own, easy reorder system. The company has been playing with artificial intelligence to take the idea to the next level — where no "push of a button" is required, Huang said.

Amazon's Dash Button, with one click, will send Prime Members their favorite, most-used products — ranging from Pampers diapers and Bounce detergent, to Gatorade and Cheez-Its.

Boxed is learning to determine when customers are going to run out of items, and when they will want more. A pilot test called Boxed Concierge automatically fulfills shoppers' items in bulk, shipping them without even asking for approval on the receiving end.

It seems like a risk, but Huang said Boxed hasn't received any returns or complaints, thus far. It's easier shipping items automatically in a business-to-business relationship, he said, but business-to-consumer becomes tricky and still requires a little bit of interaction.

"You tell us 'snooze,' you don't like the item, you don't like the price ... we learn more about you," he said.

Boxed brings in more than $100 million in annual revenue, and about 80 percent of its shoppers fall between the ages of 25 and 44.

Should Boxed's pilot test prove successful, it threatens to encroach on brick-and-mortar wholesale retailers' businesses. Huang said he envisions a world where people don't need to visit warehouse clubs anymore.

How To Make Money Online Using Your Blog

Blogging is crucial! I have stressed enough about it in my lessons and articles as its a great tool that can help you make money online. It is a platform where a person can share his views or passion about anything and everything. All he has to do is sign up on a blogging network or host the content on his own website. Blogging has evolved from being a hobby few years back to full time profession today. In India, people still think blogging cannot make a full time profession but they’re wrong. Amit Agarwal, Top Indian Blogger earns up to INR 30,00,000 per month! There are many bloggers like Lakshmi Sharath who quit her full time Marketing job and started blogging about Travel, which took her to 10+ countries on the expense of their tourism boards.

Blogging is essential:

• For building your career.
• For sharing your knowledge with the world.
• For getting discovered on the Internet.
• To showcase your talent.
• To become popular on internet
• To make some quick bucks on Internet.

Know the blog basics:

If you are planning to get started with blogging, here are some basics you need to know and follow:

Choose a platform – WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Medium etc are some popular platforms you can choose (I recommend WordPress).

Select Domain Name and Hosting – Brainstorm thoroughly when choosing a domain name. Let the name be short, memorable and not confusing for readers or else just go with your name. There are plenty of hosting services available with numerous plans so do through research and choose wisely.

Design/Modify the blog – If you go with the ready template then customize it to your desire look and feel. And if you want to design the same it would be far better.

Add Plugins – Plugins will add more value to your blog. They will help your blog work faster and smarter. Security, publishing, and monitoring plugins are some you just can’t miss installing.

Start Writing – Start with About Us, Contact Page, Products, Services pages etc and start writing new blog posts everyday or at least once in two days! Learn more about blogging and content amplification here.

Now that you know how to get started with the blog, here are some excellent ways to make money with your blog. However, if your primary objective is to replace your full-time income with blogging then understand it is by no means a get rich quick ordeal. Blogging requires hard work, dedication, research and most importantly the urge for writing. Do it for the love and joy of blogging, money will slowly follow you. So it’s time to brush up your language skills, find your passion and start making money.

Ways to Make Money with Blogging

1.Enroll With Advertisement Providers

This method is use commonly to monetize one’s blog. The advantage with this method is that it is very simple, making it quite popular. Various networks like Google Adsense, Viglink, and BuySellAds provide ads to be displayed on your blog. Most of these networks will charge you a fee of 20% to 40% of your total earning for finding relevant advertisers.

Understanding Popular Ad types:

CPC/PPC Ads – Cost Per Click otherwise known as Pay Per Click are banner ads that can be placed on sidebar or in-between content of your site. You will be paid for each ad that is clicked by the reader.

Example Network for CPC/PPC Ads – Google Adsense, Revcontent, BidVertiser Infolinks and so on.

CPM Ads – Cost Per 1000 Impression is what we call it CPM Ads. CPM deals generally come from agencies that are willing to pay you a fix amount upon touching 1,000 impressions on placed ads. CPM is most effective to incorporate as you will be paid even if the reader does not click on ads. However, you need to have at least 1,000 visitors a day to survive in the game.

Example Network for CPM Ads – Amazon CPM Ads, AdBlade, Propeller Ads, Conversant Media and so on.

How to get started?

Quite simple, sign up with the provider, apply for the advertisements you wish to place on your blog. Once the application is accepted for your blog, you will receive codes for the ads. Whenever a user clicks on these ads, commission is generated per click. The earnings per click may vary from $.01 to $50 depending on various factors pertaining to your blog.

If you are using wordpress, you can use Google Adsense plugins! This will help you get the advertisements activated for your blog.

Once you start using Adsense account, Google will start placing ads on your blog. As you will aim at increasing traffic to your blog through various means you will earn revenue as and when people will click on the ads.

SheoMaker

Jeremy Schoemaker From ShoeMoney.com

Here is an example of Jeremy Schoemaker who made $1,32,994 US $ using Google Adsense on his blog Shoemoney.com

2.Direct Advertisements

Direct Advertisement or sponsored ads has certain edge over the previous method. This is one of the best method to make money using your blog after you gain exposure and see traffic flowing. These kinds of ads are independent one, unlike Adsense which select the ads that need to be placed. 3rd party Advertisement Networks also keep a considerable amount between you and the actual advertiser. This may even sound similar but here you select and review which ads are being placed on your blog unlike Adsense where you have no control over the ads placed. You quote the price directly here eliminating the middleman. Finding the advertiser may be a hiccup but once you have established a list of clientele, you can make a fortune with your blog.

How to Locate Direct Advertisers?

First create an “Advertise Here” page with complete detail about your Alexa Ranking, PR, Daily Traffic, your Klout score and other details that your advertiser might need. Then use the following tips for locating Direct Advertisers:

Google – Major advertisers use Google AdWords for online advertising; search them online using your website related keyword. Contact them by sending a mailer about your ad selling service; you never know what might click!

Check Popular Relevant Blogs – If you often blog, then you already know some other popular blogs in your niche. Check what ads their advertisers are placing, offer a good deal to those advertisers to attract them to your site.

Use Advertising Networks – Brands that are already advertising using third party networks are best to be approached for direct advertisement. They will be more interested as they will no more have to spend on networks and dealing with direct seller is much more convenient.

Tips: 

Have some space allocated on your blog UI at the top or on the right hand side that shows ‘Advertise Here’ feature.

Advertise Here

Have a pre-fixed cost defined on the website or the automated emailer when people make an enquiry.Talk to the Ad Networks, or key players, regional players in your industry for a fixed advertisement on the website.     Remember, people want to see how much of traffic do you drive on your website and how relevant is the traffic.

3. Backlinks Commission

Backlinks refers to all the links on your blog that refer to other websites. It is more like you referring to another website on a related article. For Instance you’re a well known tech blogger and backlinking the words like “OnePlus One” to Phone’s official website and “Buy OnePlus One” to Amazon’s Page.

Quality backlinking can also boost up your chances of webpage appearing on Search Engine. The more links related to certain topics appear, the further it pushes itself up on search engine. However, you cannot keep this exercise as a part of direct sale like advertisements on your website. Backlink promises can be part of a review of the product / service and it would be your genuine effort. Too much of backlinks from same article to multiple clients can even result your blog in the Sandbox (In nutshell, Google will penalize you) as Google is completely against buying and selling of backlinks.

Writing Paid Reviews

Most bloggers have a definite field for blogging. Once they’ve completed a certain time on their blogs, they should have gained a certain level of knowledge, expertise and skills relating to it. If you are able to recreate the knowledge with marketing skills, you’ll be surprised to know that there are number of brands/people that will pay you for writing content for them.

Get a dedicated blog website, with all the details relating to such projects or find the needy party. Complete the task in professional manner and get paid. Pay will mostly be fixed by you but would depend on your site’s hits, influencer engagements and popularity.

Best Paid Review Sites

Sharedreviews – Sharedreviews have over 400 categories for blogger to write about. It is a revenue-sharing website, where the owner share half of the revenue generated through advertisement with writers.

PayPerPost  – Here advertisers demand you to write about 100-200 word review/post about their product/brand/service. Having a blog is a must, as those sponsored blog need to be posted on your own blog.

Digitaljournal – Again a revenue sharing website wherein you get a portion of revenue generated from ads, so write more and earn more is the policy.

Constant-Content  – Here, you write the content and the website sell it for you. Revenue earned will be shared and higher ratio will mostly be in your favour.

Epinions – If you love to share opinions and reviews then trying out this site is a must. If you write longer and quality reviews it won’t be difficult to reach $100 in a month with epinions.

In India you can use websites like:

Indiblogger.in: Indi blogger is one of India’s oldest blogger networks. Most of the new networks are getting evolved from this platform or at-least the benchmark is done considering this platform. They have many indibloggers meetup, great giveaway based blogging campaigns and blogging contests (you should participate in indiblogger initiatives at-least to network with other bloggers). They are currently running one of the popular campaigns called – Flipkart Outdoors.

Blogmint.com: Its a market place for bloggers to pick up brands who is willing to hire bloggers who can review them or their products or write for their blogs.

Blog Mint

Blog Mint is Willing to Pay Rs. 500 to Bloggers Who Can Write for Olympes.com

Digital Influencer (dinfluencer.com): Its a recently launched platform by Team echoVME with some absolutely cool Live projects. Brands like Cashkaro.com, Urban Tree Infrastructures, Apollo White Dental Care, Casenation and more have their projects placed for bloggers exclusively.

Chu Chu Tv

Review Chu Chu Tv & You Can Earn Rs. 1000 Worth Amazon Voucher (Provided Your Blog Gets Shortlisted)

• Influencer Marketing India
• Apply & Win Apollo White Dental Free Treatments (Provided You Get Shortlisted)
• Services and Digital Products 

If you know what you’re good at, then start your own set of services. Like, you can start Logo Creation, Content for Websites, Photography, Blog Migration, Website Building or any other services that you want to offer. There are a lot of ideas that would work great online and you could use the opportunity to gain from your passion or hobby. Feature your previous work with a good description, details, contact and a good user interface always helps!

Let you blog be services centric: If you are a designer, showcase your design skills exclusively on your blog! Portfolio, choice of colors you use, your photos while you design and promote your blogs all across and do the right SEO for the keywords used in the content strategies. These services can be driven with Consulting pages, Get a logo done in 100 US $ pages – you need to have a strong call to action for the services or products you are planning to sell.

On my blog I sell my book: Social Media for Business – On an average about 200 to 500 book gets sold every year through no hard selling. People who reads content are more likely to buy your book as you become trust agent on internet. Another popular Social Media influencer of the world: Pam Moore is very clear with her communication on her blog/website. When you click on her contact page it clearly conveys her costs of consulting or if you wish her to review a particular product – a specific price needs to be paid.

social media for business

Initial $500 Consultation + Review Your Product ($500 Fee) Is A Great Way To Make Money!

Where to Sell Services Outside Your Blog?

eCommerce Blog – If you want to sell digital good or service then create a shopping cart using Shopify or 3dcart or PayUMoney ( I personally use PayUMoney to sell my books) and start selling to expand your business. Most of the eCommerce website offer 14days to 1 Month free trial, so trying out selling online is of totally worth!

Fiverr – Fiverr is a most popular marketplace today for selling almost anything that you can imagine. The base “Gig” at Fiverr starts at $5 and “Extra Gig” can shoot up to even $100 if you really have something best to offer.

Gigbucks – Much older than Fiverr and allows you to sell services ranging from $5 to $50. There is no membership charge and no limit for seller posts. The site charges you 20% commission on each transaction.

Fourerr – Fourerr is an excellent alternative to Fiverr, where seller can sell their services starting at $4. This again will charge 20% commission for each product/services sold.

Redlr – Redlr is a fun marketplace where you can share small services starting from $5. You can also response to the buyer need and get best rates.

Affiliate Marketing

Popularity of affiliate marketing these days has shoot up to a different level. It is today a main source of profits and revenue for major merchants and brands. This method can bring in good amount of income from your blog too. You need to place a product or service on your blog with sufficient description. When a person buys the product or service from your website, you get paid. It requires certain homework. You need to know what the people are looking to purchase and if the product supports the content of your blog. Do not over do promoting same brand’s product or services.

Also, don’t make your blog full of such posts. Place the product between all your posts subtly. Find the product or service you want to affiliate with. Apply with them and get approved. Most websites take 24-72 hours to confirm the due amount and the commission will be paid on 25-50% on the sale value of the good.

Types of Affiliate Marketing –

Pay Per Click (PPC) – Here the merchant pay you whenever a visitor click his advertisement placed on your website. Best rate per click would be $1 per click.

Pay Per Lead (PPL) – Insurance and financial firm are generally interested in PPL where application and contact form are placed on your website. You earn a certain amount whenever these forms are filled by visitors.

Pay Per Sale (PPS) – In this form the advertiser will pay you a fixed percentage of fee for each qualified leads.

Pay Per Performance (PPP) – With PPP the marketer pay a commission range from 15% to 20% when a visitor make purchase or show interest in buying by filling the contact form.

Example Network for Affiliate Marketing – Commission Junction, ClickBank, and Google Affiliate (These are some brilliant platforms from where you drive Affiliate commission). In Indian context you can work with Snapdeal Affiliate Network, Flipkart Affiliate Network and Amazon Affiliate Network – Review the products on the blog and if someone makes a purchase through your reviews and recommendations you will get a share of the sale.

Premium Membership

Premium Membership site is website that charges recurring fee for access to premium content. This method cannot be applicable to all bloggers but a few well known bloggers who are masters in the particular field of blogging. They can create premium site access, services, products or newsletter for the unique content they’d offer to their readers or users. Create a special landing page for details about premium access and give a clear view about what you’re offering on the general blog. Set the price and offer and get paid whenever someone applies for it. A premium membership site can be created using MemberPress plugin https://www.memberpress.com/ with WordPress.

How to attract visitors to Premium Membership?

Allow Free Premium Downloads – Offering free eBooks, or other valuable digital downloads will help you build email mailing list and is also a proven method to encourage new members to sign up.

Free Online Course – Visitors are generally asked to pay onetime or monthly fee to get access to the lessons on relevant niche. Members will more likely sign up if you offer them a free online course for example; I’m offering Free Digital Marketing Course .

Online Publications – Create weekly or monthly publications and charge visitors for that excusive content. Start with offering first 10 content for free, and for more content they need to sign-up for subscription.

 Jon Loomer – one of the popular Facebook Marketers runs a premium membership for absolutely cool workshops and content online for US $ 97. There are many bloggers who converts their subscribers to premium members – so that they can have a closed group interaction with specific set of audience who is very keen on learning few things ‘hands-on’ virtually.

Sponsored Blog Posts 

Many a times companies or individuals would want you to cover a story for them – about their products or case studies. They might be willing to provide you content or fill the template you have in place. This is more likely to happen as your blog becomes popular with time. These stories are called sponsored stories and you can proudly present those stories as sponsored blog post. There are higher chances that you will also get quality content from the contributors – you can restrict the style that you want them to write on. Remember, there should be a section for ‘Guest Blog / Sponsored Blog’ so that readers get to know that you are open for sponsorships.

Gigabit Wireless (GI-FI)

Gigabit Wireless (Gi-Fi) is the next generation Technology. Gi-Fi refers to wireless communication at a data rate of more than one billion bits per second.

 Gi-Fi is the world's first transceiver integrated on a single chip that operated at 60 GHZ on the CMOS(Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) process. Gi-Fi allows wireless transfer audio and video data up to 5 gigabits per second, that is ten times the current maximum wireless transfer rate, at one tenth cost. 
Gi-Fi was developed at the National Information and Communication Technology Research Center in Melbourne, Australia.

Network Evolution:

                                     img source: Google image
 

Why Gi-Fi: The reason for pushing into Gi-Fi technology is because of-
 (i) Slow data rates.
(ii) Low range of frequency operation.i.e. Bluetooth and wi-fi.
(iii) High power consumption.

. The Core Component of Gi-Fi system is the subscriber station.
. Gi-Fi support standard of IEEE 802.15.3C wireless PAN.
. An 802.15.3C based system often uses small antenna at the subscriber station, the antenna is mounted on the roof.
. Gi-Fi support line of sight operation.
.  the wireless span is computer network used for communication among computer devices close to one person.

Gi-Fi Features: 
. Small size.
. Cost effective.
. High security.
. Quick development.
. High portable.
. High mobility.
.  Low power consumption.
. High Speed data transfer rate.

 




 

Top 10 Hot Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies

The market for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is flourishing. Beyond the hype and the heightened media attention, the numerous startups and the internet giants racing to acquire them, there is a significant increase in investment and adoption by enterprises. A Narrative Science survey found last year that 38% of enterprises are already using AI, growing to 62% by 2018. Forrester Research predicted a greater than 300% increase in investment in artificial intelligence in 2017 compared with 2016. IDC estimated that the AI market will grow from $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. Coined in 1955 to describe a new computer science sub-discipline, “Artificial Intelligence” today includes a variety of technologies and tools, some time-tested, others relatively new. To help make sense of what’s hot and what’s not, Forrester just published a TechRadar report on Artificial Intelligence (for application development professionals), a detailed analysis of 13 technologies enterprises should consider adopting to support human

decision-making. Based on Forrester’s analysis, here’s my list of the 10 hottest AI technologies: Natural Language Generation: Producing text from computer data. Currently used in customer service, report generation, and summarizing business intelligence insights.

Sample vendors: Attivio, Automated Insights, Cambridge Semantics, Digital Reasoning, Lucidworks, Narrative Science, SAS, Yseop. Speech Recognition: Transcribe and transform human speech into format useful for computer applications. Currently used in interactive voice response systems and mobile applications. Sample vendors: NICE, Nuance Communications, OpenText, Verint Systems.

Virtual Agents: “The current darling of the media,” says Forrester (I believe they refer to my evolving relationships with Alexa), from simple chatbots to advanced systems that can network with humans. Currently used in customer service and support and as a smart home manager. Sample vendors: Amazon, Apple, Artificial Solutions, Assist AI, Creative Virtual, Google, IBM, IPsoft, Microsoft, Satisfi.

Machine Learning Platforms: Providing algorithms, APIs, development and training toolkits, data, as well as computing power to design, train, and deploy models into applications, processes, and other machines. Currently used in a wide range of enterprise applications, mostly `involving prediction or classification.

Sample vendors: Amazon, Fractal Analytics, Google, H2O.ai, Microsoft, SAS, Skytree. AI-optimized Hardware: Graphics processing units (GPU) and appliances specifically designed and architected to efficiently run AI-oriented computational jobs. Currently primarily making a difference in deep learning applications.

Sample vendors: Alluviate, Cray, Google, IBM, Intel, Nvidia. Decision Management: Engines that insert rules and logic into AI systems and used for initial setup/training and ongoing maintenance and tuning. A mature technology, it is used in a wide variety of enterprise applications, assisting in or performing automated decision-making.

Sample vendors: Advanced Systems Concepts, Informatica, Maana, Pegasystems, UiPath. Deep Learning Platforms: A special type of machine learning consisting of artificial neural networks with multiple abstraction layers. Currently primarily used in pattern recognition and classification applications supported by very large data sets.

Sample vendors: Deep Instinct, Ersatz Labs, Fluid AI, MathWorks, Peltarion, Saffron Technology, Sentient Technologies. Biometrics: Enable more natural interactions between humans and machines, including but not limited to image and touch recognition, speech, and body language. Currently used primarily in market research. Sample vendors: 3VR, Affectiva, Agnitio, FaceFirst, Sensory, Synqera, Tahzoo.

Robotic Process Automation: Using scripts and other methods to automate human action to support efficient business processes. Currently used where it’s too expensive or inefficient for humans to execute a task or a process. Sample vendors: Advanced Systems Concepts, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UiPath, WorkFusion.

Text Analytics and NLP: Natural language processing (NLP) uses and supports text analytics by facilitating the understanding of sentence structure and meaning, sentiment, and intent through statistical and machine learning methods. Currently used in fraud detection and security, a wide range of automated assistants, and applications for mining unstructured data. Sample vendors: Basis Technology, Coveo, Expert System, Indico, Knime, Lexalytics, Linguamatics, Mindbreeze, Sinequa, Stratifyd, Synapsify.

World's Youngest IBM Watson Programmer

Tech News Nation: Today, we’ll read about a 12-year-old app developer Tanmay Bakshi, who is making headlines after his recent talk at IBM Developer Connect In Bengaluru. He has developed an IBM Watson-based algorithm named AskTanmay, which is also the world’s first Web-Based NLQA system.

Tanmay Bakshi, who lives in Canada, is the world’s youngest IBM

Watson programmer. To my surprise, he started coding at a very young age of five. Tanmay has developed an algorithm called “AskTanmay”, which is designed by taking assistance from IBM Watson’s cognitive APIs. It’s the world’s first Web-Based NLQA system.

During his address at the developer conference, he showed how AskTanmay solves queries pertaining to ‘Person,’ ‘Organisation,’ ‘Location,’ or ‘Date’ type.

Tanmay has even open sourced his app to make it more accessible to his fellow developers.

Ever since publishing his first iOS app on the App Store, he has learned new technologies at an exponential rate, becoming fluent in today’s all major programming languages.

He is currently in seventh grade and a co-author of a book called Hello Swift, which teaches the basics of iOS coding to the young learners.

You can watch Tanmay’s talk below:

Tanmay also loves to share his knowledge via his YouTube channel Tanmay Teaches that hosts more than 80 solution videos.

Currently, Tanmay is working to develop a way to make Apple Watch work independently from the iPhone, an application to help devs and students find algorithms, and a couple of other iOS apps.

“I want to become a better developer, write more books, deliver more keynote addresses and share my knowledge through my YouTube channel,” he says.

10 upcoming Google Projects !

We have seen great leaps in digital technology in past the past five years. Smartphones, cloud computing, multi-touch tablets, these are all innovations that revolutionized the way we live and work. However, believe it or not, we are just getting started. Technology will get even better. In the future, we could live like how people in science fiction movies did.