How to Be Happy Without Getting Lucky

A perfect spot for thinking and breathing

 

All the great ideas here are from @Naval
I just edit it so I could comeback and read it from time to time.

1. Seek wealth, not money or status.

Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep.
Money is how we transfer time and wealth.
Status is your place in the social hierarchy.‏

2. Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible.
If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.‏

3. Ignore people playing status games.
They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.‏

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How To Attract More Users?

As an app developer, the biggest problem you have is “How can I show my wonderful creation to every user possible?” and this isn’t as straightforward as “tell your friends”. Users today are informed, and use different channels to find, understand, and get apps.
Did you know that 3 out of 4 users do some kind of research before installing an app?!
So what is the problem?
Among all those informed users, how do you attract new, interested users that will generate revenue for you?
You don’t just want a ton of users, you want a ton of users who love your app.
So, how do you wade through the horde of less-than-interesting users, for the ones that truly matter? First, we need to see where users are searching (see the image below).

 

Second, we need to see what are good ways to find new users that will match our service (or app).

Three recommended methods

Bitcoin And Crypto Currency

Bitcoin is a decentralized, anonymous, digital-only currency that’s lately gotten a lot of public attention. Like any new technology, there are many different aspects and a lot of ‘noise’.
In this 4min video, I tried to focus on the important stuff.

Read more: Crypto-currency 101 and the bitcoin revolution

 

 

The Art of Retaining Users (Video)

This is the 3rd episode of “The Zen of Monetization”.
It covers three principles for users’ retention:

• Understand user behavior in your app.
• Identify roadblocks to retention (e.g screen tracking and events).
• Use tactics & tools to re-engage users (e.g. use a specific method to specific users’ segment).

Understand Your Cohort Analysis Report

I know, it sounds scary. But the true is that it’s not complicated, and once you get the logic behind this report, you can gain lots of useful information out of it. It can help you to gain insights and actionable items so let’s see how and when to use it. First, let’s define it.

What?

Cohort analysis is a subset of behavioral analytics that takes the data from a given platform (e.g. eCommerce site, web app, game etc’) and rather than looking at all users as one unit, it breaks them into related groups for analysis. These related groups (=cohorts), usually share common characteristics or experiences within a defined time-span.

See it in action

In the charts below you can see a popular cohort analysis: It groups customers based on the date when they made their first purchase. Studying the spending trends of cohorts from different periods in time can indicate if the quality of the average customer being acquired is increasing or decreasing in over time. You can also see if your marketing efforts at the time made a difference. In the case below, we can see during 2013 (the circles) it was a slow start, but after a new campaign, that took the first two weeks of March, things got better. As for 2014 (the triangles), we had a good start, but between March and May there was no growth, later during May major improvements in the product boost the spending to a new record.

Use House Ads To Improve Your Revenue

As developers and entrepreneurs, we have mountains of data.
Data that could change your business and move it forward. However, there is so much data that it’s overwhelming in some cases. Life force you, in some cases, to ignore it. But that’s the wrong path to follow! You wish data that is actionable and moving your revenue forward.

The freemium model was one of the reasons to a huge disruption in the data world. We see it clearly in the gaming market. For game developers, the need to understand users through data is particularly acute. In the past 2 years, we learn that everyone is a gamer: there were 1.78B gamers worldwide as of August [Source] and the number keep moving up. Since we are talking here on free installation, we do need to make money after the users installed our game. It will be good 

Now, because users act differently the foundation of any monetization strategy should be your analytics.
There will be segments in your userbase that will:

• Pay for In-App Purchases
• Click on ads
• Engage with certain types of ads (e.g. full-screen video)

A custom monetization strategy for each user means you are maximizing your revenue. There are few (new) tools in AdMob to help you to do this. It’s call ‘audience aware’ because it will tailored the right solution to the right user at the right time.

Monetization Questions For Entrepreneurs #StartupTips

“The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge” – Thomas Berger

One of the critical times for startup is when it needs to define what will be the path to profitability. It’s a real challenge, and one of the ways to come up with the right plan is to ask the right questions.

A set of questions that could lead you in the right path:

1. How do you define the relationship between ‘growth’ and monetization for your startup?
   Do we need to focus on one first?
   What is the mark to blend the two?
   Can we do both?
2. What do you think about ‘starting a business’ and not ‘starting a startup’?
   The main point here is to get out of the ‘la-la land’ of startups that don’t need ‘revenue’ and look at the world of building a profitable business from the get-go.
3. What other bold/good/recent startup(s) are executing a good monetization plan?
   Can we do something similar? Which parts of their plan we wish to test first?
4. Are there several platforms that we can leverage in our monetization paths?
   In other words, if we are a startup that is building an application for iOS/Android.
   Can we also create an amazing web experience and enjoy it as another platform for engagement?
5. How your purchasing process (or billing) is working today?
   What pitfalls other should learn from it?
   How you optimize it?
6. Where are the gaps (or opportunities) in the current state of your online commerce?
7. What are the top 3 action items that you can take in order to monetize your work better at this stage?
   This might be a great question to ask every 1-3 months.
   Moreover, you might want to keep A/B testing your actions.
8. Any interesting trends you see in the market around your startup?
   What are the leaders doing?
   What other direct competitors are doing?
   What are indirect competitors are doing?
9. Can we improve the usage of our analytics in order to gain more insights for our KPIs?

For more thoughts on the subject (with some tips from experience) – Join 4100+ students and check out my course on Udacity “App Monetization“.

Good luck!

In-App Payments On The Web

There are many examples of applications that are free but let you add features with in-app payments. Think of a game that is free to play, but offers additional levels or virtual goods for a certain price (a low one in most cases). It’s very common to see applications that are free at the ‘trial period’ and later gives premium users the option to buy a specific level that match their needs. It’s a good practice to give users your product or service without any barriers (e.g credit card information). If they find it useful, they will pay for it with a smile.

Few examples

• A designing web app that give the options to buy more projects (or more shapes, tools, features).
• A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application, that offer certain capabilities for a price.
  The basic options to collect and manage your contacts will be free, but if you wish to send emails they will charge you.
• A game that let you advances more quickly if you buy certain improvements. For example a ‘magic’ power that give you the ability to pass a difficult stage (e.g. the mighty eagle in Angry Birds).