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ALPHABET
They crushed their Q2…
The Numbers:
Earnings per share: $11.75
Revenue: $32.66 billion
Revenue from advertising: $28 billion
Net income: $8.26 billion
Net income, including fines: $3.19billion
Stock performance was also very good, going up 5%, before settling at around 3.7% up.
The Crew’s thoughts on it:
Google is continuing to grow at a very fast pace. Even with the huge fine from the European Commission, they are not doing too bad at all.
Revenue grew 26% year over year – that’s just superb given Google’s size.
Advertising still dominates in their revenue but cloud and hardware are also growing.
Overall, we don’t expect Google to slow down, which makes it still one of the best places to advertise.
Speaking of Alphabet, let’s take a closer look at YouTube…
YouTube grows its user base and its problems
YouTube noted it now has 1.9 billion logged-in monthly users, who watch over 180 million hours of YouTube on TV screens every day.
Overall interactions, such as likes, comments and chats, grew by more than 60% year over year, and live streams increased by 10x over the last three years.
In terms of its product updates, YouTube said that Channel Memberships, which are currently open to those with more than 100,000 subscribers, will roll out to more creators in the “coming months.”
When it comes to YouTube’s content problem there was not a lot more said than that it’s one of YouTube’s “biggest priorities” and that it’s seeing “positive” results.
The DaddyOFive/FamilyOFive story shows that results aren’t that positive yet.
Michael and Heather Martin, the creators of channel DaddyOFive, are serving probation in Maryland after being convicted of emotionally and physically abusing their children in “prank” videos for their channel. They even lost custody of their two younger children as a result.
They tried restarting their YouTube venture with the FamilyOFive channel but was taken down after it reached 400k subscribers in July 2018.
Just like anywhere on the Internet, there will be people doing stupid things, and that hurts the platform’s reputation and its ability to attract advertisers. Nobody wants to be associated with parents that abuse their children.
We are still quite optimistic about YouTube as a traffic source. Video ads are much more popular these days. Facebook helped increase their popularity, and now advertisers have 2 huge platforms where they can use their video assets – FB and YT.
MINDSET
Mo Ali Aguel bringing the heat
While travelling and speaking at conferences, Mo somehow got the time to write a huge Facebook post about the entrepreneurial mindset.
The main issue he brings up is this mindset that too many people have to just find the latest trick or technique, and also aiming too low once they have a business going.
Some keys to success, in Mo’s opinion?
Mindset and beliefs
“Work on your mindset.
Your mind is a muscle, it needs training.
Your mind is a very sensitive muscle that can get stronger.
Cut out every negative thought you may have or the people surrounding you may inject.”
Your circle
“You are the average of your circle. If you hangout with average people you will be average.
If you connect with exceptional people, you will have no choice but to be exceptional.
Work on evolving your circle.
Go out there and meet people and work on those relationships.”
Hire people
“You can’t build an empire on your own. You just can’t.
Hire people and treat them well. Trust me, if you treat your people well, they will follow you beyond what you can even imagine. Your company becomes a tribe.
A Tribe sticks together through the good and bad, through happiness and sorrow.
Your business is as strong as your team.”
There are 17 others keys he talks about and we highly recommend you to read his full post right here.
Facebook is officially building an internet satellite: Athena
Facebook has confirmed to be working on an experimental satellite that could beam internet down to Earth using millimetre wave radio signals.
“While we have nothing to share about specific projects at this time, we believe satellite technology will be an important enabler of the next generation of broadband infrastructure, making it possible to bring broadband connectivity to rural regions where internet connectivity is lacking or non-existent”, a Facebook rep said.
Apparently, Facebook plans to launch the Athena satellite already in early 2019.
While companies like SpaceX are hoping to achieve their goals of providing a substantial amount of broadband by launching literally thousands of small satellites into low Earth orbit beam internet down to the ground Athena won’t provide a substantial amount of broadband by itself.
Musk and Zuckerberg have their AI debates, where they heavily disagree.
When it comes to space, the two also collided – or well, Musk’s SpaceX rocket exploded and destroyed a FB satellite with it.
That happened 2 years ago. Maybe 2019 will be round 2 of SpaceX and FB working together, hopefully with better results this time.
E-COMMERCE
Shopify launches Shopify Academy
The way Shopify makes money is by getting more people to use their product.
The way to get more people to use their product is to teach more people e-commerce.
And that’s why Shopify launched their Academy.
It’s a collection of courses that you can access for free to help you build your e-commerce business using Shopify’s tools.
Before you go and pay for any course, it’s probably a good idea to check out this Academy.
Super rough, but valuable, roasting of someone who spent their whole budget
Christian Sprague posted his experience with his bikini dropshipping store in the Ecom Empires group.
All his budget spent, 0 sales!
While this track record doesn’t seem that promising people are giving a lot of useful feedback in the comments.
Just to pick a few key points of criticism.
When you’re trying to sell bikinis you need to put your focus on women. The ads look appealing to men – it made us think it’s an invite to a beach party. But most potential customers of your audience don’t look like the model and might feel intimidated.
To state delivery time is up to 45 days (when the summer is over) is something you should try to avoid. Christian himself came up with the solution “Should I limit the countries I ship to? Because most 1st world countries have it at their door in 10 days.” – YES.
It also turned out that at first Christian picked his products himself and then turned to using sales data from third parties. Since you’re selling a product for women advice from trendy and fashionable women might help.
Long story short – If you run an e-commerce store check out all the comments. Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
*Swoosh* goes the hyperloop
SpaceX held another hyperloop pod competition and the team in WARR Hyperloop managed to win again.
This time around they achieved a top speed of 467km/h. That’s fast!
If you don’t know what this hyperloop thing is, let us refresh your memory.
There’s this guy named Elon Musk who often has some pretty wacky ideas. This is one of those.
In short, the idea is to have low-pressure tubes and then have passenger pods go through them really really fast.
The Wikipedia entry goes into more detail for it, including a healthy dose of criticism around its safety and practicality.
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