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Tips to Apply For a Money Market Account

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | Tips to Apply For a Money Market AccountA money market account is a type of savings account that has a high-interest rate. These accounts have very low balance requirements and may have transaction limits. A good money market account is a safe bet for investors, but it is important to consider your financial goals and personal situation before you decide to open one. There are a few tips to remember when opening the highest-paying money market accounts. Here are some: – Make sure you check the bank’s interest rate requirements. – Research the banks’ deposit and transaction limits before you choose an account.

You can open a money market account online

If you have an existing checking account, you can go through the process of opening a money market account online. Most banks have websites that will allow you to open an internet account and access your information. Once you’ve established a connection, you’re ready to make a deposit. You can withdraw and deposit funds anytime you like, as long as you have a sufficient balance.

Check out the bank’s fees

The bank’s fees and charges can be high. However, money market accounts can be convenient to use and can pay higher interest rates than traditional bank accounts. Some banks even have no minimum balance requirements, meaning that you can use them for routine bill-paying. Ultimately, you can open a money market account with any bank that is willing to provide you with a low minimum balance.

Know the bank’s requirements

When opening a money market account, you’ll need to check the bank’s minimum balance requirements and daily balance requirements. Some banks even waive their monthly maintenance fee if you meet minimum requirements. You need to do your homework. If you have any questions or concerns, make sure to contact the bank or the financial institution to determine if they have a minimum balance requirement. You can find out if the bank offers this benefit or not.

strong>Option for transferring money

While the money market account is a popular option for transferring money, you should keep in mind that the interest rates may vary. Many people do not realize that they can receive higher interest rates with a money market account. It’s also important to make sure that you know what your bank’s rules are. This is especially important if you’re new to this type of investment. The money market account is a great place to put your savings.

There are several steps to open a money market account

The first step in opening a money market account is to decide the amount of money to deposit. Some banks require you to deposit a certain amount of money to open an account. While it is not a bad idea to invest some money in your business, it’s also important to keep your assets safe. Besides minimizing risks, a good money market account will help you earn more interest.

It’s important to remember that money market account rates may differ between banks. You should check around and find the best deal to avoid high fees and high-interest rates. When choosing a money market account, remember that it’s essential to shop around. There are many advantages and disadvantages. You need to compare money market accounts and select the right one for your financial situation. Depending on your personal situation, a money market account can be a very smart choice for growing your money.

Essential Business Lessons to Learn from Casinos

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Essential Business Lessons to Learn from Casinos

It can be great to look towards fields of business with great success to get inspiration on how to manage. There is a lot of business advice to collect from many areas and some of the great advice can be collected from the casino businesses.

Knowing how to handle a business and how to create success is something many people use for a lifetime to master. The complete and safe recipe for sky-high success does not exist and the market is constantly changing. Every business is different, and you will need to make the right choices for your business.

However, there are some fields of businesses that are successful when it comes to attracting customers and surviving in a competitive environment. And it is always a good idea to look to the ones with success to collect some inspiration on how to make your business stand out. The gambling field is a great place to look to as there are some essential and good lessons to take from casinos.

Focus on digitality and accessibility

The casinos have been fast at redirecting their focus on the digital world. Knowing that this is where the future lies. Online casinos have long been a part of the gambling scene. And customers have long been able to gamble wherever and whenever they wanted. Making the digital casinos rise has made gambling much more accessible, also to those who did not gamble before. This is a focus that could be vital to a business. You can visit the online casinos to collect inspiration on how they attract customers and how they cooperate with others.

On https://www.americancasinoguide.com/ you can find a list of the best-reviewed casinos and you can browse through the sites to see what they have done to get their great reviews. The most important lesson however is that you can reach a wider range of customers by going online. The future is digital and making your business excel on the digital platforms is an important factor in creating success.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Essential Business Lessons to Learn from Casinos

Go all-in on marketing

Think out of the box and be bold when it comes to marketing. It can be hard to do something that no one has ever thought of before, but you should try to stand out to make a solid impression on potential customers. If you want to use more time on marketing, you can read about different courses on https://www.CNN.com.

However, a lesson you can learn from casinos is, do not just showcase what you can offer but try to create an image of how it would be to be a part of it. The casinos speak to the full experience you get from visiting a casino. The casinos are quite rootless in their marketing, and it is probably one of the more successful strategies. Not being too fancy to use celebrities to lure people in or insert a great portion of humor into their advertisement.

Most people have at some point in their life come across a casino advertisement. And this is definitely due to their ability to make themselves noticed. They do not shy away from flashing lights to get our attention. And this is often the thing that makes it work.

A Guide to Choosing the Right Trading Platform

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | A Guide to Choosing the Right Trading Platform

If you are contemplating trading as a potential way of growing your wealth, the choice of platforms to use might appear somewhat confusing. It is not uncommon for beginner traders to wonder which criteria to apply to make the choice. While the prospect of doing it through sheer intuition might seem alluring, an informed decision will work better to establish a synergetic environment to assist you in the endeavor. That’s why we have prepared this concise guide on how you can single out the trading platform that best suits your needs.

What Is a Trading Platform?

First of all, we need to address a common entry-level misconception: a trading platform is not another term for a broker. The latter refers to a company or individual acting as an intermediary as you engage in trading. The broker will largely determine the general pricing and other terms and conditions.

By contrast, a trading company is a digital environment in which trading takes place. It is essentially a software product used to enable opening and closing positions and much more. A popular example of a trading platform is MetaTrader 5, where traders have the opportunity to explore all kinds of markets from gold to forex. It’s your trading platform that shapes the way you interact with trading partners through its set of features, which explains why it is crucial to make a fitting choice.

How a Trading Platform Influences Your Experience

The advance of technology has brought about a broad variety of trading platforms. Browser-based versus integrated platforms is probably the most universal dichotomy. This refers to where a platform runs, in which the name of standalone applications designed specifically for trading purposes is integrated. Such platforms tend to be easier to customize but also more demanding in terms of technical capabilities, while browser-based ones normally come with a steeper learning curve.

Apart from the above factor, trading platforms differ from each other in a number of ways that might be more or less vital to you depending on your goals and circumstances. The choice you make will eventually determine the experience that you have every time you need to effect a trading operation. Below is a list of aspects to pay attention to in order to select a proper marketplace based on your ambitions.

Accessibility

Given how fast-paced today’s life tends to be in every domain, the ability to access your trading data via a variety of channels is essential. With browser-based platforms, you need to make sure that they show a decent level of usability across devices. The same applies to standalone apps: check whether you’ll be able to run the platform you are considering on the go using your phone as well as from your PC.

Usability

A user-friendly interface is more important than you might be tempted to think. When the way you are supposed to interact with the system is transparent, it enables you to entirely focus on the trading process rather than spend half of your time looking for a particular feature.

Features

Speaking about features, these can be roughly classified into trading and analytical. The former category might include any or all of the following (the list is far from exhaustive):

  • the ability to create and maintain watch lists;
  • futures trading functionality;
  • stock trading.

Additionally, you can have support for advanced trading strategies and automation tools such as notifications. Analytical features include a range of reports and statistics to inform your trading decisions. They range from sector analysis to specialized newsfeeds depending on your preferences.

Pricing

The amount of money that you pay for using a trading platform is one of the factors that determines its efficiency. Regardless of whether you choose a premium option or a budget-friendly one, make sure the pricing is transparent to you.

It’s All About Staying in Control

Control is key when it comes to choosing a trading platform, and the amount of it that you want to have is usually correlated with knowledge. Would you like to watch the inner workings of trading, or do you prefer to operate on a high level? You are welcome to leave a reply and share your ideas.

Online Marketplace: New challenges to overcome

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Online Marketplace: New challenges to overcome

The marketplace model of eCommerce is one such breakthrough that allowed everyone to become a part of the new ecosystem of online commerce. There was a time when the entry of an online alternative in a market would scare the hell out of small offline retailers. The consumer behavior was changing and the prices were getting aggressively competing; it was not easy for small retailers to keep up with their online counterparts.

Then came the marketplace model that allowed even small retailers to claim a share from the multi-billion dollar pie of eCommerce. Now, instead of competing with the offline retailers, the eCommerce sites were connecting third-party retailers directly to their customers. We called this model the pure marketplace ecosystem, where the owner of the marketplace did not maintain the inventory but simply connect the people with inventories to the people who want to purchase. The marketplace was just an intermediary, which would make money from the commissions they charged on each sale generated for their retailers.

The time changed, markets evolved, competition became even harsh, and marketplaces required more innovative ways to make money than the mere commissions. This gave birth to different sub-classifications of the actual marketplace model, which still exists:

  • E-Bay: A peer-to-peer marketplace that sales only from the third-party inventories
  • Amazon: A hybrid marketplace that sales from both in-house and third party inventories
  • Walmart: A hybrid combined with the physical model to sell both in online and offline ecosystems

What’s next in the marketplace model of eCommerce?

The meaning of an online marketplace is changing as we speak. Today, the boundary that differentiates a physical marketplace from its online counterpart is as thin as a thread. The biggest names in the marketplace ecosystem, such as Amazon, Alibaba, and Walmart, have established both online and offline presence and securing major shares of the pie through their Omni-channel manifestations.

Today, the marketplace business is no more about massive catalogs of different categories of products. Instead, marketplaces are creating ecosystems for their customers. They are driving customers towards the business from all possible sides and earning customer loyalty by offering everything at one place on any channel. Take Amazon for example. Is there anything that Amazon can’t offer to a common consumer? From entertainment to finance, grocery, vegetables, electronics, home furnishing, and cloud services, Amazon is the best example to understand the rapidly evolving face of the Retail 4.0 marketplace model today.

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Is the marketplace is a profitable business idea in 2020?

It indeed is. Even the biggest entities in the market cannot cover everything. There are still numerous niches with profitable prospects for the new entrants. It certainly not an easy job to set up a marketplace and compete with the likes of Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, and Walmart. However, you don’t need to compete with them, if you identify some niche marketplace ideas. The marketplace model offers an array of benefits to the merchants and the customers, and all of them could encourage them to come along with your platform:

  • A combined channel: You could offer a hybrid channel to small retailers and merchants to generate sales from both online and offline markets.
  • Better exposure: Selling on a marketplace platform reveals new doors to the merchants who have been relying on traditional channels. They can even expand their business internationally.
  • Reduced marketing cost: Merchants need not spend a fortune to build eCommerce sites and then marketing them. They can save all these costs by simply signing up on your marketplace.
  • Established trust factors: Retailers get access to an established platform, which its customers already trust. This trust factor is induced to the sellers of the marketplace, too.
  • Competitive product prices: With so many sellers available for a single product, the prices are l always competitive. It encourages more customers to shop from your site.
  • Multiple revenue channels: As a marketplace owner, you need not depend on commissions alone to make money. You can make money from several non-traditional channels, such as showing featured products, sponsored products, and selling membership subscriptions for added benefits to sellers and the customers.

No doubt, the above benefits for everyone lay down the foundation of the marketplace model, but it’s not all breezy either. There are some pitfalls too that require strategic resolutions:

  • It’s all technology: The core that drives an online marketplace business is pure technology. From the marketplace software to web-hosting, content delivery networks, third party APIs, and compliance with the laws, everything is driven by technology. That makes a competitive marketplace setup quite expensive, complex, and workforce-extensive.
  • Chicken and egg problem: Sellers won’t board your marketplace until you have enough customers to make good sales, and customers can’t purchase until you have sellers. It makes the opening days for a marketplace business pretty complicated. You would need a significant amount of investment to market your platform, and then acquire sellers through handsome incentives.
  • Data security: When you are managing a massive marketplace with so many merchants, customers, and sensitive information onboard, there is a high risk of data security. Since the only asset you have is your platform and data, you have to be very particular about keeping it secure.

How you can start an online marketplace business?

It’s a big question – how to start an online marketplace business? There is the technology and there is business process development, both go hand-in-hand to form a complete marketplace ecosystem. If you have a business plan or a niche in your mind, you need to focus your efforts on handling the following four challenges first, and you could own a great marketplace business:

Note: You need to manage these challenges keeping your customers and sellers/merchants in thought. You can’t start a marketplace by conciliating with the needs of any of the two stakeholders.

Marketplace Software

Marketplace software constitutes your entire platform. You would need a collection of different marketplace solutions that work collectively to build your marketplace platform. One of the major constituents is – the marketplace website.

Marketplace website builder: You can develop your marketplace platform from scratch by outsourcing your project or hiring in-house developers. However, this would be a highly expensive and time-consuming undertaking. Instead, you can purchase a ready-made, open-source, multi-vendor eCommerce script to set up your platform in a few hours. There are various clone scripts in the market; you can get one of them and build your website. These scripts will provide all the fundamental features you need to build your platform. Since they offer open-source code access, you can also customize them the way you want.

Another alternative is using a free eCMS like Magento, PrestaShop, or OpenCart. However, these Commerce platforms are mainly suitable for inventory-based eCommerce sites, as they do not provide multi-vendor support out-of-the-box. You will have to purchase a corresponding multi-vendor module or extension from a third-party vendor to add marketplace features. They are open-source too.

Some SaaS solutions are also present in the market with ready-made marketplace sites. If you are ready to pay a monthly recurring fee, transaction fee per-sale, and can do with limited control over your site, this could be one of the fastest ways to build and launch your site in a day. These solutions are closed-source.

The choice is yours, you can use any of these options based on your preference and requirements. Do some research and select the most suitable option, as it would be a long-term commitment. You can’t switch your marketplace software every now or then.

Branding and Marketing

Be advised that customers don’t remember the seller but the marketplace platform itself. Therefore, every bad experience customers receive from your sellers directly affects your business image. All the discounts, Ads, and promotions, happen in the name of the marketplace platform. If you can’t get your customers to remember your brand identity, know that there is something wrong with your marketing and branding activities.

Supply-chain and Demand

The sole purpose of a marketplace platform is to fill the gap between supply and demand. Both the buyers and the merchants are your customers. You need to maintain a steady flow of demand and supply to keep both of the ends happy. Without buyers, you will lose customers and demand; without sellers, you will lose the supply-chain. Happy customers create demand, and sellers create the supply. You have to maintain an optimum balance between the two entities to succeed.

Flawless Customer Support

For both the buyers and the sellers, customer support is the most volatile constituent that might just ruin everything at any stage. There is a need for offering continuously impeccable customer support to the stakeholders. However, it cannot happen unless your sellers are supportive to the customers. You might try your best to give flawless experience to the buyers, but everything stops if your sellers don’t do their part. You must create an environment where everyone is doing his or her jobs properly. From quality control to addressing queries, processing refunds, and undertaking replacements, everything should work in harmony with each other. Consider professional grade customer service software or hiring professionals to build you efficient systems to reduce customer support issues.

To Conclude

Overall, the marketplace is a challenging business. However, easy businesses don’t furnish good returns. You can win this war with technical advancements and customer-friendly policies. If you want to create a hub of customers like Amazon and eBay, you shouldn’t arbitrate on the above four fronts. Invest in innovative marketplace software solutions, bridge the supply-demand gap, market your business, and extend the best customer support –this is the optimal way to command the new challenges of marketplace business and succeed effortlessly.

About the Author

Jessica Bruce a professional blogger, guest writer, Influencer & an eCommerce expert. She is currently associated with ShopyGen as a content marketing strategist. Jessica also reports on the latest happenings and trends associated with the eCommerce industry.

Follow her on Twitter @Jessicabruc (https://twitter.com/Jessicabruc)

Exterior Renovations That Can Upgrade Your Business Property

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When you think of renovating the office or the workplace, it’s natural that your first thoughts might go to what you can for the interior. After all, that’s where all of the thinking, working, relaxing, and team-building happens. However, the exterior plays an important part, both in branding and welcoming others, but also in keeping your employees safe. For that reason, here are some renovation that may be worth the investment.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Exterior Renovations That Can Upgrade Your Business Property

Giving it a new face

One of the most drastic, but effective, changes you can make is to change the entirety of how it looks from the outside. Giving your building a new facade is not solely an aesthetic change. It can make a difference in, for instance, the insulation and its security against bad weather. However, it also makes for an eye-catching change that can make your building much more noticeable and professional looking.

Laying some groundwork

If the surfaces that your employees, co-workers, clients, customers, and guests walk on are a little worse for wear, then it’s worth taking the time to replace them. Worn down and uneven surfaces, or surfaces that are prone to getting slippery, can be a safety hazard and a concrete flatwork contractor can help you restore some security. Clean concrete surfaces can look a lot neater than some of the rougher alternatives, as well, and can be easier to maintain.

Shaping the greenery

If you have any greenery around your property, such as grass, trees, or bushes, then it’s important to maintain them. All you might need is to hire some simple ground maintenance services. However, if you want to make the most out of the greenery, a commercial landscaper can help you create a much more aesthetically pleasing area that can make your property look much more professional and impressive.

Branding your building

If you want to give the exterior of the building a more professional finish but you don’t want to go quite as far as a new facade, or you already have that facade but want to add some specific identity, then 3d signage is a great way to do it. Having your logo come out of the building, an actual object in physical space feels much more prestigious than just a graphic.

Create a welcoming area

You might have a reception inside the business but, if the weather permits people to sit outside often, you might want to create a more welcoming area around it as well. This can be as simple as installing some benches, or a seating area around a table. Aside from giving visitors a place to sit when they’re not directly inside, this can also provide a great break space for your employees, allowing them to get some sunlight and to get a break away from their desks.

There’s a lot that your business property’s exterior can do for you if you simply put in the work and investment. Hopefully, the tips above give you some ideas on how to make better use of it.