May 2017 - QL Tech

Mobile Application Development Trends To Watch Out

Posted on May 30, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

Mobile devices like tablets and smartphones have become an inseparable part of everyone’s daily lives. From the early morning when you wake up till the night when going to bed, how many times you use your mobile phones? For reading news, checking emails, staying in touch with friends, colleagues, and families through social media, listening music, reading eBooks, and for many other routine activities, you use your mobile phones and inset mobile applications. Moreover, the ever-increasing popularity of Android and iOS shows how mobile usage is growing by leaps and bounds. As a result, there is a bright future for the mobile application development market.

Gartner’s prediction narrates that over 268 billion mobile downloads will generate an income of $77 billion in 2017

This blog is going to enlighten you on the best and not-to-miss Top 13 mobile application development trends for the year 2017.

Most prominent mobile application development trends

Last year we had already talked about what top 13 trends were projected for the year 2016 for the mobile application development market. All those mobile application development trends are going to stay in the year 2017 as well, along with new additions. Let’s walk through each one by one:

1. More Spotlight on Security and Privacy In Apps

Along with growing mobile usage and mobile application development, the necessity to adopt best practices in data security, app security, and privacy are in the spotlight.

In accordance with the prediction by Gartner, 75% of mobile apps would not pass even basic security tests.

Hackers, in order to steal sensitive and confidential information, will learn to carry on with the tendency of misusing recognized security gaps in mobile apps. This was the greatest concern last year as well. Furthermore, this negative mobile application development trend is predicted to continue in the year 2017. In addition, one of the studies conducted by HP also mentioned that 70.6% of mobile apps can access to external storage and 94.7% mobile apps include logging methods.

However, there are some JavaScript frameworks that can help you develop a secure and scalable mobile application.

Security-and-Usage-in-Mobile-Application-Development

2. More pleasing User Experience (UX)

Trends have changed in almost all fields. Be it website designing and development or mobile application development, the main focus is better user experience (UX). Effectual display of data and content on your mobile user interface is important for a sound user experience. In the year 2017, industry experts have projected an innovative enhancement in this feature in a sensible manner. Various Android Apps and iOS Apps should make use of technologies with novel features such as interactive content layers, circular design pattern, cards and manipulation of content. Mobile users find it very easy to operate mobile apps. If those apps are not user-friendly, users will not wait for an update. They will straightaway quit its usage. Hence, the primary focus is on the more pleasing user experience of all mobile application developers, for both Android and iOS.

3. Shifting landscape of web-based app due to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

AMPs have become the common talk of the town for more than a year.Google has announced that there will be a separate search index for the mobile web. This announcement is been considered as one of the revolutions in the field of development in digital marketing. It has a significant impact on your SEO and rankings. Web-based apps that are supported by Google AMP will load much quicker on mobile devices. It will, hence, reduce bounce rates in a huge quantity. Publishers will also get the benefit of increased ad visibility and more website visitors. Hence, this trend in mobile application development is definitely expected to the rock the entire year 2017.

AMP Benifites - Mobile Application Development

4. The Trending of Chatbots

Chatbots are computer programs that imitate a conversation with users using artificial intelligence. Chatbots are getting a huge attraction to mobile apps. The most popular chatbots include Allo, Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Siri. Most mobile app developers are motivated to comprehend how chatbots work. This year, in 2017, trends indicate that most of the Android developers and iOS developers will work towards developing Chatbots. They’ll resemble human beings in the style of speech detection and personalities that lead to smoother interactions.

5. Growing Cloud-Driven Mobile Apps

Cloud computing is a pretty familiar term for almost everyone, from customers to tech professionals. Nowadays, cloud computing has marked its presence in mobile applications also. Users can expect a great upsurge in powerful mobile apps that can directly acquire data from the cloud and take minimum space in your smartphone internal memory. The Android, iOS and Windows Phone apps all have automatic photo uploads, meaning that when you shoot a photo with your phone, it’s automatically saved to your account.

Google Drive, launched in 2012, has apps available for Windows, OS X, Android, and iOS. Dropbox, launched in 2007, has apps available for each major platform and some smaller ones like the Blackberry, Linux, and Kindle Fire. OneDrive which launched in 2014 is also incorporated compactly with Microsoft Office, and it’s built into Windows 8 and Windows 10. It’s available on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box are just a baby step towards it. A vast ocean is yet to explore in cloud storage realm.

Based on Cisco research, cloud apps will drive 90% of total mobile data traffic by 2019, and Mobile cloud traffic will be 11-fold with compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 60%.

Cloud Mobile Apps - Mobile Application Development

These statistics clearly demonstrate that the mobile application development trend related to the cloud will be prominent in the year 2017.

6. Internet of Things (IoT) Will Be Much Bigger

The rapid adoption of cloud-based apps brings us to one of the latest mobile application development trends that have irritated mobile developer interest in 2016 – the Internet of Things. It’s fair enough to say that the Internet of Things (IoT) is still in its infancy. However, the way IoT is growing, it directly impacts the mobile application development trends since IoT devices are majorly controlled by Smartphones and mobile devices. Currently, the IoT is gaining traction in the fields like security, health, education, smart homes, and automobiles.

IoT integration of mobile apps will unquestionably flourish and it will be a grand move in the year 2017.

7. Artificial Intelligence Is Real Now

Based on the research of Gartner, there will be a more than 300% increase in investment on artificial intelligence in the year 2017 as compared to the last year.

Artificial intelligence (Ai) is expected to provide access to powerful insights to the business users which weren’t available earlier. This access will be provided with the use of advanced analytics, cognitive interfaces into complex systems, and machine learning techs. Giants like Google, IBM, eBay, Facebook have started acquiring startups those who are proficient in Artificial Intelligence.

Facebook-in-AI Through Mobile Application Development

Already we have seen some wonderful AI apps such as Siri, Alexa, Tesla, Prisma, and Google Now. Much more is expected in 2017 keeping the AI mobile application development trends in one piece.

8. AR & VR Will Show Some Magic

In the world of modern mobile application development trends, Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) apps are getting universal for all.

Market research analysts at Technavio predicted that the global mobile AR and VR apps market will grow steadily in terms of downloads at a CAGR of more than 74% during 2016-2020.

Both AR & VR have been avant-garde in gaming & entertainment industry in the last year, 2016.

Popular examples of AR games include Pokemon Go, Zombies Run, iOnRoad, Sky Siege, Ingress, and myNav. On the other hand, VR devices that are gaining popularity include Oculus Rift, HTC Vive VR, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard and PlayStation VR among others.

Based on the trends and growth in the mobile application development market, AR and VR both are expected to show some magic in the year 2017.

9. Wearable Devices Are Getting Attention

Wearable technology is one of the most exciting areas of interest for consumers. This has boosted improvements in mobile application developments.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for wearable devices is going to experience a composite annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3%, leading to 213.6 million units shipped in 2020.

There are some amazing wearable devices which gained huge traction from consumers and audiences in the year 2016. Such wearable devices include but are not limited to Apple Watch Series 1, Xiaomi Mi Band 2, Google Daydream View, Pebble 2, Garmin Vivomove, Fitbit Flex 2, and others.

Application of wearable devices in Mobile Application Development

These wearable devices have proved that now they are not restricted to the health and fitness sector. They have also progressed in other sectors and will definitely gain more prominence as a mobile application development trend of the year 2017.

10. M-Commerce – a growing bud in Mobile Application development realm

Instead of swiping debit cards and credit cards, nowadays, most of the customers prefer to pay through other options. Such options include the transfer of money through Apply Pay, PayTM, Google wallet and other cashless options. In short, mobile apps are slowly replacing plastic money. This is acting as a driver of M-Commerce.

Moving m-commerce from e-commerce in Mobile Application Development

Furthermore, along with the growing market of wearable devices, M-Commerce payment options will take a distinct form in the year 2017. As predicted by experts, wearable devices will play a prominent role in the future of Mobile Application Development.

The following stats throw light on the prediction of mobile app development trends.

m-commerce Market in Mobile Application Development

11. Usage of real-time geo-data from a mobile device for LBS

In order to determine your tentative location, Location-based Services (LBS) allows apps and websites (including Maps, Camera, Weather, and other apps) to use information from cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Global Positioning System (GPS), and related networks. Integrated LBS mobile applications like Apple’s iBeacons and Google Beacon are trendy. This highly developed technology gives a foremost scale to tailored mobile app marketing.

12. Swift language – ahead of other programming languages

Apple’s programming language, Swift, was first introduced at Apple’s 2014 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). As a multi-paradigm and compiled programming language, Swift was developed for iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS & Linux.

It was included in Xcode since Version 6. This programming language gives comfort to all mobile app developers since it is built on the best of C & Objective-C minus the compatibility issues of C. Swift possess some robust features that will transform the mobile application development process. Such attributes are mentioned in the below chart:

Swift 2 offers a host of new and developer-friendly attributes; this latest programming language is undoubtedly going to stay in the year 2017.

13. Enterprise mobile apps and micro-apps – a way to a go-ahead

Over and above, these Top 12 mobile application development trends for the year 2017, experts have also anticipated that enterprise mobile apps and micro-apps will further advance.

According to Natalie Lambert, VP Marketing at Sappho, “with more than 2 million mobile apps to choose from, most of us have installed at least 40 of them on our smartphones. Downloads from the Apple App Store alone surpassed 100 billion last years, and that number is expected to double in 2017.”

Enterprises mobile application aims to assist you to streamline, restructure and deal with critical business processes on the go. While the prime motive of a micro-app is to meet the requirements of highly targeted operations in lesser load time. However, both have gained success in the field of Mobile Application Development.

CLOSING THOUGHTS – FUTURE OF APP DEVELOPERS

Looking at the potential of mobile application development and its trends, skilled app developers perhaps need to get rid of outdated tools and trends at the development stage. Both Android app developers and iOS app developers can augment their development skills better provided they have insight into the latest mobile app development trends. Following these TOP 13 trends, certainly app developers will benefit themselves for their business.

What is content curation?

When it comes to your SEO practices, along with link building, keywords, and on-page elements, content is also one of the most significant elements. Are you wondering content is still the king of SEO? Well, as per Lee Odden, Content isn’t king, its kingdom. Content curation strengthens your content marketing strategy.

According to Content Marketing Institute, content curation assembles, selects, categorizes, comments on, and presents the most relevant, highest quality information to meet your audience’s needs on a specific subject.

According to Curata, 42% of companies have an executive responsible for content marketing, reaching 49% in 2017

Basically, content curation is not about creating new content. However, to a certain extent, it is about discovering and compiling existing content written by industry experts and sharing it with your online followers.

Why content curation matters?

The reason why a content curation matters are simple; content curation boosts your target audience reach. Content curation also has a role in your SEO. Of course, duplication of content will be penalized by search engines and your rankings will get hampered. But, a correct approach of content curation will augment your SEO, as mentioned below:

Furthermore, content curation will help you establish as a thought leader in your industry. The good thing about content curation is it is not restricted to sharing others’ content. You can curate your own content and share it again and again, which is called repurposing of content. Last but not the least, content curation does matter a lot for you because in this exercise you are going to learn a more about our content and your industry since there will be extensive research and reading of similar other content.

In short, to preserve booming online presence, it’s vital for you to adopt content curation as a digital marketing tactic.

How content curation helps on social media?

Content curation is more like an art rather than science. There isn’t any particular technique to be followed for any particular social media platform. In the case of twitter, curating quality content from industry influencers and sharing it on your feed will send them a notification. In turn, there are high chances that they’ll follow back you and your brand. This way you can engage with others while connecting your content with their audiences.

The most important thing for a digital marketer is to understand that content curation helps you build invaluable relationships while providing value to your audience. That is why your social media page should not be snowed under only curated content. Your social media page should strike an ideal balance between curated content and your own created content.

Most of the acquainted content marketers prefer a content mix in their content marketing strategy as:

If content curation is done right, it assists you to build valuable relationships while providing value to your audience on varied social media platforms.

What are the most preferred content curation tools?

Till now, we talked about why content curation is important. Now let us move to the main point, how to curate the content. For content marketers, content curation is integral to online strategy. Effective content curation helps position you as a thought leader in your domain. Moreover, it is an affordable way to retain a consistent publishing schedule of quality content.

“Content curation is the process of both creating and linking to pertinent content on a B2B website”
– HiveFire CMO Richard Turcott

Content curation process can be graphically represented as:

However, don’t you agree, manually attempting to search for the most relevant content in a given industry and then publishing it across multiple channels can be time-consuming?

Yes, it is not only time consuming but it is also less effective. For perfect content curation, you need to take help of automation.

Here, we present the most preferred and ultimate list of content curation tools.

As we discussed in the above paragraphs, content curation is a grand manner to support a created content strategy, consistently publish content, and keep a track of your desired information sources. Let us know each content curation tool in a deeper way to understand how it can boost your overall content marketing strategy.

1. Curata

Curata is the leading provider of business-grade content curation software (CCS). Curata’s content curation software will ease you if you are struggling to scale your content marketing due to a lack of content. Curata’s CCS enables content marketers to discover fresh content, create new content, curate content from various sources, refine content flow, and publish & promote the most relevant and highest quality content as part of a successful content marketing strategy.

As a part of content curation, Curata’s CCS easily organize, interpret, and contextualize the content. Curata digs content from hundreds and thousands of relevant sources, keeping your content engine buzzing without a requirement of constant creation of your own content. It provides great support on content marketing platform by adding your own unique perspective to curated content and filtering content by relevancy & timing. CCS is best for planning, developing, and evaluating your content marketing.

According to several resources, Curata services start from $1,500 on a month-to-month basis.

2. Pinterest

Reading at first sight you might be surprised how can a social media platform act as content curation, right? But yes, it is indeed a content curation tool.

According to Julia McCoy, Pinterest is also fantastic for collecting useful “hacks”, tricks and tips you can build your content around

It is often called as an online pinboard. Pinterest is a visual discovery platform since it works on images, video clips, and infographics. Open your business account on Pinterest and follow people in your industry and pop culture icons to catch access to millions of great content ideas. You need to save these content ideas to interactive boards on your account and pin them. Apply these pins to curate exceptional videos, podcasts, and images content for you and for your clients.

Furthermore, the content you pin can easily comprise an image and a link that drives back to the source. The source can be either a blog or infographic. With the help of Pinterest search, you can reveal great content that is probably interesting to your audience. It is a great platform to search and share content by domain to various social platforms.

The icing on the cake is Pinterest is a free means for content marketers to discover great content.

3. Scoop.it

A tool called Scoop.it is fantastic for content curation since it builds your relationship with other content curators. Scoop.it helps individuals and businesses to publish their content in a proficient and impacting way. This tool uses big-data semantic technology to assist you in promptly finding relevant content. Scoop.it displays the content curated by other users and offers similar topics shared. This allows you to get insight from influencers and industry leaders regarding a specific topic. It also gives you an opportunity to share your information with others and help them curate their own content.

Its top features include choosing specific keywords with the help of Boolean research, adding own sources with RSS feeds, suggesting content based on big data, and filtering content based on various criteria.

Scoop.it is a free tool; however, its paid options come with a more robust search.

4. Storify

Storify is a wonderful visual content curation tool that creates ‘stories’ or ‘timelines’ by gathering and publishing your content from social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It is intended for organizations of any size, looking for integrating curated content into their own website or their social media page. Either you can create the content and offer people to curate the content, or you can glance through the storyboards and curate content from others.

Storify helped one woman raise $650,000 when her Storify story went viral and had 1.5 million hits
Jeff Bullas

In addition, Storify enables you to research and pool content from multiple sources, merge that content with original content, and then share the mixed content as a unique story. Once can use Storify to search blog posts, comments, and videos that others have shared online.

Storify is a free tool and it also has options of paid versions.

5. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo believes that there is ample content on internet and web pages, no shortage at all. But what matters most is to search the relevant content and use it on a timely basis. BuzzSumo gets content research to a new level using social search. The key to getting relevant content is to search using filters. You can make out the total number of shares on a particular content resource and even can identify content by author. Buzzsumo masters the art of filtering out the content that resounds with audiences, the content that is currently trending, and the content about to trend.

Buzzsumo was a go-to resource of mine to find the most shareable content that resonated with the largest audience
Margot da Cunha

It is a highly popular content curation tool which is FREE till limited searches and then offers some advanced features underpaid options. Their plan starts from $79/month and goes beyond that based on the package you opt for.

6. Triberr

Basically, Triberr is a marketing platform for influencers. However, it also acts as a content curation tool by providing the ability to discover great content. Triberr is a community where tribes curate their own content and promote others’ content.

Either you can create an account or can log in with your twitter, facebook or LinkedIn ID to join as a tribe and follow relevant people.

Triberr has various plans as follows:

7. Post Planner

According to Ian Cleary, The content engine in Postplanner is a great way to find content.

For smarter content, better posts, and mind blogging results – reach out to only one social media destination called Post Planner. It aids you to find the best and the right content for your audience and post it. Furthermore, it delivers content based on users’ keywords, provides status ideas, and assists users to search blogs and experts in their forte.

Post planner plans start from $9/month.

8. Feedly

Feedly is known for its user-friendly design. It delivers fast, mobile-optimized content using RSS feeds. Feedly enables you to browse and share content from your favourite news sites, blogs, feeds, and YouTube channels. Feedly displays the latest content being shared on a particular website or using a precise keyword on top of the entire content.

Cas McCullough : I use Feedly to categorize content for my own social platforms, as well as my clients’ platforms

Up to 100 feeds, services of Feedly are FREE, and its paid plans start from $5.41 or $18 for a team.

9. Pocket

Pocket, as the name suggests, works like a pocket where you can save your content and view it later when required. Pocket provides service for saving web pages and articles. There you can view later when you want. Pocket, as a content curation tool, enables content discovery as well as arms you with the skill to search for content on specific topics. It displays the most trending and ‘must read’ sort of posts and articles.

Pocket is a great place to get into the habit of accruing content to save and share later.
Patrick Armitage

Pocket is user-friendly, can work in your browser, as well as from apps such as Twitter, Flipboard, and others. If the content is stored in Pocket, (your phone, tablet or computer), you don’t even need an Internet connection to view it again and again.

The pocket can be used for FREE; it’s paid plan starts from $44.99/yr for an ad-free experience…

10. Trap.it

Trap.it is a content curation tool and a social selling service. It is considered as the best social media management solution too. It assists you to manage employee advocacy. With the help of Trap.it, you can search relevant and new content within minutes, which can be shared via email, LinkedIn or other social media platforms. Its top features include salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics Integration and Artificial Intelligence for content curation.

11. Curation Suite

Curation Suite is the renewed version of Curation Traffic. To discover, curate, publish and share multiple types of content, curation suite is the most popular platform. Curation Suite is a robust WordPress plugin that works right within your WordPress dashboard. It works with any theme and any plugin you have, to search content in the form of posts, articles, videos, infographics, and others.

Curation Suite plans start from $97 which is a one-time payment and then you can go for a top-up according to your content curation needs.

12. Quora

Quora is yet another underestimated but most important content curation tool. It is a great place to share your knowledge and ideas and engage with similar interests people. It is a forum where questions are asked and pertaining replies are given by the varied users.

You can set up an account, and then search your keywords to find outstanding content for future use. In addition, you can turn on notifications about specified topics pertaining to your field. By doing so, you can get access to more and more relevant articles and interesting ideas in your inbox.

Quora platform is FREE and can be accessed for multiple times a day

Closing thoughts

The list does not end here, there are much more content curation tools available in the market which can help you boost your content marketing strategy. Over and above these 12 tools, 39 more tools have been listed here for you as additional reading.

Sr No	Content Curation Tool	Description
13.	Addict-o-Matic	· Search the best LIVE sites across the web. · Dig the latest and trending news, blog posts, videos and images
14.	BagTheWeb	· Search, create and share ‘bags’ of web content on varied topics
15.	Bundlepost	· Aggregate and plan social media content · Find, edit, and schedule with the browser plugin or social media dashboard
16.	Channel kit	· Enables you to tag and organize all sorts of information in one place · Includes articles, websites, contacts, PDF files or various format images—all showcased as neat cards in channels
17.	ContentGems	· Find, curate, and share engaging content · Boost qualified website traffic and build your company’s thought leadership
18.	Crowdynews	· Mechanically integrates real-time social content beside editorial content to raise engagement and boost revenue
19.	CurationSoft	· Helps establish brands as a reliable voice, and a “not to miss” source of information
20.	DrumUp	· Mines web content in real-time to suggest to your audience · Reduces your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter management time
21.	elink	· Offers a swift way to transform a bunch of links into content · Enables to curate, publish, and share content online in a visually appealing manner
22.	Flipboard	· Create your own personalized magazines and brochures · Catch up on news, read stories across the globe, and browse articles,videos,and photos your friends are sharing across the web
23.	Flockler	· Combine all your content, including what your fans and followers say about you, into one social hub. ·Create your own social hub or bring social content into your existing websites, applications, eCommerce sites, and other services
24.	Folloze	· A great B2B platform to create content experiences that dynamically adapt to a visitor’s profile, company, industry, and stage of the deal
25.	HeadSlinger	· Saves your research time by 50%, find all your news in half the time · Scan your favourite sites’ headlines in a matter of seconds and store your favourite news sources in a swift and simple manner to find folders
26.	Huzzaz	· Video curation platform that enables you to search, mine, collect and showcase YouTube and Vimeo videos · Analyze user’s viewing behaviour and figure out which videos matter most to your viewers and to enhance the site engagement
27.	Juxtapost	· Swift, simple and FREE way to bookmark online images · Gather and handle categorized post boards
28.	Kbucket	· Being it a user indexed search site, here, skilled “content curators” categorize, comment, tag, and publish their research to support their content marketing strategy
29.	Curator	· Persistently publish fresh and new content on websites or blogs in minutes a day to keep up readers engagement
30.	LinkHubb	· Curate and share multiple links from around the web in one organized page, upload documents and files to the cloud, and use affiliate technology to generate ad-based revenue
31.	List.ly	· Curate, crowdsource and engage readers via LIVE rooted list content inside blog posts
32.	Newsle	· Track users’ Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and email contacts in the news. By no means miss a key story about a follower, professional contact, or public figure
33.	papaly	· Bookmark management and discovery tool
34.	Paper.li	· Publish ‘newspapers’ comprised of content from anywhere on the web to treat your readers to fresh news daily
35.	Pearltrees	· Visual and collaborative curation tool. Allows you to collect, organize, and share any URL, and upload personal images and notes
36.	Pluggio	· Secure web-based system that helps individuals, businesses, organizations and marketers easily grow and manage their social media profiles
37.	RebelMouse	· Create a blog, website, or social page in seconds. Simply connect your social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ or LinkedIn.
38.	RockTheDeadline	· Simplifies for brands, agencies, and publishers to create and manage compelling content ·Curate timely and trending news and promote that content over multiple channels
39.	Roojoom	· Create Smart MiniSites, online magazines, and e-newsletters · Content can be personalized to increase engagement and improve conversions across the customer life-cycle
40.	Shareist	· Capture bookmarks and ideas, share them on social media and save them for building and publishing pages to blogs
41.	Sharpr	· Segregate information silos, advance collaboration, and share what matters most with the users who matter most to your business
42.	Spredfast	· Helps brands, media, and agencies involve and connect with audience integrating social media into their marketing and advertising efforts
43.	sprinklr	· Helps brands and organizations distribute curated social media content to support their content strategy. Platforms include websites, event displays, retail signage, and mobile apps.
44.	Storyful	· Helps newsrooms find the most valuable content on the social web. Uses a “human algorithm” to sort through verified curated news from various mediums.
45.	Sutori	· Create and share visual stories, collaboratively
46.	symbaloo	· A personal Startpage that allows you to easily navigate the web. Compile your favourite sites into one visual interface. Save your bookmarks in the cloud and access them from anywhere with any device.
47.	TagBoard	· Social media hub for hashtags · Collect, moderate, and follow hashtags, as well as create and follow your own hashtag conversations
48.	The Tweeted Times	· Comprehends news in your Twitter flow every hour · Ranks each section by its popularity amid your friends
49.	UpContent	· Content mining and content curation tool that crawls the web to draw news, articles, and blog posts · Sorts by parameters such as the social influence · Reduces browsing needs of surfing 1000s of page results
50.	Vidinterest	· A platform to discover social videos that enables you to bookmark videos and create private or public playlists of videos · Allows surfing any website featuring videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and Daily Motion.
51.	Waywire	· Video curation tool that embeds hundreds of top-quality sources from trusted media makers to improve your site with current, timely, trending and contextually-relevant videos

Again, this is not an exhaustive list of content curation tools. Feel free to drop in the comments section if you use any of the other tools and how is your content curation experience with that content curation tool. We are excited to hear from you regarding your insights on content curation tools!

How To Make Money In Affiliate Marketing?

Posted on May 17, 2017November 6, 2019 by admin

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is now not a new concept, but it is still a very fresh and rewarding way of marketing online. It is about a relationship between three main parties: the affiliate (publisher), the merchant (advertiser), and the customer. Furthermore, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of making money online.

It offers a low-cost technique for traders and dealers to display their products and services and build brand awareness.

Geno Prussakov has mentioned in of his blogs that 38% of marketers call affiliate marketing one of the top customer acquisition methods.

What is affiliate marketing?

An affiliate marketing model is straightforward; it acts as a commission-based recommendation practice. A partner or affiliate promotes a trader or a dealer’s products for a slice of the pie. Affiliates are as good as extended sales and marketing departments of the merchants. They play a major role in your marketing campaign and assist the customers to choose products and buy them online.

According to a study, in most affiliate programs less than 10% of affiliates drive 90% of traffic and conversions.

Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing. Despite affiliate marketing doesn’t require a fate and years of struggle to get started, you shouldn’t presume excellent results overnight. It is intensely competitive and you need to dedicate productive time for choosing products and ensuring that they meet market needs. Consequently, learn how to promote them and how to measure the success of an affiliate marketing program.

How to become an affiliate marketer?

Let us have a look at the traits of a successful affiliate marketer. Typically, an excellent affiliate possesses the following traits:

To become a successful affiliate marketer is not a tough job; it is a simple process as shown below:

1. Discover an exclusive niche

As a secret success formula, do not try to straightaway offer anything at all. Rather, stay focused on a precise niche market. Figure out your audience, analyze their pain points, offer them solutions to solve their issues, and ultimately assist them to achieve their goals. To identify the service area which can work best for you and your audience, the best place is to visit forum and question answers’ websites of your industry.

2. Make powerful use of search engine marketing

Search engine marketing is a powerful mechanism for online businesses. After assembling affiliate storehouse, jump into its timely and logical promotion. The preferred option of most of the affiliates is pay-per-click. However, to reap long-term benefits use a proper blend of organic search and paid search. PPC can definitely give you instant results but if you rely only on PPC for a longer time, all your profits might end up in the hands of Google Adwords.

3. Understand Your Product and Identify Your Audience

This is a complete analytical exercise. You need to devote your time in knowing your product and knowing your audience. Create a database, you will find it handy as and when required glancing through. Learn in-depth about the products and/or services. Think about the value you can provide to your customers along with your products/services offerings which can help you to build your credibility. This is because trust can be earned from credibility builds trust.

Have a psychological study of your audience. This will help you in developing and designing a web site that converts well and ultimately boosts your ROI.

4. Don’t ponder all your prospects or resources in one thing or place

This is the excellent tip to become a successful affiliate marketer. Promote products from diverse merchants. This way you will be able to balance the cash flows. Furthermore, out of multiple merchants, if one or two fail to promote your product, the overall impact on your business will be minimal. It is absolutely fine to opt for diversification and promote niche products from diverse merchants.

5. Gain excellence in internet marketing

Internet marketing is a very dynamic field. On an ongoing basis, trends keep changing. You need to act intelligently here to succeed. Keep yourself updated with the latest trends, tips, and tactics. In order to become an expert affiliate, you must always dedicate your time in reading, learning, and embracing the dynamics of Internet marketing.

6. Monitor your efforts

As an affiliate, don’t give up if it doesn’t reach the satisfaction levels. Try and try, again and again. Monitor your efforts and analyze your statistics, to figure out what is working well and what is going wrong. Accordingly, amend your affiliate marketing strategy.

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing works on click; by clicking on a special hyperlink made available by the particular affiliate program. The most common type of tracking is tracking via a cookie. When a user clicks on the link, a cookie is stored on their computers. This cookie lets the merchant know that in case a sale transaction happens, it has come from you.

To get started with affiliate marketing, the first step is to sign up for a partner program. On getting login details, you will be assigned a link with a unique ID that makes it feasible to track all traffic sent by you to the advertiser’s site. If your visitor clicks on it and performs the qualified action, you will receive a commission. Qualified action depends on the compensation model. The most commonly used one is pay per sale model which is based on the revenue sharing when a merchant pays an affiliate the percentage of the sale.

Affiliate marketing works best in three types of products /services promotion where it has shown highest success till date:

1. Information products	can make you earn commission up to 50% since they are cost-effective; production costs are lower as compared to prospects they offer
2. Physical products	easiest to sell but churns out a lesser commission (not more than 5 to 10%) since most of the amounts get deducted in variables like shipping, wholesaling, and others
3. Services	based on trends, one can normally expect commission in the range of 10 to 30%

Over 50% of topmost affiliate programs fall into these FOUR categories: Fashion, Sports, travel, and Health & Beauty.

Affiliate marketing can provide you with a stable stream of income. How much you can earn entirely depends on how successful you are in converting your browsers into buyers and service subscribers. Affiliate marketing is cost-effective; the place is not important, you can work from anywhere in the world and still earn handsome amounts.

How to make money as an affiliate marketer?

Affiliate marketing experts often make an income that can tally over five figures per month, however, only 1 to 5% of thousands of marketers literally achieve this level. When an affiliate reaches this elite level, they are often referred to as a “super” affiliate.

“Affiliate Marketing Has Made Businesses Millions And Ordinary People Millionaires. Affiliate Marketing may be Your Next Best Career Move.”
Bo Benette

If anyone asks can you make money with affiliate marketing, the precise answer is “yes”. It is true that affiliate programs can earn extra money and even a full-time income from home. The long answer is a little more complicated. Like any home income venture, success comes not so much from what you choose to do to make money, but whether or not you do what needs to be done correctly and consistently.

Affiliate marketing is the ultimate home business since it has no dependence on finance to get started. Furthermore, neither you need to manufacture, stock, ship product inventory, nor you need to deliver a service on demand. Under affiliate marketing, you are fundamentally paid for referring new clients and customers to other businesses.

[A] Affiliate marketing WITH website

It is better to do affiliate marketing with a website. Once you have figured out your niche and have zeroed down your research on an affiliate marketing program, the immediate step is to build your site. For a newbie in the realm of building sites, an easy option is to go for WordPress. Since the WordPress CMS provides ease in operation and coding skill required is zilch, you can set up your own site effortlessly.

Make sure that you go for the authorized domain for better authenticity of your site. And, the content which you publish on your site should be of excellent quality. Your content plays a major role in your overall marketing strategy.

Content is not just king, its kingdom. Lee Odden

The type of content could consist of product reviews, banner ads, blog posts, common questions and answers (FAQs), informational content, etc. In your blog posts, you can mention about your products, how it helps your target audience, why they should buy it, what are the common issues with the product and how to deal with it, etc. Coming to the informational content, you can have a tab of FREE resources wherein you can add some slideshow, presentation, tutorial, EBook, etc. all these tactics will bring traffic to your website. In case your product is admired enough and brings sufficient relevant traffic to your website, you could also monetize the traffic in other ways, such as AdSense.

Promotion of website and content

Once your website is ready with relevant content, the next step is the promotion of your website and your content on various social media platforms. On the basis of your niche, you can choose from Facebook Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, and several other niches and location-specific networks.

Now, everything is ready for your affiliate marketing, starting from website to content and social media. Once all requirements are fulfilled, you can straightaway go ahead with the promotion of affiliate offers.

Remember, under affiliate marketing, merchants only pay for actual customers, not just visits. This gives affiliate marketing a major benefit over other promotional channels, such as PPC, where it’s trouble-free to spend a large chunk of money on clicks without producing any actual conversions. Successful affiliate programs use the multi-channel acknowledgment to ensure the affiliates that create the most value get paid the most.

According to Bill Burnice, top affiliate networks for 2017 are:

Clickbank
Rakuten
Amazon Associates
ShareASale
eBay
Avangate
Flexoffers
Avantlink
Revenuewire
ReviMedia
AdCombo
AffiBank

[B] Affiliate marketing WITHOUT having a website

It might be sounding absurd, but yes, you can do affiliate marketing without having a website also.

You can start posting the products which you want to promote on blogs and forums with your affiliate link in your signature
You can take help of EBook as a promotional scheme. Go for writing a ‘viral’ book and post on sites like eBay. An informative and useful book as compared to simply laden with affiliate ads might get quite better traction from your target.
Video marketing is one of the most prominent content marketing strategies as per SEO Trends 2017. Hence, go for sites like YouTube and Vimeo and promote your video clips. You will surely convert a good amount of fan base into affiliate profits.
A simple yet effective technique is to write classifieds for the products you want to promote and submit them on various sites. Classified submissions are regarded as one of the most favoured marketing prompts for affiliates who don’t use websites.
Build your own social network and let your followers know about you and the products you promote.
Write guest posts for the website having high traffic.
Little less recommended method is PPC. Because promotion through pay-per-click technique involves creating PPC campaigns through search engines like Google and Bing, and promoting the merchant website directly through your affiliate link.

Affiliate Marketing WITHOUT having website

Closing thoughts on affiliate marketing

The problem with affiliate marketing, like many other home business options, is the self-styled sages and get-rich-quick programs. These sages and programs hint that affiliate marketing can be done fast and with little or zero effort. So, the issue isn’t really whether or not affiliate marketing is a viable income option (it is), but whether or not you can make affiliate marketing work for you. Affiliate marketing isn’t hard, but it does require knowledge, planning, and consistent effort to make any significant income.