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Author: Engin

Books

"No two persons ever read the same book." says Edmund Wilson. It certainly makes sense. Nevertheless, recommendations are the best way to find new books. How many books can you fit in your short life anyway? Books need to be chosen wisely. Some books can add fabulous value to you or to your business. As it's a remarkably challenging process, I would like to help you during this.

Here is the list of the books that I've read and learnt from a lot. I added a couple of examples here, but please check out my Goodreads recommended shelf for an up-to-date list. Hope you enjoy it!

Currently Reading

The Illustrated Man
This is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See
The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture
Nutuk


People

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Charlie Munger

Richard Feynman

Alan Turing

Steve Jobs

Ray Dalio

Richard Branson

Peter Thiel

Bill Gates

Jeff Bezos

Larry Page

Seth Godin

Warren Buffett

Sergey Brin

Shane Parrish

Eric Ries

Quotes

“Hope is not a strategy”

“Think big, start small, act fast”

“Ideas are cheap, but acting on them is quite expensive”

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde

“I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.” – Richard Branson

“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” – John Naisbitt

“Ideas are the currency of growth.” – Morgan Brown

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein

“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.” — Charlie Munger

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” – Francis Bacon

Blogs

 

In the market, there are a huge amount of blogs on Marketing and Startups but most of them are not worth to read it.  I don't want people to waste their time to find new blogs or reading dummy content. So here is a curated list of blogs that I like to follow and find worth to read.

Startup Marketing - "Growth Hacker" term is founded by Sean Ellis. In his blog, he writes on startup marketing. If you want to unlock your startup's growth, you must follow this blog. I think this is the first blog to follow for growth hackers.

Growthhackers.com - If you have any questions on growth hacking, you can ask your question on this platform and expert growth hackers will answer your questions. You can find must-read articles, videos and presentations from this platform as well.

Coelevate - Brian Balfour writes great essays on customer acquisition, growth, activation and referral. He is VP of Growth at Hubspot and Sidekick. One of my favorite blog on growth.

Andrew Chen - He is an advisor and investor for companies like Dropbox, ProductHunt, Qualaroo and Angel List. At the same time, he shares his knowledge on his blog. His blog contains full of research and insight.

GainBits - Gain Bits blog is not a typical, useless growth hacking blog. Their aim is not to post blogs like how a button color increased conversion %400, they blogs contains comprehensive guides and strategies.

Sixteen Ventures - Lincoln Murphy is a thought leaders on SaaS. He shares his knowledge on SaaS Growth Strategies. If you are looking for more information on SaaS metrics or customer activation or customer onboarding you can check this blog.[/vc_column_text][vc_text_separator

GrooveHQ - GrooveHQ is a help desk software and they are sharing their story from $0 to $500K MRR. Alex Turnbull is the founder of this company and unlikely he is the only founder of this company. Very insightful blog for startups.

Open Buffer - Buffer shares everything related to their company on this blog. It's not a common thing between companies. They share salaries,  incomes, number of active customers and so on. For startups it gives great insight.

Signal v. Noise - AS you may know Basecamp is one of the greatest project management tool in the market. And on their blog they are sharing their knowledge of how they created this compant and what they are doing daily. If you like this blog, you can read their books as well which I mentioned in my curated books list.

Paul Graham  - Not like a typical blog, he writes long but must read essays on his blog. You should be focused to read his essays. They are not like "2 minute read" blogs, he creates masterpiece essays.

Startup Lessons Learned  - Eric Ries, founder of lean startup methodology, shares his knowledge on his blog. He shares his thoughts on lean startups and businesses. His blog contains lots of great lessons like the stories in his Lean Startup book.

OnStartups - Cofounder of Hubspot, Dharmesh Shah writes his insights and advice on startups on this blog. Resources section the blog is worth to check. It contains a curated startup links all over the world.

Saastr - Saastr contains huge amount of startup content from each stage of a startup. You can find seperate topics for Traction, Startups, Hiring, Exits and Scaling. Find your stage of your startup and read articles.

Inbound.org - Inbound.org is a community for digital marketers. If you have any questions or links to share here is the best place for sharing. Moz and Hubspot are supporting this great community. Hiten Shah and Rand Fishkin are actively using this community as well.

Buffer - On Buffer's blog you can find latest and most comprehensive articles on Social Media. How to post? When to post? What to post? All needed answers for Social Media is in this blog. You can find great tips and tricks related to Social Media in this Blog.

Chiefmartec - Scott Brinker publish his opinions on Marketing Technology on his blog. You can find lots of detailed posts related to how marketing and technology works together. Of course he is well known with his Marketing Technology Landscape which is updated yearly

OkDork - Noah Kagan, founder of SumoMe, has a "Free Marketing Toolkit" which contains lots of useful spreadsheets on his blog. "Resources" and "Best Of" are also contains great knowledge.

Hubspot - Hubspot is a leading Marketing Automation platform and on their blog they have different topics like Sales, Marketing and Agency. They always great ebooks and templates on their blog. It's a good idea to check this blog regularly.

Moz Blog - If you are looking a piece of advice on SEO, Moz's blog is definetly the first blog to check.They also provide some free tools to check you website for SEO optimization.

Quicksprout - Neil Patel (Cofounder of CrazyEgg and Hello Bar) has a great knowledge on Digital Marketing and he is famous with his Free PDF Guides. Growth Hacking, SEO, Landing Pages and so on. His guides are must reads for digital marketing industry.

Copyblogger - Content related stuff can be found on this blog. They provide free ebooks and courses related to content marketing on their blog. Be a free member and you will get an access for all content marketing stuff.

Tools

Digital Marketing

Easiest email marketing tool with a simple UI
Create triggered event between your tools
Connect your customers via Intercom, Get in touch with your customers and create engagement
Analytics for you web app and mobile app, A/B testing and Churn can be calculated within Mixpanel
Lead Generator Pop-up's for your web site, content analytics and sharing options
A/B testing for your website without knowing any HTML
Simple and cheapest option for Marketing Automation
Connect your favorite apps together and integrate without coding
Visual Website Analytics and Heatmaps
Schedule your Social Media Posts and Organize Them
Listen your brand on social media and engage with your customers
Easily check your follows and followers on twitter. Bulk follow and unfollow option
Create images for social media and web site with drag and drop function
Best analytics tool on Earth. This is the first thing you need to implement after "Hello World"
Collect website data with 1 tool and use it with hundereds of different tools
Tag container, Marketer can add Javascript Codes without any help from IT/Developers

Productivity Tools

Organize and plan everything in kanban format
Simple notepad, very easy to take notes with it
Create and work on your documents on the cloud
Take your notes and collaborate on your notes
Save your urls for later reading and tag it
Best collabration and communication tool

While you’re still in school, try to save as much as possible or start repaying your loans so you have less to pay off later.

What’s an interest rate?

Once you’re in your 20s, a private student loan interest rate can vary widely. The lower the interest rate, the higher the loan repayment. But remember, interest rates don’t increase based on your credit score, so if you have a poor credit score, they cant help you.

Loan interest rates on some public student loans also vary widely. Keep your eye on the loan’s payment amount, as that can be the factor that determines your loan interest rate. Visit websites like SoFi to start getting all the information you need.

What’s the cost of borrowing money for college?

In addition to the cost of paying back your student loans, you’ll also need to pay the interest. The average interest rate on a 10-year private student loan is 3.59 percent. The average interest rate for a 10-year federal student loan is 3.39 percent. The rates fluctuate with the market because they’re tied to the market value of the dollar. The cost of your education is very different from one school to another, so it pays to have a detailed understanding of what you’ll pay in tuition and fees at the school you plan to attend.

What is the difference between private and public universities? Public colleges and universities are publicly funded and therefore offer much higher levels of educational benefits. Public universities and community colleges are usually funded through state budgets, while private universities tend to be funded from private foundations. Private universities offer more specializations, such as veterinary medicine or accounting, whereas public universities offer the same core degree program with a variety of options. Public universities tend to be more expensive, but they also tend to offer more benefits. What kind of degree can I get in college? Some degree programs may require specific classes before you can enroll, whereas others do not. Some programs allow you to study part-time if you wish, while others require that you take at least some courses as a full-time student. Some degree programs require that you take some credits on campus or at a university, while others don’t. Some degree programs don’t offer a degree, whereas others do offer some form of professional certification. What is the difference between a master’s and a doctorate? In general, a doctorate is a specialized, doctoral degree that is usually awarded after graduating from a master’s degree program. A master’s degree may be a professional degree that may be completed in a few years or it may require some post-baccalaureate training, such as a fellowship. What is the difference between a doctoral degree and a doctorate of theology? A doctoral degree is a specialized, doctoral degree that requires some post-baccalaureate training to complete. A doctorate of theology is a special credential that is awarded after a master’s degree program is completed. Why should I study theology? There are a number of reasons why it is important to study theology. The first reason is that theology is a crucial part of the theological education of theological students and it is a valuable preparation for a number of other areas in the theological curriculum. For instance, theologians are required to study the Bible, which is required for theological majors and for theological minors; the Bible is also required for admission to graduate studies in theology. The Bible can be studied in the humanities and in the social sciences, but theology requires a strong theological background.

eBay is perhaps the single most influential company to lay the groundwork for the modern era of online commerce. eBay allows people to shop for and sell anything from books to an used car, the great thing about eBay is that it also allows customers to redeem coupon codes usually found on websites like Raise. Today, eBay has around 80 percent of the $200-billion dollar annual online-sales market, and is worth over $50 billion dollars, making it the second largest company in the world. eBay isn’t just big; it’s also smart, as the company has taken advantage of trends like ecommerce, the rise of mobile, and the internet’s ability to bring big products to small buyers all in the last few years. That’s why it’s been such a force to be reckoned with in the online marketplace.

Electronics, Cars, Fashion, Collectibles & More | eBay

Last month, eBay announced a new ecommerce strategy called Smart Post, where it will focus more on mobile and the internet. CEO John Donahoe explained it this way:

When the business model changes, we do it differently.

The way it is with us is our brand is all about building the eBay experience. If you’re a merchant, it’s really about getting on the eBay platform, and then building a product that is really appealing to people and then using the eBay brand.

He also emphasized the focus on consumer-facing technology. “People are going to get what’s new and what’s great on eBay,” he said.

This is in line with a plan he outlined in his first public speech as CEO in 2013, which was titled “Our Vision and Vision.” He reiterated his belief in eBay as a platform that allows for users to do the right thing and engage with the world.

But some of the changes on display on the floor were less welcome, including the removal of one of the eBay homepage search boxes, which will now be replaced with a search box that will only return results on eBay. The other will return users to the original search bar on eBay.com.