<ul><li>Employees don’t want to come back more than occasionally</li><li>Having an increasing number of permanently remote employees is complicating</li><li>Workers who do endure the hassle of commuting into the office will regularly find themselves sitting at their desks with headphones on logging into Zoom meetings with their remote colleagues undermining leaders’ justification for any enforced hybrid or full-time in-office schedules.</li></ul>

The Return to the Office: Core Problems

<ul><li>Research suggests that the hybrid approach has little to no impact on productivity and culture, connection, and innovation improve with in-person time</li><li>With workers who have been hired remotely or have moved out of range of an office, "it's a tricky issue."</li><li>One approach is to give them a certain amount of time to relocate to where they can be part of the hybrid schedule. Another is to grandfather them in and let them remain remote</li><li>This has the downside of the frustration and two-tier system and is likely to decrease their ability to get promoted because of proximity bias.</li></ul>

Most Companies Should Stick To A Hybrid Approach

Companies with a preference that workers be in the office all or most of the time might have to pay more to recruit and retain them.HubSpot's strategy includes three Es: enablement, experimentation, empathy:  enablement involves equipping managers and workers with tools and support for hybrid, such as templates for 1:1 meetings and connectivity suggestions;  experimentation includes virtual events, so that employees from different teams can get to know each other; empathy includes special support for caregivers and employees of color, including training and encouraging managers to talk about t<warningtag>heir own experiences.</warningtag>

The Money Issue

We’ve recently heard from leaders who are finding the coming return to office even messier than they anticipated. Some share a set of core problems:&hellip;

remotework

Remote Work

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

business

Business

When No One Really Wants to Return to the Office

They are abundant, they are irrational, and they cause problems for others without apparent benefit to themselves, thereby lowering society’s total well-being. There are no defenses against stupidity, argued the Italian-born professor, who died in 2000. The only way a society can avoid being crushed by the burden of its idiots is if the non-stupid work even harder to offset the losses of their stupid brethren.

Stupid People Share Several Identifying Traits

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. No matter how many idiots you suspect yourself surrounded by, Cipolla wrote, you are invariably lowballing the total. This problem is compounded by biased assumptions that certain people are intelligent based on superficial factors like their job, education level, or other traits we believe to be exclusive of stupidity. They aren’t. Which takes us to:

Stupidity Law #1

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.Cipolla posits stupidity is a variable that remains constant across all populations. Every category one can imagine—gender, race, nationality, education level, income—possesses a fixed percentage of stupid people. There are stupid college professors. There are stupid people at Davos and at the UN General Assembly. There are stupid people in every nation on earth. How numerous are the stupid amongst us? It’s impossible to say.

Stupidity Law #2

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.Cipolla called this one the Golden Law of stupidity. A stupid person, according to the economist, is one who causes problems for others without any clear benefit to himself.

Stupidity Law #3

This law also introduces three other phenotypes that Cipolla says co-exist alongside stupidity.First there is the intelligent person, whose actions benefit both himself and others.Then there is the bandit, who benefits himself at others’ expense. And lastly there is the helpless person, whose actions enrich others at his own expense.

The 4 Phenotypes - The 3 Non-Stupid

Cipolla imagined the four types along a graph, like this:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla#/media/File%3ACipolla-matrix.svg

The 4 Phenotypes Graph

The non-stupid are a flawed and inconsistent bunch. Sometimes we act intelligently, sometimes we are selfish bandits, sometimes we act helplessly and are taken advantage of by others, and sometimes we’re a bit of both. The stupid, in comparison, are paragons of consistency, acting at all times with unyielding idiocy.

Consistency Always Wins - The Revenge Of The Stupid

However, consistent stupidity is the only consistent thing about the stupid. This is what makes stupid people so dangerous. Cipolla explains:Essentially stupid people are dangerous and damaging because reasonable people find it difficult to imagine and understand unreasonable behavior.An intelligent person may understand the logic of a bandit, for example. The bandit’s actions follow a pattern of rationality: nasty rationality, if you like, but still rationality.

Consistent Stupidity Is All The Stupid Have, But It’s Plenty

You can foresee a bandit’s actions, his nasty maneuvres and ugly aspirations and often can build up your defenses.With a stupid person all this is absolutely impossible as explained by Law # 3. A stupid creature will harass you for no reason, for no advantage, without any plan or scheme and at the most improbable times and places. You have no rational way of telling if and when and how and why the stupid creature attacks. When confronted with a stupid individual you are completely at his mercy.

A Double Attack - The Unforeseeable And The Patternless

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril. This brings us to the fifth and final law:

Stupidity Law #4

Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.And its corollary:A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.We can do nothing about the stupid. The difference between societies that collapse under the weight of their stupid citizens and those who transcend them are the makeup of the non-stupid. Those progressing in spite of their stupid possess a high proportion of people acting intelligently, those who counterbalance the stupid’s losses by bringing about gains for themselves and their fellows.

Stupidity Law #5

Declining societies have the same percentage of stupid people as successful ones. But they also have high percentages of helpless people and, Cipolla writes, “an alarming proliferation of the bandits with overtones of stupidity.”“Such change in the composition of the non-stupid population inevitably strengthens the destructive power of the [stupid] fraction and makes decline a certainty,” Cipolla concludes. “And the country goes to Hell.”

Decline And The Composition Of The Non-Stupid 

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Stupidity is far more dangerous than evil, for evil takes a break from time to time, stupidity does not.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

In 1976, Carlo M. Cipolla, professor of economic history at the University of California, Berkeley published an essay outlining the fundamental laws of a force he perceived as humanity’s greatest existential threat: Stupidity. We (still) grossly underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

strategy

Strategy

teamwork

Teamwork

humanresources

Human Resources

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

The 5 Universal Laws Of Human Stupidity

Are video games good or bad for you?Short answer: yes, if you are using them strategically. <ul><li>Video games improve our memory and visual navigational system</li><li>Video games help improve our problem-solving ability</li><li>Video games can help reduce cognitive decline that happens naturally as we age</li><li>Gamers are better at allocating attention</li><li>Video games might be able to help conditions like anxiety and depression</li></ul>

The Surprising Benefits of Gaming

A 2015 study from the University of California compared gamers versus non-gamers. EXPERIMENT 1People who played 3D games performed better at memory tasks than people who played 2D games like Angry Birds and people who didn't ply any games at all.EXPERIMENT 2They also took a group of non-gamers and placed them into 3 groups.The first group played Super Mario 64, a 3D game.The second group played Angry Birds, a 2D game.The third group didn't play any games at all.Those who practices 3D games for 30 minutes per day had improved performance on certain memory tasks.

A gamer's brain

A 2013 longitudinal study revealed that people who played strategic video games had better problem-solving skills which also correlated with improved grades in school. Gamers are better at allocating attention Dr. Daphne Beverly ran a functional MRI study into the mechanism that controls attentional allocation & this resulted in improved & efficient performance in people who play games.Neuro-simulations showed that people who played video games were better at collecting visual & auditory stimuli to be able to make decisions more effectively & efficiently.

Video games help improve our problem-solving ability

A study from the University of Montréal reveals this.They split up adults between the ages of 55 and 75 into 3 groups.Group 1 was trained on video games like Super Mario 64.Group 2 had piano lessons.Group 3 had nothing.The study found that an increase in brain matter within the hippocampus was significant only in the gaming group.

Video games can help reduce cognitive decline that happens naturally as we age

A study from New Zealand used a specially designed game called Sparks to help teenagers dealing with depression.They found that the remission rate was significantly higher in the Sparks arm, 43,7% than in the 'treatment as usual arm' 26,7.Translation Teenagers who played video games were significantly more likely to have their depression cured.CAVEATSPlaying video games excessively is probably bad for your social life.Like any other excessive habit, dooh!

Video games might be able to help conditions like anxiety and depression

A 2017 UK study showed that a sample of 708 people who played Massively Multiplayer Online Games like World of Warcraft, found various psycho-social benefits like increased self-esteem and social competence.

Gaming can improve social life

Some ideas highlighting the fine line between the brain of a gamer vs. the one of a non-gamer. I have also created a video on this: Speed & Agility - The Key to Getting More Done https://youtu.be/OtpIdRNUMKM

Hey friends, on this episode of Journal Club we're going to be addressing how video games are good for us and the several benefits they bring. 🎮 Follow me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/aliabdaal Studies referenced in the video: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4682779/ http://rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3679 https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/11/video-games https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235367249_More_Than_Just_Fun_and_Games_The_Longitudinal_Relationships_Between_Strategic_Video_Games_Self-Reported_Problem_Solving_Skills_and_Academic_Grades http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3342 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187779 https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2598 https://osf.io/h5m7k/ MY FREE ONLINE COURSES: 🚀 Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity 🎬 Video Editing with Final Cut Pro X - From Beginner to YouTuber - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/video-editing 🎓 How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying 😃 How to be Happier - Stoicism Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/stoicism MY FAVOURITE GEAR: 🎥 My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal ⌨️ My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard 📝 My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike MY FAVOURITE SOFTWARE: 📚 How I remember what I read (Readwise) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise 🎵 Where I get my Music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound 🌐 My website platform (Ghost) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ghost 🎤 My podcast hosting platform (Transistor) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/transistor OTHER RECOMMENDED COURSES 📔 Effortless Output with Roam Research - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/roam 📓 Building a Second Brain - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/basb 🎙My weekly podcast - https://www.youtube.com/c/notoverthinking My brother and I host a weekly podcast where we discuss happiness, creativity and the human condition. You can find it by searching “Not Overthinking” on any podcast app (eg: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts etc). BE MY FRIEND: 💌 Sign up to my weekly email newsletter - https://aliabdaal.com/newsletter/ 🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal 🎮 Twitch - https://twitch.tv/aliabdaal WHO AM I: I'm Ali, a junior doctor working in Cambridge, UK. I make videos about medicine, technology, productivity and lifestyle design. I also have a weekly podcast with my brother (https://www.youtube.com/c/notoverthinking), and I write a weekly email newsletter that contains some quick thoughts + links to interesting things (https://aliabdaal.com/newsletter/). 🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com GET IN TOUCH: If you’d like to talk, I’d love to hear from you. Tweeting @AliAbdaal directly will be the quickest way to get a response, but if your question is very long, feel free to email me at hi@aliabdaal.com. I try my best to reply to things but there sadly aren't enough hours in the day to respond to everyone 😭 PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

career

Career

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

Hey friends, on this episode of Journal Club we're going to be addressing how video games are good for us and the several benefits they bring.

🎮 Follow me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/aliabdaal

Studies referenced in the video:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4682779/
http://rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3679
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/11/video-games
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235367249_More_Than_Just_Fun_and_Games_The_Longitudinal_Relationships_Between_Strategic_Video_Games_Self-Reported_Problem_Solving_Skills_and_Academic_Grades
http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=3342
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187779
https://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2598
https://osf.io/h5m7k/

MY FREE ONLINE COURSES:
🚀  Productivity Masterclass - Principles and Tools to Boost Your Productivity - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/productivity
🎬  Video Editing with Final Cut Pro X - From Beginner to YouTuber - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/video-editing
🎓  How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/studying
😃  How to be Happier - Stoicism Masterclass - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/stoicism

MY FAVOURITE GEAR:
🎥 My YouTube Camera Gear - https://kit.co/AliAbdaal
⌨️ My Keyboard - Wireless Coral mechanical keyboard (Cherry Blue) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/keyboard 
📝 My favourite iPad Screen Protector - Paperlike - https://go.aliabdaal.com/paperlike 

MY FAVOURITE SOFTWARE:
📚 How I remember what I read (Readwise) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/readwise 
🎵 Where I get my Music (amazing for YouTubers) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/epidemicsound
🌐 My website platform (Ghost) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/ghost
🎤 My podcast hosting platform (Transistor) - https://go.aliabdaal.com/transistor

OTHER RECOMMENDED COURSES
📔 Effortless Output with Roam Research - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/roam
📓 Building a Second Brain - https://go.aliabdaal.com/course/basb

🎙My weekly podcast - https://www.youtube.com/c/notoverthinking
My brother and I host a weekly podcast where we discuss happiness, creativity and the human condition. You can find it by searching “Not Overthinking” on any podcast app (eg: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts etc). 

BE MY FRIEND:
💌 Sign up to my weekly email newsletter - https://aliabdaal.com/newsletter/
🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com 
 
📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/aliabdaal
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/aliabdaal
🎮 Twitch - https://twitch.tv/aliabdaal

WHO AM I:
I'm Ali, a junior doctor working in Cambridge, UK. I make videos about medicine, technology, productivity and lifestyle design. I also have a weekly podcast with my brother (https://www.youtube.com/c/notoverthinking), and I write a weekly email newsletter that contains some quick thoughts + links to interesting things (https://aliabdaal.com/newsletter/).

🌍 My website / blog - https://www.aliabdaal.com 

GET IN TOUCH:
If you’d like to talk, I’d love to hear from you. Tweeting @AliAbdaal directly will be the quickest way to get a response, but if your question is very long, feel free to email me at hi@aliabdaal.com. I try my best to reply to things but there sadly aren't enough hours in the day to respond to everyone 😭

PS: Some of the links in this description are affiliate links that I get a kickback from 😜

📚 Check out my first book Feel-Good Productivity here: https://www.feelgoodproductivity.com/

Hey, I'm Ali, a doctor turned entrepreneur, and the world’s most followed productivity expert 😜 

On this channel, we explore evidence-based strategies and tools that can help us be more productive, and build a life that we love. 

If that sounds interesting, consider subscribing! See you in the next video x

Ali Abdaal

Routines are healthy, predictable, and comfortable. Yet, many businesses have found themselves in uncomfortable positions over the past two years. The restaurant industry had to rapidly shift to online ordering and curbside pickup. Airlines and cruise lines had to rethink the entire traveller experience. It resulted in industries forging new paths and making groundbreaking discoveries. Innovation happened.

Adaptability ensure future success

Behaviour patterns have changed and companies must respond in turn. Two-thirds of organizations surveyed in 2021 said their strategy would change significantly in the next three years as they adjust to the pandemic. However, many companies don't believe they are agile enough to support the evolving business needs. Organizations that take an adaptable, flexible approach are far ahead of those who want to do business as usual while the world has moved on.

Keep moving

A business comfortable in its routine is often change-averse. This fear of failure is preventing innovation and one that organizations must overcome to avoid the risk of falling behind. Leaders promoting innovation are taking the bold step to shake up the status quo. But, to earn buy-in and support, they should find a common, relatable ground.

Identify bold leaders to earn buy-in

Continuing to do the same things in the face of change eventually results in irrelevance. Responding to emerging market conditions can position organisations to be more resilient when the trend eventually leads the rest of the market to follow.

The early bird catches the worm

Change is constant, evolution is continuous, and companies need to be adaptable to ensure future success, this Capgemini exec says.


Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

creativity

Creativity

Yes, innovation is supposed to be uncomfortable

The father of industrial design, Raymond Loewy had an uncanny sense of how to make things fashionable. He believed that consumers are torn between two opposing forces: neophilia, a curiosity about new things; and neophobia, a fear of anything too new. As a result, they gravitate to products that are bold, but instantly comprehensible. Loewy called his grand theory “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable”—Maya. He said to sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.

Most Advanced Yet Acceptable

Why do people like what they like? It is one of the oldest questions of philosophy and aesthetics. Ancient thinkers inclined to mysticism proposed that a “golden ratio”—about 1.62 to 1, as in, for instance, the dimensions of a rectangle—could explain the visual perfection of objects like sunflowers and Greek temples. Other thinkers were deeply sceptical: David Hume, the 18th-century philosopher, considered the search for formulas to be absurd, because the perception of beauty was purely subjective, residing in individuals, not in the fabric of the universe.

The Formula Of Likeness

In the 1960s, the psychologist Robert Zajonc conducted a series of experiments where he showed subjects nonsense words, random shapes, and Chinese-like characters and asked them which they preferred. In study after study, people reliably gravitated toward the words and shapes they’d seen the most. Their preference was for familiarity.This discovery was known as mere-exposure effect, and it is one of the sturdiest findings in modern psychology. Across hundreds of studies and meta-studies, subjects around the world prefer familiar shapes, landscapes, consumer goods, songs, and human voices.

Liking The Known: Mere Exposure Effect

In mere-exposure studies, the preference for familiar stimuli is attenuated or negated entirely when the participants realize they’re being repeatedly exposed to the same thing. For that reason, the power of familiarity seems to be strongest when a person isn’t expecting it.The reverse is also true: A surprise seems to work best when it contains some element of familiarity.

Familiar Surprise

Eureka moments are a force in the academic world as well.Scientists and philosophers are exquisitely sensitive to the advantage of ideas that already enjoy broad familiarity.In 2014, a team of researchers from Harvard University studied about sort of proposals that were most likely to win funding from prestigious institutions such as the National Institutes of Health: familiar proposals or extremely novel ones?<ul><li>Most-novel proposals got the worst ratings.</li><li>Exceedingly familiar proposals fared a bit better.</li><li>The highest evaluation scores went to submissions that were deemed slightly new.</li></ul>

Mere-Exposure Effect In The Academic World

In Silicon Valley, where venture capitalists also sift through a surfeit of proposals, many new ideas are promoted as a fresh spin on familiar successes.Optimal newness in names: Most parents prefer first names for their children that are common but not too common, optimally differentiated from other children's names.This helps explain how names fall in and out of fashion.

Optimal Newness

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything

When startups and their investors partner to raise capital and fund scale, there is an opportunity to take a look at their existing human capital structure and plan a more purposeful road map to support their growth.While the average check size has grown among <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/venture-capital">venture capital</a> (VC) firms, the success rate of their portfolio companies hasn’t. <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/news/Pages/item.aspx?num=487">Harvard Business School</a> notes that in spite of the increased cash infusion, 75% of VC-backed <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/startups">startups</a> still fail.

Growing Outwards

Failure can be attributed to a variety of unforeseen or unavoidable factors, often coming from external circumstances out of our control. However, as leaders and investors, we must ask ourselves, What are those things in my <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/company">company</a> that we can control, especially at critical moments of growth? And with that question comes a look inward into the construct of the organization itself. One of the most often overlooked but integral components of this is <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/333102">human capital</a>.

Startup Failure

The bottom line is that when startups and their investor's partner to raise capital and fund scale, there is an opportunity to take a look at their existing human capital structure and plan a more purposeful road map to support their growth. Here are five keys to managing human capital through hyper-growth.

A Purposeful Road Map

Before thinking about the “what next” understand the “what now” For example, have you identified the existing team members who are integral to your company’s future success? Have you put together growth-supportive <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/300515">compensation packages</a> to ensure their continued commitment?

Tie Your Internal Shoelaces

Investors expect their capital to be put to work expediently and efficiently. With that, comes the need for rapid but effective hiring. However, the support to manage such hiring is often an afterthought, a mad scramble for resources once an event is complete. Prior to a fundraising, transaction or growth launch, it is important to put the recruitment team in place and set the foundation for its human capital alignment.

Hire an Internal Recruiting Team

As your company grows, its core may continue, but its characteristics will inevitably change. It’s like a baby turning into a toddler. It’s so important that as your company continues through key phases of its growth life cycle, leadership defines what it wants post-growth to look like, how it wants to behave and what it wants to be known for. In short, the company needs to create a new post-growth archetype.

Create a New Company Archetype

As the company turns on the growth fire hose and starts running a flowing stream of <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/383196">investment cash</a>, it will inevitably take on a new and more mature persona. Companies know that with growth comes growing pains, and it is within their power to plan accordingly. Change management is necessary, but many times, it comes into play only at the point when dysfunction arises. Often, that can be too late.

Pre-Allocate a Percentage of Your Fundraise for Change Management Integration and Training

Successful growth isn’t just about revenue, eyeballs or market share. So, create a comprehensive growth rubric — the key components that leadership will continuously measure the company against to define successful progress. This growth rubric can be used before, during and after transition phases, benchmarking against individual success metrics while course-correcting where needed.

Define Your Growth Rubric

The growth company of today has a unique opportunity to develop a more self-aware plan. As part of the securing of capital, it is up to the company and its investors to develop a comprehensive strategy for a healthy scale. Every VC has investors to appease, and their reports are chock-full of metrics such as revenue, compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and customer acquisition.

A Self-Aware Plan

As leaders, we have an opportunity to also hold ourselves accountable for internal metrics such as hiring efficiency, retention rate, <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/368614">employee satisfaction</a> and rate of internal promotion. Human capital is the engine under the flashy hood, and it is ultimately what will make the fast car last throughout the growth journey.

The Bottom Line

When startups and their investors partner to raise capital and fund scale, there is an opportunity to take a look at their existing human capital structure and plan a more purposeful road map to support its growth.

startup

Startups

Looking Inward to Grow Outward: 5 Keys to Managing Human Capital Through Hyper-Growth

Niche sites have significant earning potential. They can earn over $1,000 a month within the first 12 months and eventually replace your regular "9 to 5." But to reach that point, you need to know how to successfully get one off the ground using a step-by-step process.

Creating a niche site

Niche affiliate websites work by promoting someone else’s product through content and earning a commission from every sale the company makes. To do this, site owners produce articles and reviews, covering topics like what the product is, who needs the product and why, and how the product compares to other similar products. If someone makes a purchase, an affiliate commission is earned.

How niche affiliate sites work

It depends on three things:<ul><li>Choosing the right niche</li><li>Building the site right from the beginning</li><li>How much time and effort you put into the site to get it off the ground</li></ul> Choosing a niche with high-ticket items, laying the right foundations, and putting more effort into the amount of content you produce and links you build will make your site earn more quickly. Niche sites currently flip for around a 32X multiplier based on one month’s income, meaning if it earns $1,000 a month within 12 months, you can potentially flip that site for $32,000.

How much can you earn from a niche affiliate site

Choosing the right niche lays the foundation for everything else going forward. For example, the degree of difficulty to rank your site, the amount of money you can earn, etc. When you decide on a profitable niche, consider: <ol><li>Personal experience/interests</li><li>Choosing the right affiliate program(s)</li><li>Viability in the long term</li></ol>

Choosing the right niche

Too much experience in a niche can make you too personally invested. You may want to vet all the content in the finest detail or write all the content yourself. This makes it very hard to scale. Instead, choose a niche you find interesting but not too interesting. You should have enough interest to produce some of the content at first, but not enough to write everything in the long term.

Personal experience/interests

You may be tempted to jump into anything that is hot right now, but it is probably not going to give you enough scope in terms of keywords to scale your site. Focusing on seasonal niches, such as tennis, means your site will earn more at certain times and nothing at other times. If you want to build an affiliate site to act as your main source of income, you have to take these factors consideration.

Viability in the long term

When doing keyword research for niche affiliate sites, you’re mostly looking for three main types of keywords:<ul><li>General comparisons – Best wifi router, best protein powder</li><li>Branded comparisons – MacBook Air vs. MacBook Pro</li><li>Product reviews – MacBook Pro review</li></ul>These contain all the keyword types that people regularly search for and where you can plug products to earn affiliate commissions. <ul><li>Go to Ahrefs’ <a href="https://ahrefs.com/keywords-explorer">Keywords Explorer</a></li><li>Enter broad topics or brands related to your niche</li><li>Go to the Matching terms report</li><li>Filter for keywords containing a relevant modifier</li></ul>

Finding the right keywords

Pick a domain and build your site using WordPress, as it is customizable and free. <ul><li>Choose the right theme as it will form the foundation of your site. The theme should have its own built-in page builder functionality, such as Astra or AffiliateFish.</li><li>Consider conversions. Ensure your site has clear call-to-action (CTA) sections, such as clicking a link to your recommended retailer, downloading an ebook, or signing up for a mailing list.</li><li>Think about expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E‑A-T). Ensure that your website has a clear “about” page and author bios to establish authority.</li></ul>

Building your site

Content is vital to a niche affiliate site. This is where you will put all your affiliate links, which can earn you commissions. <ul><li>Ensure you write quality content that will engage your audience.</li><li>Write content for people, not search engines.</li></ul> This will help you build trust and a loyal readership because they love what you are doing.

Writing Content

Links building is getting other websites to link to pages on your own website. Links need to come from high-quality sources. Top link building choices for beginners are:<ul><li>Earned media. Use sites like Help A Reporter Out (HARO), Terkel, and Sourcebottle to build high-authority links and help to boost E-A-T.</li><li>Broken link building is an easy way to build links.</li><li>Guest blogging can help to build high-quality links to your website and help you improve E-A-T.</li></ul>

Building links

A niche site is any website that caters to a specific audience or topic. To create a profitable site, just follow six simple steps.

How to Create a Niche Site That Earns 4 Figures a Month in 6 Easy Steps

I’ve designed websites for 9 years now and made around $800,000 in my career as a website designer.In this article, I’m sharing my 5 top tips that will help you create amazing website designs.Let’s dive in!

My Top 5 Tips For Designing A Website

When picking your colour palette I recommend using just 3 colours. One colour for your background. One colour for your typography. And one colour for your accents. By accents, I mean things like buttons. A grand total of three colours!You can use variations of your 3 colours. For example, when I use black I do use some greys. But rarely do I ever introduce more than 3 completely different colours into the design.If you can’t pick your own colours, Great! Just use black, white and a single brand colour for your highlights.

1. Use just 3 colours

When choosing fonts for your website design I recommend using just one classic typeface.Your font family must include a number of different weights. For example Heavy, Bold, Medium and Light. To achieve variation and hierarchy in your designs you can change up the size and weight of your font.Super important! You must pick a high-quality font. It must read well in long copy. For example your blog posts. I recommend using classic fonts like Helvetica.If you must use a brand font. Use it just for the main headers. Then use your single chosen font for the rest of your website designs. Done!

2. Use just one font

The average website design is going to be viewed on dozens of different devices.Your design must be able to flex and stack and still look good. This means using a modular design.By modular design, I mean every element you create should be self-contained.Whenever you’re laying out your page elements, always be working with independent, separate modules. How your design is going to flex vertically and horizontally. And how it’s going to stack on top of each other...Check out my linked article to continue reading and see tips 4 and 5.

3. Make everything modular

To this day I still employ all of these frameworks when I’m designing a website.
Give them a shot. Especially if you’re just starting out.

When picking your colour palette I recommend using just 3 colours. One colour for your background. One colour for your typography. And one colour for your accents. By accents, I mean things like…

writing

Reading & Writing

communication

Communication

product

Product & Design

My top 5 tips for designing a website

FOMO, or the "fear of missing out," has permeated most corners of our popular culture. But rest assured -- FOMO wasn't invented by some Madison Avenue agency. In fact, quite the opposite; the term was created by a Harvard MBA named Patrick J. McGinnis, author of The 10% Entrepreneur.However, while we have come to use it in our everyday vernacular ("Dude, my dog has serious FOMO every time I leave him at home"), McGinnis actually developed FOMO for the context of business decision-making.

The Fear Of Missing Out

Most people don't know that FOMO is just one half of the managerial equation. It has an even darker counterpart -- one that can cripple and then completely ruin companies if it's not managed well.FOBO, or the "fear of a better option, managers don't act at all, choosing instead to sit back and wait for a better option to come along.People have long agonized over major life choices, like getting married, taking a job, or buying a house, in hopes of finding a slightly better or radically better option.

Fear Of A Better Option(FOBO)

FOBO means that managers create as many options as possible, keep them open, and then decide which options work somewhere at the time and place that is most favourable.Today, when we have so many options, we don't just try to optimize whom we marry, or where we work or live -- we try to optimize nearly every aspect of our lives and we spend inordinate time and energy in the process.It's the ultimate analysis paralysis that we see plaguing our business climate, and it helps explain why corporations are succumbing to the nimbler start-up culture that is defining business in the 21st century.

How FOBO Affects Your Office

Leaders must accept that decisions come with downsides, trade-offs, and the risk of failure. Otherwise, they are too slow to react. With that acceptance in mind, leaders simply must move forward and make the best decision they can.In a world where innovation is the currency of effective leadership, indecision can be fatal. Blockbuster, Borders, Blackberry, Yahoo, and others failed to innovate, perhaps succumbing to FOMO, FOBO or both.

How to avoid FOBO

The inventor of FOMO is warning leaders about a more dangerous threat to  business. See how waiting for a better option is worse than missing out.

problemsolving

Problem Solving

The Inventor of FOMO Is Warning Leaders About a New, More Dangerous Threat

Companies often have difficulty talking with customers about prices and have a legitimate need to reduce “friction” in the transaction. They accomplish this by using tricks such as tweaking price endings to distort perceptions or to signal a bargain. For example, $9.99 is perceived as a whole dollar cheaper than $10. The challenge for purpose-oriented organizations is to be transparent and truthful.

Price challenges

A helpful starting point to improve how organizations present their prices is to accept that price is an integral part of its dialogue with customers. The next step is how to explain it. The field of linguistics gives us four rules to have meaningful dialogue:<ol><li>The rule of quality: Participants ay only what they believe to be accurate.</li><li>The rule of manner: They avoid overly vague, complex, or simplistic expressions.</li><li>The rule of relevance: They only contribute information that is related to the topic.</li><li>The rule of quantity: They give the right amount of information.</li></ol>

How organizations present their prices

Position the price as a component of the company's responsible and ethical intentions. For example, Southwest Airlines price fairness in the name of its approach to service: On its website, the airline describes "Transfarency" as a "philosophy in which customers are treated honestly and fairly, and low fares actually stay low — no unexpected bag fees, change fees, or hidden fees." From a linguistics standpoint, this applies to the rule of relevance:<ul><li>Communicating about the company's ethics.</li><li>Connecting price to that message.</li><li>Hoping the customer makes the connection between the two.</li></ul>

Make price a reflection of your values

Customers often wonder how a price was set or why it has recently changed. This suggestion applies to the linguistic rule of manner by being very clear. Demystifying how prices are set or changed can help establish a trusting relationship with customers. For example, the furniture company Neptune provides extensive detail of its underlying logic for pricing.

Explain the price

Any of the four linguistic rules for dialogue can be broken if done in a lucid way.For example:<ul><li>To show customers just how affordable its furniture is, Saudi Arabia IKEA replaced monetary values printed on price tags with images of coffee cups, pizzas, bananas, and other relatively inexpensive everyday items.</li><li>The Japanese ice cream brand Akagi recently apologised following a 12-cent price hike on some of its products after 25 years without change.</li></ul>

Violate a rule, but do it blatantly

Even if inflation means you have to charge more, don’t try to hide it from your customers.

Talking to Your Customers About Prices

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