An article in USA Today last year said that the entertainment value for online players is high because most users sign up for free leagues, and during a time where people are looking for ways to find entertainment that doesn’t cost much money, fantasy sports is a great value.

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It’s easier said than done, of course – but if you can pull it off, the impact is extraordinary. And now the numerical evidence for something that every brand consultant has known in their bones is in. An analyst at the Stern School of Business in New York has assessed the effect the First Lady brings to the designer labels that she is seen in, and worked out that the total economic benefit that she has brought to her chosen brands is around $2.7 billion (£1.7 billion). Not since Imelda Marcos has a political wardrobe come under so much scrutiny.

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Here are the key numbers that Google SVP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg shared during today’s call:

* Display advertising: The company’s annualized run rate for display ad revenues is approaching $2.5 billion, according to Rosenberg. Google called it its next billion dollar business, and that it’s already here. Much of Google’s display ad business comes from its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick.
* YouTube: While Google didn’t reveal specific revenue numbers for YouTube, the company did say it is monetizing 2 billion views per week, up 50% from last year. Recent reports suggest that YouTube is approaching $1 billion per year in revenue.
* Mobile: The annualized run rate for Google’s mobile business is $1 billion this year. That means, if things stay on track, mobile will become yet another billion-dollar business for the search giant. As a note, this is really more about Google’s mobile ad business and less about Android, which is free for companies to use.

OK, it is all still advertising, but no one call it a one trick pony anymore.

A one and a half trick pony perhaps?

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Finance ministers gathered in Kuwait – led by Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa – to discuss the mechanism and the regulations of the fund.

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I think this is a very good idea. Ultimately, the root cause of terrorism is not religion but young people having no money and no jobs. Create enough entrepreneurs and let them create thousands of jobs, and the problem of terrorism will slowly but surely fade away.

When I am poor and jobless, my life appears worthless, fit perhaps only for a jihadi-death. But when I have a job and a family, boy, I tell you, it is different.

“A vendor buys vegetables from the wholesale market for Rs 1,000 in the morning and sells these for Rs 1,200 by the end of the day. This is a 20 per cent return every day or 6,000 per cent a year (assuming she works 300 days a year).” (Source)

Well, is this a practical estimate?It appears to be so. Because, even assuming that the vendor is not able to invest his profits and invests only the principal that remains with him the next day and every subsequent day (Rs 1000 every day), on an investment of Rs 1000, he has made 200*300 = 60000, or 6000%

Now, let’s look at a vendor who spends only Rs 100 per day on expenses and invests the rest. That is, he is able to save Rs 100 out of the 200 first day, so if he starts with Rs 1000 the first day, he spends Rs 1100 the next day and sells it for 1320, the third day, he spends 1220 and sells for Rs 1464 and so on. By the end of the year, he will end up with over trillions of trillions – of dollars. Yeah, it is true, you do the math yourself.

OK, that is just fantasising, because beyond the first few days, he will not be able to scale. But, a constant investment of Rs 1000 everyday for a 20% return end of day is possible, and we know it is happening.

Which means, if a vegetable vendor is selling Rs 10,000 worth of goods everyday, he will have an income of Rs 6,00,000 per year – Rs 50,000 a month. Is this really true in India? It could be fascinating to find out.

And that also makes me wonder? Why aren’t retailers worth hundreds of billions? It is fairly apparent retailers have hefty profit margins all over the world. Is it because the scale factor starts kicking in soon enough? What are your thoughts?

Anyway, what are the profit margins for the world’s largest retailer – Walmart? I dug up, and found that its gross profit margins were over 25%, but its net profit margins were about 4%. I  bet this huge gap doesn’t exist for a small retailer. So, somewhere along the scale, a retailer’s net profits start decreasing dramatically.

“I learned a lot from that deal. I learned that the Internet is all about people expressing themselves on pages they own and control. I learned that a business deal made over dinner and a handshake can turn into hundreds of millions of dollars, I learned that good partners are worth every penny of returns you give up to get them, and I learned that selling too soon is not too painful as long as you don’t sell too much. And most of all I learned that you can make 100 times your investment every once in a while. And when you do, it’s something special.”

Source: Gawker

Google’s AdWords and AdSense cash-cow businesses are breathtaking in their scale. But where to find the next multi-billion dollar business? So what should be the next engine for growth? Google should become a hedge fund, muses this post!

Why?

“Well, consider that, by virtue of its ubiquitous search products, Google has real-time access to the intentions of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. That seems like data that could be valuable for investing purposes…”

Interesting thought, that.

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By Richard Appelbaum, The Santa Barbara Independent

The idea for microcredit began in the early ’70s, when Muhammad Yunus — an economist from Bangladesh’s Chittagong University — led his students on a field trip to a poor village, where they interviewed a woman who made bamboo stools. Yunus learned that she had to borrow money at rates as high as 10 percent per week for the bamboo she used — a cost that left her with only two pennies a day as her total income. Had she been able to borrow under fair conditions, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and rise above a subsistence level.

Realizing there must have been something terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his own hands. Yunus some of the usury victims with loans out of his own pocket. The sum total of his investment was the equivalent of 27 U.S. dollars. This modest experiment succeeded in putting the women on a self-sustaining cycle of business growth, lifting them out of poverty. It was also an epiphany for Yunus, who realized that tiny loans could make a huge difference in the lives of people trying to eke out a livelihood with small business ventures.

In this interview from December 2007, UCSB Professor Richard Appelbaum and Professor Yunus discuss the origins and reasons for the success of the Grameen Bank, as well as Yunus’s call (in his latest book, Creating a World Without Poverty) for the creation of “social businesses” where profits would go not to investors but for poverty reduction.

Read the entire interview from here