The recent announcement of the Tiktok Shopify partnership marks TikTok's continued investment in social commerce. The partnership aims to help Shopify merchants, of which there are over one million, engage with TikTok's youthful audience and generate sales revenue. Ultimately, the venture will grow to encompass additional in app shopping elements too.

Early Days of Tiktok

In the past, TikTok gained notoriety for being a video platform that offered memes and entertainment. Members were not able to purchase items directly on the platform, even though it featured influencers who promoted cosmetics, clothes and domestic products. Rather, members were only able to purchase items on TikTok through adverts on the platform.

Shopify Partnership

This new arrangement permits merchants on Shopify to set up, optimize and run their TikTok advertising campaigns from Shopify's dashboard directly. To do this, they have to install the newly released channel app from TikTok that is available from Shopify's app store. After installation, merchants can take advantage of the functions offered on the 'TikTok For Business' Ads Manager.

Merchants on Shopify have come to realize the importance of discoverability, with social commerce offering the chance for independent companies to boost their brand awareness. The 2021 report from Shopify about the future of commerce revealed that fifty-four percent of younger shoppers across the world find brands through social networks. In addition, Shopify has joined forces with TikTok to introduce product links. Merchants on Shopify will use these links as product tags on TikTok, to send shoppers straight to their online stores from organic posts. Shoppers can opt to purchase from the merchants' stores directly, or click tagged products in merchants' TikTok posts.

Once merchants have set up the one click pixel in their 'TikTok For Business' account, they can activate in feed shoppable video adverts. To create these adverts, merchants simply choose the products they want to promote using templates that are designed specifically for ecommerce. These ad templates feature existing videos or imagery, so the TikTok channel is suitable for merchants of all sizes. To launch their joint venture, TikTok is offering merchants a $300 voucher to spend on their first advertising campaign.

In today's world of social media platforms, TikTok stands tall at the top of the pile. Formerly known as musical.ly, TikTok is as successful as it is for a number of reasons. For starters, the social media platform in its current form fills a void that its predecessors like Vine had left in the social media space. It is, therefore, not difficult to see why the social media app has taken off in popularity the way that it had.

Importantly, it does not hurt that the current TikTok algorithm within the app and the ability to share videos to other major platforms seem to support the viral reach of videos. Even TikTok users that are numbered among "the least of these" will post a video that will get likes, views, comments, and good support. Some go on to be viral, reaching far beyond the app and become Internet phenomenons. Add to that the fact that the tag of the person whose video is being shared remains throughout the duration of the video, and you get users who are eager to use the platform and grow their profiles in the social media space.

A Closer Look At TikTok Competitor Instagram Reels

In many ways (before Facebook bought the app), Instagram had a much freer algorithm where hashtags yielded a greater reach for the content posted by users and the chances of posting viral content were much higher. However, that has significantly changed. As such, other social media apps like TikTok have been allowed to take up space. The competition has forced Instagram to evolve and implement new features. The most recent feature in this evolution is the addition of Reels which are very TikTokesque in how it functions.

Some popular features that IG Reels and TikTok share include stitching together shorter videos that combine to make one video that is designed to promote a particular idea, point, or just for fun. The use of filters, as well as the addition of music, text, voice alterations, and other features, are among the TikTok adaptations used on IG Reels.

It is true that IG Instagram has done well through Reels to ensure that they don't lose a significant portion of their user-base to TikTok by now offering TikTok's appeal right there in the IG app. However, it is hardly likely that this will hurt TikTok in a similar manner that IG Stories arguably hurt Snapchat. For starters, TikTok by design (algorithm and sharability features) plays to the desire for virality that brands, influencers, and other users are looking for with their digital brands.

Coinmama is a global cryptocurrency broker that was launched way back in 2013. This exchange service is owned by New Bit Ventures Limited, who have their headquarters in Israel. Although Coinmama is deemed an exchange service, users are limited to just buying specific cryptocurrencies, as opposed to trading them. Presently, the only cryptos available to buy on Coinmama are Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Advantages

The advantage of using Coinmama is that it’s available in a large number of countries. In fact, it supports the widest range of nations; almost 200. These include countries like Algeria, Belgium, Kenya, Thailand, UAE, just to name a few. The only countries that aren’t supported are those that have been sanctioned. Coinmama also supports states in the U.S. including Colorado, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas, etc. Coinmama also allows buying cryptocurrency with credit cards and offers some of the highest limits among brokers that accept credit cards. You are able to buy up to $5000 worth of Bitcoin in a day and up to $30,000 per month.

Bitcoin exploded in popularity in 2018, and many websites started to launch and offer tools. This led to the popularity of Bitcoin mining calculators. With that said, we've researched calculators and have created a short list of the best ones.

Calculators For Beginners
When you're mining Bitcoins, but you're a newbie, then things can become overwhelming very fast. There is a lot of info out there and many factors that play a role in the profitability of mining. Some calculators are simpler than others, and this includes:

CryptoCompare- When you search Google for Bitcoin Mining Calculator, the first one that pops up is this one. There's a reason why, and that's because you can customize the hash-power, cost per KWh and power consumption, as well as the mining pool fee. You can estimate what your yearly income will be, as well as monthly, weekly or even daily. It doesn't take into account potential difficulty changes that may occur in the future, so it may provide you with over-estimates of profits.

Anything Crypto- We have a page dedicated to showing you profitability of different ASIC miners. This includes skeptical and optimistic predictions, and we take difficulty changes and price changes into consideration.

You probably have seen the television show Shark Tank and heard of the site Kickstarter, places you can get your product and startup funded. The crowdfunding industry has taken off in the US with entrepreneurs getting tens of thousands of dollars in funding to millions of dollars. There are hundreds of crowdfunding sites online to get your startup funding, but only a few have a track record of success and the community to fund your product or project. If you money is stopping you from starting your company, look to these startup funding sources.

The collaborative economy has been made possible by the Internet and has boomed in recent years. In 2012 the industry funded $2.7 billion in projects and $5.1 billion in 2013. The Jobs Act of 2012 kicked off the industry so growth has continued every year since for the young market. As an investor in a crowdfunded startup you get either a share of ownership in the company, rewards, products, or perks. Businesses and individuals get to step all the overhead involved in bank financing or Venture Capital.

Sites to Choose From:

Kickstarter

Kickstarter allows for donation based funding on creative projects. This site is not for charities or businesses, its for creative projects like art, films, designs or a music album. The site has helped get 143,000 projects off the ground. You have to pay a fee to Kickstarter if you get funded in addition to a processing fee. And you only have a certain period of time to get your funded. Make sure your submission is good as not all projects make it past the approval process.

There have been many changes in the tax reforms. IRS is encouraging everyone to do a quick tax reform checkup. That's why H&R is in the forefront by offering a free tax reform "Checkup service." It's an excellent program that helps you to track whether your tax obligations are smaller or bigger than usual. This will help taxpayers to change their financial or family situations in the next tax season.

There is a lot to do much ground to cover by taxpayers. The current reforms drastically decreased their taxes while increasing their paychecks. It requires taxpayers to check and fix their W4 forms.

A single taxpayer with one withholding allowance, with no children and a salary of $35000 was entitled to a $600  in refunds in 2017 returns. Changes in withholding tables in February saw a paycheck increase of 32$ in March. However, by next year, April the refunds will be 600$.

Weebly has a substantial amount of subscribers at 625,000. Merchant payment processor Square acquired Weebly for $365 million. Square intends on global expansion via this acquisition. A great portion of Weebly users lie outside of the United States, allowing Square to address a bigger audience of entrepreneurs. Revenues are expected to rise from $744 MM to $764 MM. The team members are also included in the merger. Most of the team from Weebly will be joining forces with the Square team.

The merger occurred during late April 2018. The merger is slated to help businesses all over the world. The services of both companies will line up well together. The CFO of Square stated that she feels both companies are culturally aligned. Backers of the acquisition include Floodgate, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, Felicis Ventures, and Y Combinator.

The executive chairman for News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, is asking for Facebook, Twitter, and even Google to subsidize the news websites that show up on people's newsfeeds. Essentially, Murdoch wants someone to pay him for the news that his company, and others like his, would put out on people's feeds.

This change comes right after the announcement of Facebook's updated newsfeed policies that prioritize friends and family first over the likes of news sites and advertisement pages.

This effectively puts news corporations at an extreme disadvantage for having their news seen at all. As anticipated, Wall Street did not take well to the news at all. They expect users will spend less money overall making their market shares decrease over time.

Newsfeed Chief for Facebook, Adam Mosseri, did not really have much to offer in the way of a compromising solution. He was quoted in the press announcement as telling news and advertisement companies to "experiment" and see what "content gets more likes." A very shunted answer when announcing that they are basically cutting off the toes of news companies.

Finding investing tips and advice has long been popular with the 75 million users of Yahoo Finance each month, although until now you couldn't actually make any trades on the site. Now the app can be used by E-Trade, Fidelity and Scottrade clients to buy and sell stocks through an arrangement with Tradelt, allowing brokerage portfolios to be synced. Clicking on the tab that says 'link broker accounts' allows users to take the first step in the straightforward process.

Michael La Guardia, head of product at Yahoo Finance points out that the company is not expecting to make money from users of the service, and most revenue will still come from advertising as it does now. However, the new app will provide value for users, and encourage them to keep using the app. La Guardia also promises more features and services coming in the future.

The San Francisco Chronicle has recently released a report indicating that the Trump administration may soon rescind or delay the International Entrepreneur Rule. The I.E. rule, which is intended to increase entrepreneurship and innovation, and hopefully lead to job creation, is widely regarded as a type of company startup visa. The program will be overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The rule was initially put in place by the Obama Administration and is anxiously anticipated by the startup community. It was set to come into effect on July 17, however, it appears that Homeland Security is now intending to push back the date into 2018 as it finalizes plans to withdraw the rule permanently.