StartupTalky

Tag: Portfolio Management

  • Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management to Make Investing Smarter

    AI technology is redefining investment in that it makes the processes faster, simpler, and wiser. In fact, these innovations tend to churn vast amounts of data through machine learning, define optimal asset mixes, and execute trades quickly and carefully. Investors can expect intelligent guidance, automatic adjustment of position sizes, and plans that change markets. It captures a large amount of external data that provides invisible analytics. Reducing manual work and embedding behavior insights give even professional and beginner investors a definite advantage. The result will be a sleek and sustainable increase in portfolios that have the potential for significant scaling up.

    Tool Unique Features / Differentiators Target Audience / Best Use Case Key Strengths Limitations / Challenges
    Bloomberg Terminal Built-in chat for teams, mobile app, proprietary & third-party research Finance professionals needing real-time market data & trading tools Comprehensive market coverage, risk analytics, alerts Expensive, complex for beginners
    Alphasense AI summaries, tone checks, Smart Synonyms™, ESG checks Businesses, investors, researchers for market intelligence Fast document/data search, expert insights Limited visualization, collaboration restricted
    Finbox Automated cash flow/dividend models, API & Excel integration Investors & analysts needing valuation models & screeners Instant fair value estimates, curated portfolio ideas No direct broker integration, limited data export
    Betterment Goal-based investing, smart-beta & factor-based options Robo-advising & personal investors Tax-loss harvesting, easy app tracking Premium features for high-balance accounts only
    QuantConnect Open-source LEAN engine, Python/C# API, 15k+ backtests/day Quant researchers & developers for algorithmic strategies High scalability, backtesting, live trading Setup challenging for beginners, extra cost for datasets
    Wealthfront Direct indexing, FDIC-insured cash accounts, custom portfolios with crypto Digital-first investors seeking robo-advisory Automated portfolio creation, low fees No human advisor, limited mutual fund options
    NumerAI Crowdsourced AI models, staking with Numeraire (NMR) Data scientists & quantitative analysts Encrypted data, low fees, global talent pool Requires coding/data skills, only hedge fund exposure
    Nitrogen Wealth Automated Risk Number, AI-generated proposals, sandbox testing Financial advisors & wealth management firms Risk monitoring, client engagement, CRM integration Advisor-focused, not for direct retail investors
    Plaid  Aggregates 12,000+ financial institutions, fraud checks, wealth APIs Developers & fintech firms Flexible APIs, cross-platform integration Some features enterprise-only, add-ons may cost extra
    EidoSearch Predictive analytics, pattern detection, backtesting Institutional investors, quant researchers Custom asset strategy search, visual analytics Professional-level, IT support often required

    Bloomberg Terminal

    Website bloomberg.com/professional/terminal
    Rating 4.6
    Free Trial No
    Best For Finance professionals needing real-time market data, news, analytics, trading, and communication tools.
    Bloomberg Terminal - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Bloomberg Terminal – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Bloomberg Terminal, being an AI-powered solution for investing, ensures that decisions are taken quickly and smoothly by providing real-time market data, instant news, and intelligent tools to help with wise decisions. It has made tough jobs easy with AI insights, risk analytics, and personalized views. Spot chances, cut down risk, and act fast within the system. Speedy action is triggered by built-in reporting, alerts, and datasets. Teams stay linked via Built-in chat; one can keep updated while on the go with the mobile application. Strong tracking capabilities report on a portfolio’s performance, assisting users with refining and growing returns. In fast markets, the Bloomberg Terminal makes all work simple, sharp, and effective.

    Pros

    • Quantitative analysis of market data in real-time 
    • Broad range of tools for risk and performance attribution 
    • Insight from both proprietary and third-party research, 

    Cons

    • Expensive for smaller firms and individuals 
    • Model complexity may require training for a new user.

    Pricing

    Bloomberg Terminal offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    Alphasense

    Website alpha-sense.com
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial No
    Best For Businesses, investors, and researchers using AI-powered market intelligence, document search, and financial insights.
    Alphasense - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Alphasense – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Alphasense is powered by AI for fast investing through pulling insights from millions of reports, calls, and filings in seconds. Its smart tools consist of AI summaries, tone checks, and the Smart Synonyms™, which help managers to easily track trends, test ideas, and spot risks. For example, the platform enables one to model data into key numbers and set up auto reports. All deep research has been cut down to little. Both top and bottom reviews become simple and fast. The artificial intelligence machine learning, joined with the viewpoints of experts, smooths workflows, takes care of ESG checks, and has alerts to provide guidance in almost real time. 

    Pros

    • Speedy document and data searching.
    • AI summaries and chat-based research.
    • Integrated insights from experts and brokers

    Cons

    • Limited visualization tools. 
    • Collaborate only with licensed users

    Pricing

    Alphasense offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    Investing 101: Top Investing Books for Beginners
    This guide explores the best books for beginner investors, helping you understand financial concepts, manage risk, and build your wealth.
    StartupTalkyRia Sahni

    Finbox

    Website finbox.com
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial Yes
    Best For Investors and analysts needing AI-assisted valuation models, screeners, watchlists, and financial modeling tools.
    Finbox - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Finbox – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Finbox is a cloud AI platform that performs stock research in record time and with minimum effort. With coverage of over 100,000 global stocks, it provides fair value estimates instantaneously based on an automated cash flow and dividend model. Users can filter through more than 1,000 financial metrics to pinpoint the data they require with utmost precision. The platform also enables investors to vet top portfolios for investment ideas. Data can be effortlessly transferred to Excel or accessed via APIs, while an intuitive dashboard organizes the tools for both beginner and professional users under one roof. Custom watch lists, price alerts, and historical data facilitate rapid testing and feed into better strategies.

    Pros

    • Automated Value Models, offering an instant fair value 
    • Direct access through Excel and custom API access 
    • Ideas curated from the portfolios of premier investors. 

    Cons 

    • Absence of direct broker integration for live execution. 
    • Data export is very limited without upgrades.

    Pricing

    Finbox offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    Betterment

    Website betterment.com
    Rating 4.8
    Free Trial Yes
    Best For Robo-advising, goal-based investing, tax-loss harvesting, and cash management.
    Betterment - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Betterment – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Betterment uses artificial intelligence to make portfolio management hassle-free and automatic. The firm combines tax-loss harvesting, strategic portfolio rebalancing, and goal-based investing with ETF diversification and some personalization. Through smart algorithms, asset allocation gets adjusted as goals work through changes or the market takes its own shape, thereby keeping portfolios low-risk and on track. Investors may watch growth in real-time, set up screens for social impact, and explore smart-beta or factor-based options for extra returns. The platform engages simplicity and insight to allow novice and advanced users to invest with confidence. With app-based access, people can check returns, get advice, and act on plans anytime, turning investing, saving, and wealth building into a smooth and guided process.

    Pros

    • Affordable, transparent fees 
    • Real hands-off automation with tax-loss harvesting
    • App-based goal setting and available for tracking 24/7. 

    Cons 

    • Financial planning has premium prices in premium plans. 
    • Advanced features are only available to high-balance accounts

    Pricing

    Plan Pricing
    Individuals $0–$20K Balance → $4.1/month
    Employers Request for Proposal (RFP)
    Advisors Request for Proposal (RFP)

    QuantConnect

    Website quantconnect.com
    Rating 4.7
    Free Trial Yes
    Best For Quantitative researchers, developers, and traders building, backtesting, and live-trading algorithmic strategies across multiple asset classes via an open-source engine (LEAN).
    QuantConnect - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    QuantConnect – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    QuantConnect is an open-source artificial intelligence platform for trading and portfolio strategy design that allows users to build, test, and run automated strategies in stocks, forex, crypto, and options. The cloud infrastructure can run over 15,000 backtests a day, complete with real-time risk checks and robust broker integrations, and there is also an API in either Python or C# for configuring custom signals. Traders can benefit from many extensive datasets, Jupyter notebooks, and tools for live trading with automated reconciliation. The platform also enables group activities, licensing from Alpha Stream, and heavy portfolio analytics, making life easier for both small traders and capital allocators in developing scalable, event-driven strategies. 

    Pros

    • Highest scalability and fidelity with respect to backtesting 
    • Open-source nature and community support, and monetization options 
    • Cloud notebook and API are available for custom modeling 

    Cons 

    • Setting up code for beginners could prove challenging 
    • Extra charges for specialized datasets

    Pricing

    Plan Pricing
    Researcher $60/month
    Team $120/user/month
    Trading firm $336/user/month
    Institution $1080/user/month

    Etrade Business Model | How does Etrade make money?
    ETrade is a financial service provider & an electronic trading platform. Get an insights of ETrade Business Model to know how ETrade makes money?
    StartupTalkyRia Puneyani

    Wealthfront

    Website wealthfront.com
    Rating 4.4
    Free Trial No
    Best For Digital-first investors seeking robo-advisory services including automated investing, tax-loss harvesting, goal-based planning, and high-yield cash management.
    Wealthfront - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Wealthfront – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Wealthfront is an AI-driven wealth builder, so investors can build and configure portfolios without being overburdened by difficult tasks that diminish their time. The thing about a Wealthfront account is that the system itself can create a designated account and place one’s money into stocks, groups of stocks, bonds, ETFs, REITs, cryptocurrencies, or social-responsibility funds allocation, which will change over time as the market changes or new money is deposited. The app offers high-yield cash accounts, smooth movement of funds, and FDIC insurance up to $8 million. With direct indexing for Wealthfront accounts over $100,000, users can unlock a significantly higher growth rate by crushing the taxes.

    Pros 

    • low fee of 0.25%, and the minimum investment is $500. 
    • Tax-loss harvesting takes place every day for every account. 
    • Custom portfolios with fractional shares and some crypto exposure. 

    Cons

    • There is no human advisor to talk to. 
    • Limited direct mutual fund options or trading flexibility.

    Pricing

    Plan Pricing
    Annual Advisory Fee 0.25% annually

    NumerAI

    Website numer.ai
    Rating 4
    Free Trial Yes
    Best For Data scientists and quantitative analysts who want to build machine learning models, compete in stock-prediction tournaments, stake models with Numeraire (NMR), and potentially earn rewards.
    NumerAI - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    NumerAI – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    NumerAI is an unusual hedge fund that works with machine learning in a crowdsourcing capacity. Over 100 data science models create predictors to predict the world’s stock markets. This is achieved using encrypted, anonymized datasets with a combination of meta-models, which are designed as the finest choice for the quality of signals being measured by accuracy and diversity. NumerAI delegation gives its signal for prediction assessments for some staking in NMR coins. Those who get lucky receive rewards and can continue in the program. However, those getting down go O.S. and lose their connected NMR tokens, sort of self-correcting in nature from that perspective. 

    Pros 

    • Crowdsourced global data science talent
    • Superior confidentiality, encrypted model submissions 
    • Fees are lower than those of a traditional hedge fund. 

    Cons 

    • Necessary data science or coding skills for contribution 
    • No retail portfolios, hedge fund investment only.

    Pricing

    NumerAI offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    Nitrogen Wealth

    Website nitrogenwealth.com
    Rating 4
    Free Trial Yes
    Best For Financial advisors and wealth management firms seeking AI-driven risk assessment, client engagement, proposal generation, and portfolio analytics.
    Nitrogen Wealth - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Nitrogen Wealth – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Nitrogen is an AI-powered platform for advisors to manage risk, design portfolios, and establish client trust. Key elements include automated risk scores (Risk Number), live asset reviews, AI-generated meeting notes, smart proposals, and sandbox testing of new ideas. It integrates with widely used CRMs and planning applications for a smooth workflow. The platform also allows easy onboarding and oversight, providing activity monitoring tools for compliance in real time. Custom analytics, clear reports, and optimized allocations scale advice and keep clients engaged. Nitrogen’s interface brings together automation and insight quickly, allowing advisors to work quickly and clearly-growing and managing portfolios with ease.

    Pros 

    • Automated visual risk and performance monitoring 
    • Integrates effortlessly with Proprietary Tech stacks and CRMs 
    • Real-time asset class drill-down and allocation optimisation 

    Cons 

    • Advisor-focused, unsuited for direct retail investors. 
    • Requires customization training for new users

    Pricing

    Nitrogen offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    Plaid 

    Website plaid.com
    Rating 4
    Free Trial Yes
    Best For Developers and fintech firms needing secure, standardized access to users’ bank data and payment initiation across thousands of institutions.
    Plaid - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    Plaid – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    Plaid links more than 12,000 financial institutions, providing users and advisors with one dashboard to see all their accounts—banking, brokerage, retirement, cryptocurrency, and loans. Their AI tools sort transactions, generate fraud checks, and effectuate cross-platform syncing, hence making portfolio monitoring and risk control a cinch. Wealth APIs feed live data on investments, give real-time previews for liabilities, and accelerate the onboarding experience across apps. Plaid also helps surface trends in spending and saving, thereby facilitating personalized financial advice. The platform is highly flexible and developer-friendly. Considering security, privacy, and identity checks form its core principles, Plaid guarantees compliance while granting clean and reliable insights to investors and advisors about their entire financial picture.

    Pros 

    • comparable variety of accounts for global aggregation 
    • Platform-agnostic, mobile, desktop, and third-party apps compatibility 
    • Developer-friendly with very flexible APIs and analytics 

    Cons 

    • Advanced analytics and add-ons attract further costs. 
    • Availability of selected features only for enterprise clients.

    Pricing

    Plaid offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    EidoSearch

    Website eidosearch.com
    Rating 4
    Free Trial Demo available on request
    Best For Institutional investors, quant researchers, and analysts who want AI/pattern-driven predictive analytics and probability-based decision tools across equities, futures, currencies, and more.
    EidoSearch - Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management
    EidoSearch – Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management

    EidoSearch detects the patterns and forecasts asset moves on behalf of investors, with speed and accuracy, through the scanning of millions of financial time series using advanced AI. Its search engine instantaneously retrieves analogous events in the market, revealing analogs and outcomes to inform active portfolio decisions. The platform produces predictive signals, backtests concepts, identifies periods of risk or opportunity, and allows users to test strategies against custom criteria for the market. It is directly integrated with leading order management systems (OMS) and data feeds in a seamless workflow; sophisticated dashboards and visual analytics make deep market research accessible to any investment team.

    Pros

    • Doing real-time big data action discovery.
    • Custom asset strategy predictive pattern search. 
    • Backtesting and forecast tools with visual analytics. 

    Cons 

    • very institutional and professional. 
    • Customization and integrations may need IT support.

    Pricing

    EidoSearch offers custom pricing; contact them for a quote.

    Conclusion

    AI tools have brought about changes in portfolio management in terms of speeding up the processes, automating some functions, and giving smart insights to investors. In managing investments, they utilize prospective models, risk checks, and large data sets to improve returns while cutting exposure to market swings. Rebalancing is easy under these systems since the strategies adjust according to changing conditions. Clear dashboards and easy access bring advanced investing within reach of more people and remove barriers that once limited smart portfolio design. It offers such powerful backing to new and professional users alike by marrying efficiency with transparency. If any imminent technology advances by made, portfolios will become sharper and flexible.

    Mutual Fund Investing: Strategies for Building a Diverse Portfolio
    Learn how to invest in mutual funds strategically and build a diverse portfolio that suits your investment goals and risk tolerance.
    StartupTalkyMuskaan Kapoor

    FAQs

    How is AI changing investing?

    AI speeds up investing by analyzing data, automating rebalancing, and reducing risks for smarter portfolios.

    What are some Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management?

    Some Best AI Tools for Portfolio Management:

    • Bloomberg Terminal
    • Alphasense
    • Finbox
    • Betterment
    • QuantConnect
    • Wealthfront
    • NumerAI
    • Nitrogen Wealth
    • Plaid
    • EidoSearch

  • Investing 101: Top Investing Books for Beginners

    Investing is allocating capital, or money, to projects or ventures expected to profit in the long run. The type of project or asset determines the kind of returns generated. Risk and return are two sides of the same coin in investing; low risk typically implies low predicted returns, whereas more significant gains are frequently associated with higher risk. 

    There are many different kinds of investments to consider. The most popular ones are mutual funds, stocks, bonds, and real estate. Investing is for more than just wealthy people. You can start with a modest, nominal sum. 

    Financial literacy is the first step toward successful do-it-yourself investing. Understanding financial markets, investment instruments, risk management, and diverse investment techniques is essential. Books can serve as valuable educational resources here. 

    Every investor is different, and investment books advise readers to consider their financial objectives, willingness to take risks and time horizon. In this article, we will look at the top books for new investors that will help them comprehend the financial world.

    The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need
    Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life
    The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
    Clever Girl Finance: Learn How Investing Works, Grow Your Money
    Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Money
    The White Coat Investor
    The Elements of Investing

    The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need

    Book The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need
    Author Andrew Tobias
    Goodreads Rating 3.91 out of 5
    The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need - Top Investing Books
    The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need – Top Investing Books

    Andrew Tobias presents readers with a comprehensive handbook that covers a wide range of financial topics, from basic investment principles to retirement planning and tax techniques. He simplifies complex investment ideas so that readers with different degrees of financial literacy can also grasp them. With details concerning mortgages, home equity, and real estate, the book even addresses the benefits and downsides of homeownership. It helps you navigate the complexities of personal finance and create a financially stable future.

    Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life

    Book Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life
    Author William Green
    Goodreads Rating 4.54 out of 5
    Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World's Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life - Top Investing Books
    Richer, Wiser, Happier: How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life – Top Investing Books

    William Green is a well-known financial writer for publications like The New Yorker, Fortune, Time, and Forbes. “Richer, Wiser, Happier” examines eight successful investors and presents timeless insights on what made them successful. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Jack Bogle, Ed Thorp, Will Danoff, Mohnish Pabrai, Joel Greenblatt, and Howard Marks are among those on the list.

    Some of the similar themes among the investors interviewed for the book include a focus on:

    • What matters most to them and what they thrive at
    • Continuous learning
    • Independence, intelligence, flexibility, and simplicity
    • Being patient when making investments

    The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor

    Book The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor
    Author Howard Marks
    Goodreads Rating 4.32 out of 5
    The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor - Top Investing Books
    The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor – Top Investing Books

    Howard Marks‘ The Most Important Thing goes into the principles of successful investing, emphasizing unconventional knowledge. Marks offers insights drawn from his substantial expertise in the financial markets. The book is organized into 21 sections that Howard Marks has identified as “The Most Important Thing” at some point, making it a clear and expert resource for all investors. 

    The book goes into market cycle dynamics and the significance of understanding where the market is in its cycle. Only then can you, as investors, change your strategy accordingly. Marks presents the idea of “second-level thinking.” This is a systematic and proactive process in which investors thoroughly assess their options to make the best long-term decisions.

    Clever Girl Finance: Learn How Investing Works, Grow Your Money

    Book Clever Girl Finance: Learn How Investing Works, Grow Your Money
    Author Bola Sukunbi
    Goodreads Rating 4.20 out of 5
    Clever Girl Finance: Learn How Investing Works, Grow Your Money - Top Investing Books
    Clever Girl Finance: Learn How Investing Works, Grow Your Money – Top Investing Books

    To empower women to build a financial strategy that works for them, Clever Girl Financing attempts to simplify investing for them. Readers will learn about the fundamentals of investing from the book, like the value of diversification and many investment varieties.

    Sukunbi offers advice on examining investments and choosing the best broker. Spending less than you make and investing the difference to generate income over time is essential. Stay away from any lifestyle inflation. The only things that you need to concentrate on are saving and investing money.

    Got Good Financial Goals? Examples of Financial Goals

    Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Money

    Book Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Money
    Author Erin Lowry
    Goodreads Rating 3.94 out of 5
    Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up Your Journey - Top Investing Books
    Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner’s Guide to Leveling Up Your Journey – Top Investing Books

    For millennials who are intimidated by the financial world, this book attempts to serve as an in-depth investing guide. It tackles the important topic of whether investing and student debt repayment are mutually exclusive, offering suggestions on managing these simultaneous goals. With the growth of fintech, the book also includes information on robo-advisors and investing applications, assisting readers in determining which are trustworthy and efficient.

    The White Coat Investor

    Book The White Coat Investor
    Author James M. Dahle, MD
    Goodreads Rating 4.41 out of 5
    The White Coat Investor - Top Investing Books
    The White Coat Investor – Top Investing Books

    The White Coat Investor is a financial guide designed exclusively for medical professionals’ unique demands and issues. Dr. Dahle discusses a wide range of topics, including budgeting, debt management, insurance, and investing techniques. Considering that many medical professionals earn substantial incomes, the work provides insights into tax-efficient methods to reduce their tax burdens and maximize wealth. This wealth can additionally be helpful for retirement planning.

    The Elements of Investing

    Book The Elements of Investing
    Author Burton G. Malkiel , Charles D. Ellis
    Goodreads Rating 4.07 out of 5
    The Elements of Investing - Top Investing Books
    The Elements of Investing – Top Investing Books

    Daring beyond belief, Ellis and Malkiel wrote this book after imagining their own Little Red Schoolhouse investing course for all investors worldwide. The Elements of Investing targets the excessive trading and overanalysis that characterize the typical investor’s frenzied mental processes. The authors highlight the need for rebalancing or periodically modifying investment allocation to maintain a desirable asset mix. They also advocate for index investing, which entails investing in a diversified portfolio that follows a specific market index. The book helps you make informed decisions and achieve long-term financial success.

    Conclusion

    In summary, entering the investing world requires knowledge, self-control, and a dedication to lifelong study. These beginner’s investing books are your road maps to the fascinating world of making money that works for you.

    Top Business Finance Books for Success in Managing Money and Investments
    Explore the essential reading list for mastering business finance, featuring top-rated books on managing money, investments, and financial strategies.
    StartupTalkyRia Sahni

    FAQs

    What is the first step to becoming a successful investor?

    Financial literacy is key! You should understand financial markets, investment options, risk management, and different investment strategies.

    What are some important factors for investors to consider?

    Some important factors for investors to consider are financial objectives, willingness to take risks, and time horizon.

    What are the top books for beginners in the field of investing?

    Some of the top books for beginners in the field of investing are:

    • The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias
    • Richer, Wiser, Happier by William Green
    • The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks
    • Clever Girl Finance by Bola Sokunbi
    • Broke Millennial Takes on Investing by Erin Lowry
    • The White Coat Investor by James M. Dahle, MD
    • The Elements of Investing by Burton G. Malkiel, Charles D. Ellis

  • 50+ Tools for Freelancers Which They Must Know About

    Gone are the days, when 9-5 jobs were most preferred and termed as the safest option. People have started indulging themselves in freelancing more. Especially after Covid-19, when work from home becomes a common process. The work from home process supported the rise of freelancers as this is what every freelancer has been doing since the beginning; they were already adapted to this. While full-time employees took time to get adapted to this nature

    A report stated that 68% of workers who are working from home are showing their interest in freelancing. Millions of people lost their jobs when due to Covid the economy got hit. Plus the work from home setting gives a rise to people who show their interest in freelancing.

    Freelancing can be sure a tough job. Once you realize being ‘your own boss’ means putting the hats of the legal expert, financier, routine planner, and work manager, all at once. But there are always ways to help with that, aren’t there? We have crafted for you a list of 50+ such freelancer tools that come to your rescue whenever, wherever you need a virtual assistant.

    Before proceeding, you can also have a look at the 100 proven ways of Lead Generation.

    How To Improve Your Freelancer Profile that Stands Out
    Need tips to improve your freelancing profile? Here are some smart ways on how to improve your freelancer profile and increase your workflow.
    StartupTalkyNiku Mandal

    Accounting Tools for Freelancers:
    ZipBooks
    Momenteo
    Harpoon
    Bonsai
    Xero
    Freeagent
    Freework
    Expensify
    Freshbooks
    Portfolio Creation Tools for Freelancers:
    Behance
    Prospero
    Bidsketch
    Pixpa
    Squarespace
    Project Management Tools for Freelancers:
    Asana
    Basecamp
    EverNote
    Writing Tools for Freelancers:
    Proposify
    Zen Writer
    Write Room
    Email Management Tools for Freelancers:
    Sanebox
    Inbox
    MailChimp
    Aweber
    Scheduling Tools for Freelancers:
    Productive
    RescueTime
    Remember the Milk
    Google Calendar
    Timely
    Cushion
    Tickspot
    Klok
    Ora Time and Expenses
    ToggI
    OfficeTime
    Timesheet
    MyClientSpot
    Focus Booster
    Streaks
    Azendoo
    Freedom
    Flow
    GetHarvest
    Backup Tools for Freelancers:
    iCloud
    DropBox
    Mozy
    Marketplace Platforms for Freelancers:
    Truelancer
    Upwork
    Fiverr
    Workana
    Social Media Management tools:
    Social Oomph
    Buffer
    Tweriod
    Other Important Tools for freelancers:
    Linkedin
    LifeHacker
    Plagiarism Check
    Termsfeed
    Pro Blogger
    LKR Social Media
    Contently
    Trello
    TinyScanner
    SlideShare
    Briefbox
    MindMeister
    Text Expander

    Accounting Tools for Freelancers:

    Different accounting tools compared
    Different accounting tools compared

    Bonsai

    Pricing-$19/ Month

    Bonsai is an integrated all-in-one software suite designed to help with all the admin tasks. Bonsai lets you create invoices, send contracts and collect payments without the least effort. Apart from its functionality, Bonsai is famous among the freelancing community for its efficient design layout. Here are some reasons you should go for Bonsai:

    • The interface is clean and easy to use.
    • Bonsai is affordable, offering multiple pricing plans.
    • Bonsai has you covered from proposal to tax season.
    • Bonsai Cash business account lets you manage your finances, save on taxes and get paid faster with no hidden fees or minimums.
    • The products are integrated seamlessly.
    • Bonsai’s products are automated.
    • Bonsai offers a massive library of free templates of contracts, proposals, invoices, agreements, quotes, scope of work, and briefs.

    ZipBooks

    Pricing- $15/Month

    ZipBooks Logo

    ZipBooks is founded by Tim Chaves in 2o15. ZipBooks is a free accounting tool that you can use to create invoices, manage clients, payments, and expenses and track your time. You can even set up late payment reminders for your clients.

    Momenteo

    Pricing- $3/Month

    Memento is founded by Chelsie Patterson in 2019. Memento is a pretty convenient invoicing tool that makes generating invoices a quick, hassle-free experience. It is a paid service though and it comes with a price tag of $200 per annum.

    Harpoon

    Pricing- $19/Month

    Harpoon is founded by Andrew Johnson, Ryan Battles in 2015. Quite a lifesaver, Harpoon is an extremely handy tool that lets you track your average revenue per project(or per month, day or hour), plan your schedules, check outstanding invoices and keep track of your goals.

    Xero

    Pricing- $13.50/ Month

    Xero is founded by Rod Drury and Hamish Edwards in 2006. A one stop destination for all your financial engagements, Xero is a paid service that offers online accounting, invoicing, billing, and banking.

    Freeagent

    Pricing- $24/ Month

    Freeagent is a money managing app that assists in bookkeeping and generating invoices. A well-designed app, this one is specifically designed to keep small businesses and freelancers in mind.

    Freework

    Pricing- Free

    This freelancing tool is designed to help you manage your day-to-day work, save time, send invoices, keep statistics, manage clients, take notes, and a lot more. It is built on a mobile platform and can be assessed by both android and iOS users.

    Expensify

    Pricing- $5/ Month

    With Expensify, you can manage your receipts better. All you have to do is photograph your receipts and upload them. It works on iPhone/iPad, Android, WebOS/Palm, and BlackBerry phones.

    Freshbooks

    Pricing- $13.50/ Month

    A boon for freelancers in the midst of a financial lurch, Freshbooks lets you create invoices and manage them and organise them with the click of just a button. What’s more, the service is free as long as you have three clients. After that, it comes with a price tag.

    Portfolio Creation Tools for Freelancers:

    Behance

    Pricing- $14.29/Month

    Behence Logo

    Behance is founded by Scott Belsky in 2006. One of the most popular websites out there, Behance is nothing but a boon for freelancers. Be it showcasing your creativity, or creating your online portfolio for work. Behance supports a variety of platforms from Photoshop to PDFs, allows you to view and appreciate other’s projects, and lets you collaborate and upload your work.

    Prospero

    Pricing- $8/ Month

    One of the best-known tools for freelancers, proposal helps you to create a proposal for your client and price your projects. Prospero analyses your work, project deadlines, and your working rate to self-design an editable proposal that is relevant to the services you offer.

    Bidsketch

    Pricing- $29/ Month

    Bidsketch assists you to create client proposals with its wide range of customizable templates. Besides letting you create templates, this tool also helps you distribute them and offers related analytics about the distribution, like who downloaded it, who viewed it, and for how long.

    Pixpa

    Pricing- $5.09/ Month

    If you are looking for a space, where you can showcase the work created by you and sell them as well. This platform helps you create professional websites, where you can publish your own blogs, showcase your portfolios or set up an online store.

    Squarespace

    Pricing- $16/ Month

    Considered to be one of the best platforms for portfolio/ website making, as a freelancer, you can carve your own personal identity on Squarespace using its wide range of customizable templates.

    Project Management Tools for Freelancers:

    Asana

    Pricing- $10.99/ Month

    A popular people collaboration tool, Asana allows you to form groups of up to 15 people. You can start group discussions, and send tasks to each other. You can even send timely notifications to group members as reminders.

    Basecamp

    Pricing- $99/ Month

    A friendly freelancing tool, Basecamp is a popular project management tool that lets you keep track of all your projects and keep them organized. This online collaboration tool focuses on managing work and lets people communicate with each other.

    EverNote

    Pricing- $7.99/ Month

    One of the most popular apps out there, Evernote lets you store notes, receipts, and other miscellaneous files associated with each project and also sets timely reminders to keep you on track.

    Writing Tools for Freelancers:

    Proposify

    Pricing- $49/Month

    Proposify Logo

    Proposify is founded by Kyle Racki, and Kevin Springer in 2013. Proposify is a proposal writing tool that comes equipped with a host of templates and customizable features. It comes with a set of basic drawing tools and almost looks like a mini word processor to help you with the job.

    Zen Writer

    Pricing- $18 Onetime Fee

    ZenWriter is a full-screen writing app that comes with a serene, minimalist design and friendly layout. One of the best-looking apps out there, this one promises to not only get your work done but also give you a great working experience.

    Write Room

    Pricing- $9.99/ Month

    Designed only for Mac users, this tool comes to your rescue when you have big writing projects in your kitty. Write Room comes with a clean, minimal layout ( there are no distracting menu options or even toolbars) and a simplistic design that helps you focus on your work better.. Nothing will give you more focus than a full-screen writing tool, and WriteRoom is the original offering that is available for Mac.

    Email Management Tools for Freelancers:

    Sanebox

    Pricing- $9.99/Month

    Sanebox Logo

    Sanebox is founded by Stuart Roseman in 2010. This app helps you with one of your most important handles, the epitome of your professional existence, your mailing inbox. Sanebox helps you organise through stuff and keep your inbox clean.

    Inbox

    Pricing- $9/Month

    Call it a way better version of Gmail, this app lets you organize your mails, categorise them efficiently, have attachment previews, built-in snooze buttons, automatic labeling, and intelligent search. With its user-friendly design and easy-to-navigate layout, this one is sure to make your work easier.

    MailChimp

    Pricing- $9.99/ Month

    This E-mail marketing platform is said to be one of the best. A fantastic promotional tool, this one helps you send your email marketing newsletters, keep your clients updated about a new post or product and market your services.

    Also read: Tools for Email List Building

    Aweber

    Pricing- $19.99/ Month

    A networking and personal marketing tool, Aweber lets you build an email campaign, which can help to maintain relationships with all your previous and current clients.

    Scheduling Tools for Freelancers:

    Productive

    Pricing- $10/Month

    Productive is founded by Jan Varljen in 2014. This tool helps you form productive work habits, It comes with an easy-to-use interface that lets you plan and schedule habits for any time of the day, set smart reminders for each time of the day, and stay right on track.

    RescueTime

    Pricing- $9/ Month

    A time planner tool, RescueTime offers to save your time by keeping track and letting you know of the amount of time you spend on each of your tasks. It was founded by Brian Fioca, Tony Wright, and Joe Hruska in 2007.

    Remember the Milk

    Pricing- $39.99/ Year

    Remember The Milk is a reminder tool that was founded in the year 2004, it is an online to-do-list app, that lets you take care of important tasks so that you are never late again.

    Google Calendar

    Pricing- $5/ Month

    Google Calender Logo

    Google Calendar is an amazing planner tool from Google that lets you organise your schedule and plan tasks accordingly. It became available in 2009, one can create and edit events here and location can also be added.

    Timely

    Pricing- $15/ Month

    When you take up too many projects, it can be quite overwhelming. Timely is a time tracking tool Timely helps you to maintain a time log to track the amount of time you have spent on each of the projects undertaken.

    Cushion

    Pricing- $36/ Year

    The cushion is quite a reliable tool that helps you make an efficient work schedule for your freelancing ventures. It focuses on the time you spend on a particular project, highlights when you are overbooked, and helps you plan your time better.

    Tickspot

    Pricing- $149/ Month for Unlimited Projects

    This one allows you to keep track of your work hours as well as the time you spend on each project. In fact, you can even see how close you are to using up your client’s allotted budget.

    Klok

    Pricing- $18.99 Per Feature

    As the name suggests, Klok is a time management tool and it allows you track of your time. You can keep track of the time you spend on each project; just start and stop tracking by just clicking a button. You’re able to generate multiple reports based on this information.

    Ora Time and Expenses

    Pricing- $6/ Month

    The name says it all. Ora lets you track expenses, keep a list of your tasks, run a timer on your tasks and well, keep things organised. It is where you can work with your team and have everything the team might need during the time for work.

    ToggI

    Pricing- $10/ Month

    A productive time tracking tool, ToggI lets you track time the time you spend on each project. You can manage your own time as well as the time of your collaborator’s time to work out the total time spent on each project.

    OfficeTime

    Pricing- $69 Onetime Fee

    OfficeTime helps manage your time better. That being said, it allows you to see exactly how much money you are earning per hour and know who is really paying you your actual worth.

    Timesheet

    Pricing- $4.50/ Month

    Timesheet is a time tracker tool that makes it easier for you to record your work hours. With timesheet, you can calculate your estimated income, handle hourly rates, keep stats, generate time or expense reports and manage expenses, among other stuff.

    MyClientSpot

    Pricing- Not-known

    A very handy tool, this one offers to keeps track of your billable hours and helps you keep your work organized. It provides online project management functions and helps out with time management.

    Focus Booster

    Pricing- $4.99/ Month

    Focus Booster is a time management tool that allows you to break your tasks in segments and time them accordingly. All you have to do is start and stop the timer. Besides, the tool also makes provision for automatic 5-minute breaks after every 25 minutes of work.

    Streaks

    Pricing- $4.99/ Month

    This app follows the model of the popular “don’t break the chain method”, everyday. Use your goals, to track your per-day activities and progress and even set up goals. This to-fo list tracks every certain goal of yours.

    Azendoo

    Pricing- $10/ Month

    Another tool that helps you manage your workflow, Azendoo lets you view analytics, attach documents and work as your personal organiser. It also lets you add checklists, plan your calendar, send direct messages to team members, and set due dates.

    Freedom

    Pricing- $8.99/Month

    Freedom is founded by Fred Stutzman in 2009. This tool is designed to cater to just one unique purpose that is to stop you from wasting your time on your phone. It helps bar out unnecessary distractions by letting you set a work schedule on its platform, during which it blocks distracting apps and websites.

    Flow

    Pricing- Free

    This tool helps you to manage your workflow by letting you create workspaces and tasks, collaborate with your team members through inbuilt chat, and organise all your assignments and private tasks.

    GetHarvest

    Pricing- $12/ Month

    A time management tool, Harvest offers time tracking and invoicing services with pricing plans from free to premium. It works on iPhone, Basecamp, Beanstalk and has a WordPress plugin and more.

    Backup Tools for Freelancers:

    iCloud

    Pricing- $9.99/ Month

    The apple app, iCloud lets you backup and sync your devices using your Apple ID.
    You can store anything here, from photos, notes, files to other data. While signing in this, you get 5GB free storage at first.

    DropBox

    Pricing- $16.99/ Month

    DropBox Logo

    This tool lets you upload and transfer any files of yours and share them. IT is a great backup service, DropBox automatically backs up all the data of your computer, without you having to worry at all.

    Mozy

    Pricing- $10/ month for 125 GB

    While you are working on so many projects, you need a backup. Mozy is a backup tool that lets you do just that. It was founded in the year 2005 by Josh Coates. It can be used both in Windows and Mac.

    Marketplace Platforms for Freelancers:

    Truelancer

    Pricing- $50 or 5% of total project value

    Truelancer is founded by Dipesh Garg in 2014. If you call yourself a freelancer, you already know what a blessing Truelancer is. Truelancer not only helps you find more work but also helps you find and meet potential clients and build a network.

    Upwork

    Pricing- 20% for the first $500 project

    Upwork Logo

    Upwork is founded by Stratis Karamanlakis, Odysseas Tsatalos. Yet another platform for landing work, Upwork lets you make a free profile, crate and promote gigs, bid on projects, and meet clients.

    Fiverr

    Pricing- 20% of the gig fee

    Fiverr is a freelance haven that allows you to find jobs or ‘gigs’. The service sellers have the option to choose a starting price for their gigs, the quote starting from $5 (hence the name!). Consequently, one gets to offer different gigs at different prices.

    Workana

    Pricing- $4.90/ Month

    As the name suggests, this online tool helps you to find work on a variety of work genres. Businesses can hire freelancers from this site for their work. It is one of the finest places where freelancers and small businesses to big ones can get connected.

    Social Media Management tools:

    Social Oomph

    Pricing- $13.94/ Month

    Social Oomph was founded in the year 2008 and it comes with a set of some great social networking tools that help you market your services and stay at the top of your game.

    Buffer

    Pricing- $15/ Month

    BufferApp is founded by Leo Widrich. This one is a social media management tool, it helps you manage all the social media platforms of your business. This includes a number of articles that will help you learn and run your business better.

    Tweriod

    Pricing- Not-known

    Tweriod lets you handle your social media (especially Twitter) with ease, by constantly providing you with statistics, your campaign’s reach, their popularity, all the while, analyzing your followers, keeping reminders, and providing charts displaying the most popular hours on Twitter for your followers.

    Other Important Tools for freelancers:

    Linkedin

    Pricing- $29.99/ Month

    LinkedIn Logo

    LinkedIn is founded by Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, Jean-Luc Vaillant in 2002. LinkedIn is a widely acclaimed platform that not only lets you establish your professional identity, but also build a network, find jobs and connect with possible clients with its built-in mailing and messaging service.

    LifeHacker

    Pricing- Not-known

    LifeHacker is founded by Gina Trapani. Just as the name suggests, this site helps you by keeping you updated with recent technology, lessons on innovative thinkers, and daily life hacks.

    Plagiarism Check

    Pricing- $39.95 Per Feature

    Plagiarism is a sin to any creator. Any content that is copied, this tool helps you detect the amount of plagiarism your copy contains by screening your document for plagiarism with 5 search engines- Google, Yahoo, Babylon, Google Books, and Google Scholar. You can also use other websites for it, there are tons of tools available for plagiarism checking.

    Termsfeed

    Pricing- $56 Onetime fee

    Termsfeed comes to your rescue when you need some legal assistance. This tool offers a range of templates to help you craft statements for a variety of purposes- return policy, terms and conditions, privacy policy, and terms of service. And all you have to do is answer a couple of questions to frame the right contract.

    Pro Blogger

    Pricing- $5.99/ Month

    Pro Blogger step into the market in 2004 and since then it has been the best bet for Freelancing, this tool helps you to curate content, organise ideas and create blogs to promote your online market presence.

    LKR Social Media

    Pricing- Not-known

    This is a blog run by social media marketing expert, Laura Roeder. The blog is a great source of learning, for freelancers looking to promote themselves online, covering a wide range of topics, from designing an effective sales page to top tools to organize your work.

    Contently

    Pricing- Not-known

    This platform is a SaaS content marketing platform that gives organisations an opportunity to create great content that helps them get the audience and build their brands.

    Trello

    Trello is a collaboration tool that lets you organise your work projects, invite coworkers to collaborate and create shared perspectives, add checklists, upload photos and videos, and a lot more. Trello does offer free service, open to one and all with some limited offers. if you want extra features, you have to pay.

    TinyScanner

    Pricing- Free

    A handy app for android and iOS, TinyScanner lets you scan your work documents from your device’s camera and turn them into PDFs. It even lets you customize page size and share the scanned PDFs.

    SlideShare

    Pricing- $19/ Month

    Slideshare helps you present your ideas in an organised manner and thus showcase your clients your skills, expertise, areas of interest, and competency. Any kind of presentation, infographics can be shared here by businesses.

    Briefbox

    Pricing- $9/ Month

    Offering a collection of hypothetical briefs or templates for a variety of genres, Briefbox allows you to simply pick one of the editable briefs and start designing, as per your need.

    MindMeister

    Pricing- $2.49/ Month

    Mind-mapping is the predecessor to great ideas and MindMeister offers you that by ditching the traditional pen and paper method. Create mind-maps on your electronic devices free or buy the premium plan and enjoy additional benefits.

    Text Expander

    Pricing- $3.33/ Month

    Text expander helps you send emails faster, by pre storing all the information, predicting content from the stored info, predicting pictures, and making sure the content does not sound too similar or contain duplicate info. You can also pre-program to fix typos you often, use different signatures for different clients, and auto-insert forms.

    Conclusion

    The freelance industry is going in a tremendous way and it is not going to stop anytime soon. With the different advantages of working as a freelancer, more and more working professionals are choosing this industry. All the above tools are to make the work of a freelancer a little bit easier.

  • How to Start a Digital Marketing Company? – A Stepwise Guide

    ‌‌In reaching a wider audience, having a definite taste, companies are switching to the digital mode of marketing. Digital marketing is the modern approach to dealing with demand and supply.

    ‌‌Almost every business is trying to take advantage of digital marketing. But very few can understand that the digital world is not only for the supply of services but also to create the demand for them.

    ‌‌The field of marketing in the digital world is getting smarter. Along with dedication, you also need planning and proper execution. As the internet world is saturated with competitors, new ideas with appropriate promotional guidelines can only be helpful to survive in such situations. If you are among those who want to start and excel in digital marketing, then the below steps will be the best way to start the journey.

    Steps to Start a Digital Marketing Company
    Step 1. Decide The Niche- Your Strength
    Step 2. Competitive Research & Strategy: Know yourself
    Step 3. Website Launch: Set Your Brand
    Step 4. Build The Portfolio: Your Brand Image
    Step 5. Generating Leads: Interact and Grow
    Conclusion
    FAQs

    How to start a digital marketing company? – A Guide

    Step 1. Decide The Niche- Your Strength

    “Your competitors and the audience are factors that make the niche-finding process vital “. Simplifying the statement, it will be challenging for you to grow with a highly competitive niche. Along with that, if you have a niche, then it will be easier for you to get your target audience.

    ‌‌It would be best if you do healthy research over some topics, which are evergreen. But the niche must have less competition in the market. It will help you get easy growth and adequate visibility before the audience. You can still choose a niche with higher competition but need to adopt a unique approach to deal with the market and audience.

    ‌‌Once you get your niche for starting the digital marketing company, it will be easier to decide your target audience. You can plan accordingly to reach and provide the services to them. Target audience can help save time for generating leads and producing sales. It can be a cost effective approach to deal with the growth of the company.

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    Step 2. Competitive Research & Strategy: Know yourself

    Competitive research to start digital marketing company
    Competitive research to start digital marketing company

    ‌‌The niche you select can decide your establishment and the industry’s stability. Before starting your digital marketing company, you could observe more than hundreds and thousands of such industries leading with remarkable results. If you are planning to copy the strategy of a similar company, then it will be a difficult journey for you ahead. Do healthy research on similar marketing agencies, learn from their mistakes. Observe their skills, point out their loopholes and build your strategy with an improved and established base.

    ‌‌Believe in organic reach and avoid overnight success. Understand your audience, their needs and create the possibilities of demand and order.

    Some practical things, which you can keep in mind while forming your strategy:

    • Transparency: To create a trust factor
    • Keep the process smooth: Avoid confusion
    • Audience Reach: Create an opportunity to interact with your audience
    • Time Effective service
    • Cost-effective service

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    Big companies spend nearly 5-10% of their annual revenue on market research as it provides a deeper understanding of their customer and competitors.
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    Step 3. Website Launch: Set Your Brand

    Launch your website for your digital marketing company
    Launch your website for your digital marketing company

    The web presence will create authentication of your brand and services. Building your professional website will be the first step you should take after setting the strategy. The brand website must ensure clients’ needs and how your services will be the best choice.

    ‌‌Never discuss who you are and what you do. Instead, show the client’s actual needs. Build an interface, which explains the benefits. Keep an organized website with easily accessible contact information. Present the legalization of your website by registering with government authorization.

    ‌‌Secure your brand name on every social media site to spread your presence. Clients will search all the high-profile social media sites to verify your authentication. Your brand on social media sites also increases your reach. And it is crucial to interconnect each other, which will help lead generation. Your most popular social media site can transfer audience to other sites and it will create a strong network of interested leads.

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    Step 4. Build The Portfolio: Your Brand Image

    Building a portfolio is not something you can get ready before a definite time. It will demand time, improvisation, and delivery. The portfolio consists of testimonials, positive reviews, recommendations, brand partnerships, and collaborations. If big brand names are connected and benefit from your services, they can build a great portfolio.

    ‌‌You can offer low-cost services to get your initial clients and collect positive reviews. Once the process is initiated, regulate the price accordingly, but the quality of services must be best to avoid negative feedback. Always respond to client reviews, try to reciprocate their feedback. Your quick action towards their feedback will make them reward positive reviews.

    ‌‌It is a time taking process. Collaborative with different companies and partners to build a strong portfolio. Learn different strategies from successful digital marketing agents. Interact with your satisfied clients and understand their expectations to improve.

    Step 5. Generating Leads: Interact and Grow

    Lead generation is the most crucial and most challenging step in establishing a successful digital marketing company. To achieve a trustworthy lead, it is essential to focus on collecting organic lead generation.

    ‌‌Connect with your initial leads to create the possibility of more reach. They can spread your services among their friends, family, and colleagues. The companies, in recent times, are using referral systems to operate successful organic lead generation.

    ‌‌You can judge the behavior and habits of your target audience. Accordingly, prepare collaboration meet, organize events, or do anything to reach the audience.

    Conclusion

    Starting a digital marketing company is not a big deal but succeeding in the business is always unpredictable. You might have a perfect blueprint for building a successful digital marketing company, but trust us, every niche and company needs different treatment. Planning is necessary before starting, or think of starting something like a digital marketing agency.

    ‌‌Competition is not the only thing always, it demands a lot of patience. If you are planning to build the company through complete organic leads, then you will be needing more patience. Understanding the interest of people and reaching them with a suitable approach is difficult, but important to excel in the digital marketing world. Observe your niche, and do competitive research over the topic. Try to come up with ideas, which are fresh and effective.

    FAQs

    Is Digital Marketing a good business to start?

    Yes, as the Digital Marketing industry is progressing at a high growth rate, it is great to start a Digital Marketing Company.

    Why Digital Marketing is growing?

    Digital marketing industry is growing as Digital Marketing is quite flexible to do and more engaging than traditional marketing methods.

    Which are the top 10 Digital Marketing Agencies in India?

    Some of the top Digital marketing Agencies in India are:

    • Uplers
    • Webchutney
    • IndeedSEO
    • WatConsult
    • Intellemo
    • Gozoop
    • EveryMedia
    • EZ Rankings
    • Social Wavelength
    • Phonethics

  • ETrade Business Model | How does ETrade make money?

    ETrade has established itself as one of the finest online brokers for trading options as a pioneer in the online brokerage sector. It was one of the first online brokers in the United States and it became the first online broker to provide commission-free trading on ETFs, stocks, and options trades in October 2019. This makes you wonder, how does ETrade make its money? And what is its business model?

    A business model is a crucial component of every startup’s long-term success since it is what unlocks value. In some ways, creating a business model is more than just figuring out how to make money. With that in mind, let’s look at the ETrade e-trading platform’s business model.

    About ETrade
    Products and services offered by ETrade
    What makes ETrade unique?
    ETrade Business Model
    How does ETrade make money?
    FAQs

    Options trading with ETrade

    About ETrade

    ETrade logo
    ETrade logo

    ETrade, a financial services business located in New York, was formed in 1982 by William A. Porter and Bernard A. Newcomb. Over the years, the firm has grown to over 30 outlets across the United States, making it one of the industry’s pioneers.

    ETrade/E*Trade is an electronic trading platform that allows novice and experienced traders to purchase and sell financial assets such as common stock, preferred stock, futures contracts, mutual funds, options, fixed-income investments, and exchange-traded funds.

    Products and services offered by ETrade

    Etrade earns money through various products and services, including a day trading platform for retail customers. Let’s take a brief look at the services that the firm provides.

    • Brokerage: E-zero-commission Trade’s US stock trading platform for ordinary clients is known as a brokerage account. They enable you to buy and sell equities, ETFs, mutual funds, potion, and bonds, among other things. At a low fee, you may also trade futures and options contracts, as well as bonds. Until their kid reaches the age of majority, a parent or guardian can handle a minor brokerage account.
    • Services for Portfolio Management: The portfolio management service is given to both individual and institutional clients. Portfolios can be handled both automatically and manually. Depending on your circumstances, you may also obtain a personally customised portfolio from a financial counsellor.
    • Bank account: Individuals, families, and companies may open a bank account with ETrade, which provides higher-interest savings and checking accounts. Free initial checks, online bill pay, and an ATM/debit card are all available. You may also use the free Transfer Money service, pay with your credit card online, and borrow against your investments.
    • Retirement services: ETrade offers retirement (IRA) accounts for tax savings, minor’s savings that an adult may handle for the benefit of a child until they reach the age of majority, and persons commencing their savings at the age of 59.5 years old.

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    What makes ETrade unique?

    ETrade has a long history as an online broker, and its platforms are well-known for being straightforward to use. And even though it offers many services, including news, research, and screeners, ETrade is still simple to use.

    ETrend features a user-friendly interface that allows you to personalise the platforms according to how you want to connect with them.

    ETrade offers three web-based/downloadable platforms and two mobile apps, making it an excellent alternative for passive investors and casual traders. To help optimise the value of deposits earned in its brokerage operation, it also offers banking products through the ETrade Bank, an FDIC-registered federal savings bank.

    It joins a growing number of online brokers that have switched to commission-free stock, ETF, and options trading in October 2019.

    ETrade Business Model

    ETrade employs a strategy that generates revenue from payment for order flow as well as interest income earned on the free float. To generate income on customer funds, ETrade invests them in money market accounts. Margin rates levied on purchasing or shorting stocks on the business’s platform also generate revenue for the company.

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    How does ETrade make money?

    ETrade charges no commissions, which begs the question: how does ETrade make money?

    Margin

    Clients at ETrade pay interest on money borrowed to buy stocks and on money borrowed to short stocks. For many broker-dealers, margin interest is a crucial source of revenue, and ETrade is no different. It has rates that are higher than the national average. Depending on the total amount borrowed overnight, they start at 8.95 per cent and go down.

    Flow of Orders

    ETrade makes the majority of its money through monetising its order flow. Customers’ buy and sell orders are sent to market makers for execution by ETrade. The company is compensated for the order flow in exchange.

    When E-margin Trade’s customers borrow money to short or purchase stocks, ETrade receives interest. A transaction-fee mutual fund costs $19.99 to buy or sell at the business.

    This is a standard business procedure; therefore, ETrade isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary here. ETrade sends orders to the groups to adjust for the order flow. This is also a frequent industry practice.

    ETrade receives less than a cent per share on average for routing orders. That may not seem like a lot, but when you consider that there are about 300,000 trades each day, with several shares per order, it adds up.

    Earnings from interest

    ETrade advertises heavily on the need of filling your brokerage, bank, retirement, or PMS accounts with them since the more money you invest with them, the more interest you get. The business of ETrade is based on the interest produced by the float, which is invested by millions of customers. Offering free trading to retail investors is a fantastic way to improve their float because they are the least likely to trade actively.

    Service charges

    Portfolio management, retirement accounts, and other essential portfolio services are also profitable for ETrade. Fees and service charges are how they make money from these services.

    The fees for portfolio management vary from $500 to $250,000, with a 0.30 per cent to 0.75 per cent cost.

    ETrade charges $25 for premature withdrawals, excess contribution withdrawals, and re-characterisations in retirement accounts (changing from Roth IRA to Traditional IRA).

    And, depending on the debit balance available at the time of the trade, margin trading costs range from 5.45 per cent to 8.95 per cent.

    In the year 2019, ETrade generated $588 million in fees and service charges.

    Commissions on mutual funds

    ETrade charges $19.99 to buy or sell a transaction-fee mutual fund. It costs $49.99 to sell a no-load, no-transaction-fee fund fewer than 90 days after acquisition.

    ETrade also profits from mutual fund trades through 12b-1 fees, sub-accounting fees, shareholder service costs, and marketing support payments.

    Trading Commissions

    Only ten to twenty per cent of the millions of traders are active. Active traders, on the other hand, trade often and in large amounts. And many of them trade futures and options, the most lucrative part of the stock market.

    This 20% of active traders generate twenty times the money that they lose by providing free trading.

    Fees for Futures, Options, and Bonds on ETrade

    The larger the number of active traders operating in any of these categories, the higher the commissions because ETrade works with huge volumes rather than premium pricing.

    This information makes you wonder if ETrade is losing money on these products. ETrade loses money on its free service. However, because over 80% of traders aren’t active in the markets, they don’t lose much money. ETrade lost $23 million in securities trading fees in 2019. The $23 million loss is well worth it for their business model, given the $421 million in trading commissions they receive from active traders.

    FAQs

    When was ETrade Financial Corporation founded?

    ETrade Financial Corporation was founded in 1982.

    Does ETrade charge commission?

    ETrade does not charges commission for online US-listed stock, ETF, and options trades.

    Which is the parent company of ETrade?

    Morgan Stanley is the parent company of ETrade.

    Who are the competitors of ETrade?

    Some of the top competitors of ETrade are:

    • HyperStock
    • Firstrade
    • SAG Investor
    • Scottrade
    • MProfit
    • RetailGraph
    • eSignal

  • Story of Upside AI: Tech-driven Asset Management Company

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Upside AI.

    Upside AI is a SEBI-registered PMS (Portfolio Management Service). Founded by Kanika Agarrwal, Nikhil Hooda and Atanuu Agarrwal, Upside AI creating a new class of investing that sit between active and passive – its goal is to deliver consistent alpha through eliminating bias/emotions from the process.

    Today, Upside AI ranks among the top-performing PMS’ in the country delivering 33% annualized returns since it came out of beta in Jul 2019. family offices. asset management is a highly fragmented market and is not a winner-take-all play. Even at a sub-1% market share, Upside AI can scale to ~$5B in AUM while delivering a robust return on capital.

    Startuptalky interviewed the Founders of Upside AI to get insights on the startup story and the roadmap of the organization. In this article, you’ll get to know all about Upside AI’s history, how it launched, its future plans, competitors, funding details, growth, and more.

    Upside AI – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Upside AI
    Co-Founders Kanika Agarrwal, Nikhil Hooda, Atanuu Agarrwal
    Founded 2017
    Headquarters Mumbai
    Industry Fintech
    Website upsideai.com

    Upside AI – About and Vision
    Upside AI – Market/Industry Details
    Journey of Upside AI – How is Started
    How Upside AI works – Product and USP
    Upside AI – Founders and Team
    Upside AI – Business Model
    Growth of Upside AI
    Upside AI – Funding and Investors
    Upside AI – Competitors
    Upside AI – Recognition and Achievements
    Upside AI – Future Plans
    Upside AI – FAQs

    Upside AI – About and Vision

    Upside AI is a SEBI-registered PMS (Portfolio Management Service). It is essentially an investment management startup that uses technology to drive investment decisions. Nikhil Hooda, Kanika Agarrwal, and Atanuu Agarrwal started Upside AI with the belief that technology will make better decisions than humans over the long term since machines are unbiased and unemotional decision-makers. It is therefore focused on building products that follow a rules-based, systematic approach to investing.

    Upside AI’s first two products focus on equity investing using proprietary machine learning algorithms to understand, recognize, and buy companies that are fundamentally good businesses. It provides Portfolio Management Services or PMS, which caters to HNI’s, institutions, and family offices in India and globally. The minimum investment size is INR 50 lakhs.

    Upside AI logo

    The team wants Upside AI to be a world-class 100% tech-driven asset management company (AMC). They aim to achieve this by building an array of products across asset classes and strategies. Apart from the two live products, Upside AI has another couple of products in development, which it plans to launch over the next 6-12 months (2021-2022). Over the next couple of years, the company aims to add 1,000 HNIs, family offices, and institutional clients and grow to INR ~1,000cr in AUM.

    “We are also working on building an end-to-end digital platform where we want tech to drive the entire chain from client onboarding to sophisticated investment tech to live tracking and reporting via a seamless UI/UX experience for clients”  as said by the Founders of Upside AI.

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    Upside AI – Market/Industry Details

    The asset management market in India today is INR 52 trillion (as of December 2020). Retail mutual fund penetration in India is very low (~6% of GDP vs. ~36% in other emerging markets and ~60-70% in developed markets.) Hence, it has been growing at ~25-30% over the last 5 years; the team @ Upside AI expect this momentum to continue.

    Over the last decade, tech has disrupted several areas of financial services like payments, lending, insurance, etc. However, asset management has stayed the same in India i.e., human investors taking calls and large armies of sales/ back-end staff running distribution and operations.

    Over the next 5 years, Upside AI aims to create off-the-shelf, standardized products across asset classes that can be pre-packaged and sold to even retail investors. Distribution will be built online with end-to-end integrations with brokerages and bank accounts. The back-end ops and reporting that the team is building are already online and extremely scalable.

    By its nature, asset management is a highly fragmented market and is not a winner-take-all play. Even at a sub-1% market share, Upside AI can scale to ~$5B in AUM while delivering a robust return on capital (even traditional players with large physical networks today have 30%+ ROEs) by leveraging digital distribution and algo-based systematic investment.
    (Source: AMFI, McKinsey’s Asset management database)

    Journey of Upside AI – How is Started

    Spark of Idea: Upside AI

    “Graham is my guru in every sense of the word. I had no background in finance or investing when I picked up “The Intelligent Investor” almost 15 years ago. It led me to Graham’s other seminal work “Security Analysis”, meant for professional investors. They are the inspiration and spark behind the idea for Upside AI. They led me to the framework for our core algorithm” – Atanuu Agarrwal (Co-founder, Upside AI) added.

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    The Launch of Upside AI:

    It took nearly a year to build out the tech, including –

    1. cleaning up ~20 years of financial data
    2. Unbiased and robust back-testing, and
    3. Frameworks for qualitative issues like corporate governance

    In addition, the team conducted primary research by talking to CIOs and decision-makers at:

    1. The largest fund houses in the country
    2. Largest wealth managers in India
    3. 20-25 of the largest family offices in India
    4. 100+ retail investors

    It took nearly a year to build out the tech and back-test it; then another year to test it in the live market, before it took out of beta and started offering to third-party distributors and clients in July 2019.

    Challenges Faced by Upside AI:

    One of the major challenges that the team faced was that they were pitted against established players in an industry built on trust. Adding to that was the fact that Upside AI was perceived as an outsider since the team came from a background in venture capital and technology. Building a network of investors and distributors virtually from scratch remains one of its biggest challenges even today.

    Additionally, convincing people to put their trust and money into a newly introduced tech-based product was a mammoth task. However, the company’s aim since day one has been to make investors realize that one must diversify away from human-led investing. Over the due course, on the back of consistent performance and sustained alpha, clients, wealth managers, and distributors associated with Upside AI have come to appreciate that tech-based products should be an integral part of one’s asset allocation strategy.

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    How Upside AI works – Product and USP

    The current state of play in the Indian AMC industry is that –

    • Human managers are struggling with outperformance
    • Fees in the industry are shrinking where a human heavy cost base means low ROE, and
    • There is an ongoing system redesign on how asset allocation will change over the next decade.

    Already, technology/rules run 60% of the markets in the US. With ETFs overtaking active investing in the last few years, developed markets are moving away from the traditional human-driven investing models (which tend to be driven by irrational emotions/ biases).

    This will be the future for India and other developing countries – that users will increasingly look for an unbiased rules-based approach to equities and tech will drive much of asset management.

    At Upside AI, the team is creating a new class of investing that sits between active and passive – its goal is to deliver consistent alpha through eliminating bias/emotions from the process.

    Upside AI’s first few products focus on equity investing using proprietary machine learning algorithms to understand, recognize, and buy companies that are fundamentally good businesses.  

    1. The first step is parsing of P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow data of all companies listed on the NSE. This was a non-trivial exercise, as meticulous data clean-up and standardization.  
    2. The secret sauce is however the next step where the algorithm uses ML to shortlist companies that are not just fundamentally good businesses but also in-demand stocks.
    3. It does this exercise quarterly, to pick a portfolio of 10-25 stocks. It has also developed a framework for corporate governance checks to make sure the numbers fed into the algorithm are kosher.

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    Upside AI – Founders and Team

    Nikhil Hooda, Kanika Agarrwal, and Atanuu Agarrwal are the founders of Upside AI.

    Upside AI Team
    Nikhil Hooda, Kanika Agarrwal, and Atanuu Agarrwal – Upside AI Founders

    How the Co-founders Met:

    Nikhil and Atanuu were batchmates from IIT Bombay and in fact, have been friends since even before that when they started preparing for IIT JEE together. Kanika and Atanuu crossed paths while working in the investment banking team at Credit Suisse.

    “All three of us love playing strategy board games and that is what led to a deep friendship and then eventually the partnership. So much so that Kanika and I are married and Nikhil was the witness on our marriage certificate. We are a very close-knit group and share not only the same set of interests but also common values which is ideal if you are starting a business together.” – Atanuu Agarrwal added.

    Atanuu Agarrwal | Co-founder, Upside AI

    Since Atanuu is the in-house Ben Graham disciple and pretty much spends most of his time on the investment and product side of the business. he has a B.Tech and M.Tech from IIT Bombay. He has experience in both public and private investing in the US and India. Atanuu spent the last 7 years prior to Upside AI working in New York with the CEO/Founder managing $1bn in AUM across PE, VC, and SPAC strategies.

    Kanika Agarrwal | Co-founder, Upside AI

    Kanika focuses most of her energies on sales and distribution. She is a Chartered Accountant (All India Rank 18), a CFA charter holder by qualification. She previously worked at Mayfield India for a brief time, Credit Suisse, and EY for nearly a decade before starting Upside AI.

    Nikhil Hooda | Co-founder, Upside AI

    Nikhil is the brains behind the technology at Upside AI. He has a B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay (All India Rank 43) and a PhD in Computer Science. Every single line of code has been written by Nikhil and there has been no outsourcing or licensing when it comes to actually building the product.

    Upside AI – Business Model

    The business model in asset management is “solved”. Clients are charged a percentage of AUM periodically.

    Growth of Upside AI

    Currently, Upside AI has ~80 customers and about INR 85cr in AUM. Its goal is to cross 1000 customers and 1000 crores in AUM within the next 18-24 months (2022-23) while delivering consistent returns for its investors.

    As mentioned earlier, Upside AI ranks among the top-performing PMS’ in the country delivering 33% annualized returns since it came out of beta in Jul 2019. The company recently raised a seed round of $1.2 Million, led by a VC fund, Endiya Partners. It has already attracted marquee clients ranging from large family offices, VCs, CEOs of large MNCs in India and the US on the back of unique investment tech that the team has built in-house and extensively tested. The funding will help Upside AI build a robust pipeline of differentiated tech products and a network of large distributors, wealth managers, brokers, and IFAs.

    “I believe that a product-focused and client-centric approach can help us achieve our vision of being a world-class, tech-driven asset management company that will democratize access to sophisticated investment technology, built for Indian investors” Atanuu Agarrwal added.

    Upside AI – Funding and Investors

    Upside AI recently raised a seed round of $1.2 Million, led by a VC fund, Endiya Partners. Other investors in the round include – Vijay Kedia (a veteran stock market investor), Ajay Nanavati (Chairman of Quantum Advisors, previously Chairman of Syndicate Bank, MD of 3M), and Gopichand Katragadda (CEO of Myelin Foundry, ex-CTO of Tata Group).

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    June 21, 2021 Seed $1.2 Mn Endiya Partners, Vijay Kedia, Ajay Nanavati, Gopichand Katragadda

    The team @ Upside AI believes that the funding and guidance from Endiya and their esteemed angel investors will propel Upside AI towards the milestone to cross 1000 customers and 1000 crores in AUM within the next 18-24 months (2022-23) while delivering consistent returns for its investors.

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    Upside AI – Competitors

    Current competitors for Upside AI include:

    1. Traditional Asset Management Companies (AMCs), and
    2. Boutique investment firms run by human fund managers.

    There are companies building digital distribution like Paytm, Smallcase, and Groww, etc. Upside AI would leverage these pipes to distribute its products. However, they might become competitors in the future if they backward integrate into asset management.

    Having said that, asset management is not a winner-take-all market and there is space for multiple large players to exist.

    “In addition, as far as we know, we are amongst only a handful of players leveraging tech for investment decision-making in India. Our proprietary tech and track record are sustainable moats, which should hold us in good stead vis-à-vis the competition” says Atanuu Agarrwal, Co-founder, Upside AI

    Upside AI – Recognition and Achievements

    Upside AI ranks among the top-performing PMS’ in the country delivering 33% annualized returns since it came out of beta in July 2019; this represents a ~14% alpha (outperformance) over the benchmark index (Nifty 500 TRI).

    In June 2021, PMS AIF World ranked Upside AI Multicap in the top 10 products of its peer group. Upside AI’s AUM has grown by 10X since 2020 to over INR 75cr with investments from several HNIs, and family offices.

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    Upside AI – Future Plans

    • Its goal is to cross 1000 customers and 1000 crores in AUM within the next 18-24 months (2022-23) while delivering consistent returns for its investors
    • Apart from the two live products, Upside AI has another couple of products in development, which it plans to launch over the next 6-12 months(2021-2022)
    • Over the next couple of years, the company aims to add 1,000 HNIs, family offices, and institutional clients and grow to INR ~1,000cr in AUM.
    • The team is also working on building an end-to-end digital platform where we want tech to drive the entire chain from client onboarding to sophisticated investment tech to live tracking and reporting via a seamless UI/UX experience for clients
    • Over the next 5 years, Upside AI aims to create off-the-shelf, standardized products across asset classes that can be pre-packaged and sold to even retail investors

    Upside AI – FAQs

    What is Upside AI?

    Upside AI is a SEBI-registered PMS (Portfolio Management Service). It is an investment management startup that uses technology to drive investment decisions.

    Who are the founders of Upside AI?

    Nikhil Hooda, Kanika Agarrwal, and Atanuu Agarrwal started Upside AI in 2017.

    How does Upside AI make money?

    Clients are charged a percentage of AUM periodically.

    What is the USP of Upside AI?

    At Upside AI, the team is creating a new class of investing that sits between active and passive – its goal is to deliver consistent alpha through eliminating bias/emotions from the process. Upside AI’s first few products focus on equity investing using proprietary machine learning algorithms to understand, recognize, and buy companies that are fundamentally good businesses.

    Is Upside AI an Indian Company?

    Yes. Upside AI is an Indian Company headquartered in Mumbai.

    How much funding has Upside AI raised?

    Upside AI raised a seed round of $1.2 Million, led by a VC fund, Endiya Partners. Other investors in the round include – Vijay Kedia, Ajay Nanavati, and Gopichand Katragadda.