Effective digital marketing can provide a challenge for many companies. The number of websites online has nearly quadrupled from just over 200 million in 2010 to almost a billion by 2014. This incredible saturation means that even more people now compete for top spots on the search engine results page (SERP). Your business can compete and succeed with these people after you read how ppc works in this blog post.

Google continues to change and update their algorithm. These changes occur in response to what customers want and their attempts to maximize the user experience. This can make it difficult for websites to earn the important top positions on the SERP, but we’re here to help.

At the same time, no brand can afford to give up on an online presence. According to Accenture, 94 percent of B2B buyers report that they use the internet before making a purchase. MineWhat similarly reports that 81 percent of customers do the same. Brands that do not have an online presence will be missing for these customers.

Fortunately, PPC can provide brands with the opportunity they need to grow the rest of their digital marketing efforts. When used correctly, PPC can work with organic marketing to build the company name. If you have not used PPC before, here is exactly what you need to know about how PPC works.

What is PPC?

PPC stands for pay-per-click. It describes those ads seen on websites across the internet. Brands design these ads to target people looking at particular types of content or who searched for certain terms on the search engine. These ads appear for a variety of terms, such as local search terms:

To terms such as “home decorating”

You can see that the ads have a little green label next to the web address on Google.

PPC ads can also have a place ‘retargeting’ people who visited certain sites in the past, trying to entice them to come back. For example, say you visited an ecommerce site and looked at a certain sweater for a while. You decided not to purchase it at that time. You may find yourself regularly seeing ads for that sweater on other websites or even on your social media pages. This is how PPC works: trying to get you to visit relevant websites. PPC platforms include the major search engines as well as social media sites like Facebook.

What is Google Adwords and how does it work?

Anyone interested in understanding how PPC works will need to become intimately familiar with Google Adwords. Adwords holds the place as the largest PPC platform. To understand how PPC works, you need to consider this platform. The ads appear on the Google search engine as well as on various Google properties.

Google makes a considerable amount of revenue from their ads– about $22 billion according to their 2016 financial data. They work very hard to match the ads that appear on the SERP with the likely intentions of the person making the search.

A large component of this process consists of defining the so-called ‘micro-moment’ of the person in question. Google believes that most people making a search fall into one of four different categories:

• I-want-to-go, meaning that the person wants to go to a particular place. Most local searches fall into this particular category.
• I-want-to-know, meaning that the person wants to find specific information.
• I-want-to-do, meaning that the person wants to ‘do’ something in particular. In this category, think about people searching for ‘how-to’ queries.
• I-want-to-buy, meaning the person is ready to make a purchase.

Google works to match up ads that best fit with the particular micro-moment.

It also understands that different types of intent have different likelihoods of clicking on ads. A study by Wordstream, for example, found that for queries where people are likely to buy, the top 3 ad spots earned 41 percent of the clicks.

The search engine then uses a type of internal auction to determine which ad specifically to show where.

When you buy ads, you bid on particular keywords. The bid describes the amount of money you will be willing to pay each time someone clicks on that ad.

(image courtesy of Google Support)

Popular, high-value keywords will naturally require higher bids than other, less-popular, keywords.

In addition to your bid, Google will then look at the quality and value your ad offers. This will determine your place in the auction. When an appropriate search arises, the auction will determine if your ad wins a spot on the page. The search engine runs through this process countless times a day– Google processes well over 3 billion searches every day.

What are the benefits of using PPC?

Once people understand how PPC works, it can offer a number of benefits for organizations. Let’s break down a few that you can take advantage of in your own campaign.

Benefit 1. Value. According to Google’s own internal research, advertisers earn about $2 for every $1 they spend on Adwords. Remember that Google processes billions of searches everyday. It is also the most prominent search engine in the United States. Therefore, a well-targeted ad has the potential to bring considerable traffic and ROI for your organization.

Benefit 2. The ability to test keywords. Although organic marketing does not cost very much at the start, the way paid marketing does, it does require considerable time and resources. Brands that want to build a strong online presence know that they need to target the best keywords for their organization. They must build a presence that will allow them to take advantage of the traffic from the SERPs.

It is possible, however, for brands to mistakenly identify keywords to target. They could select keywords that draw people unlikely to convert or engage with their website. PPC allows brands to test their target keywords at the beginning before they invest all of their time and resources on gaining the high rankings on the SERPs.

They can use ads to draw crowds of people searching for that specific keyword and thus see how well this particular population engages with their site and converts. If the traffic they gain works well for their organization, they can then amplify their organic efforts. If the traffic does not convert well, they can move on to the next keyword without having wasted their time.

Benefit 3. Increase visibility. Google continues to adjust the layout of their SERP to try and improve the user experience. Back in 2016 they removed the ads that once appeared along the side of the organic search results. They also increased the number of ads that could appear above them.

In several cases, as many as four paid listings can appear before the organic listings begin. For many screens, this will push all of the organic listings down below the fold. This means that users have to scroll to be able to see them. The paid ads, therefore, have greater visibility and ability to draw clicks. Shockingly, a study by Wordstream found that nearly half of users could not even tell the difference between an ad and an organic result. Using a PPC campaign can ensure that your brand has the visibility it needs for important keywords.

Benefit 4. Get your content in front of customers immediately. Organic efforts often require time before results can be seen. Brands that do not have the domain authority of major, established publications will find this particularly true.

Fortunately, understanding how PPC works allows organizations to promote their content immediately, instead of having to only wait for the organic efforts to be successful. The paid advertising can also help attract attention and engagement for the particular page, which in turn can help boost it in the organic rankings.

How PPC works and creating quality campaigns

Building a successful PPC campaign requires considerable planning and forethought. Brands must be ready to strategize concerning their bids and budget. They will also need to think carefully about the content they post in the ad itself.

The entire ad campaign will be built around the keywords targeted, so it is important not to neglect keyword research. This research will inform brands about the terms their targeted prospects will most likely search for. It will also provide information about the traffic they can hope to attract from an ad on that page.

This research should also be complemented by checking how Google displays the SERP for that search term. Remember that Google attempts to understand the intention of users by looking at their likely micro-moments. Depending upon the micro-moment, you will see different types of content, such as the local 3-pack, video results, Quick Answers, and ads. The number of ads displayed will also vary.

Checking the SERP layout for your targeted keyword will provide you with information about how many ads are displayed for that particular term. The organic search results will also let you know about the types of content people likely want to find. This can help you identify if this keyword targets your correct audience.

As you develop your list of keywords, remember also to go specific. Long tail keywords are more detailed and target a more precise audience. Since the focus becomes smaller, the competition will also decrease. Less competition will therefore reduce the amount needed for a successful bid. This can help brands save money while also allowing them to focus on a more exact audience.

Consider a lawyer, for example. A bid on a generic term like ‘lawyer’ or ‘divorce lawyer’ might not help a lawyer in a specific city very much. Bidding on ‘divorce lawyer in Houston’, however, will help narrow the audience to the people the brand actually wants to target without wasting money on clicks that will not benefit them.

To build an even stronger list, also consider negative keywords, or terms that you do not want included on your search queries. An ecommerce store that specializes in formal dresses might want to bid on the term, ‘prom dresses’ every spring. They would likely not want their ad to show up, however, for people searching for ‘make your own prom dress’, as this audience will be less likely in wanting to actually make a purchase.

Think if there are any terms that you do not want to appear in your search results. Think about other uses for terms in your keywords, words related to job searches, and other indicators that people will not fall into your target audience.

Once you have a strong keyword list, the next step will be to craft your actual ad. Take advantage of all the space Google offers you to boost your visibility on the page. Write copy that engages people and encourages those who have searched for this term to click on your ad. Consider again the intentions of the people likely to search for the term and what they want to find on the SERP.

For local search results, as an example, people often want to find contact information for businesses. This is why Google features contact information and maps in their local 3-pack, helping people navigate to the business they want. Including some contact information in your ad allows you to similarly answer the need of this audience.

A person making an ‘I-want-to-buy’ query, on the other hand, will want to see information about products and prices. Including this information in your ad can again help you appeal to the audience.

How PPC works with organic

Now you should understand how PPC works, the value of a PPC campaign, and how to create a successful one for your organization. You now want to address integrating this campaign with the rest of your digital marketing efforts. When PPC and organic marketing are used together, they can create a strong digital presence. This presence will allow you to establish your authority and draw in customers.

Integrating these two aspects of your campaign, however, remains critical. You want them to work together to make sure customers find you at those important moments in the buyer’s journey. Here are a few ideas to get started.

Idea 1. Share keyword data from both campaigns. The keyword information you gather to build your list for your PPC campaign can help your organic efforts and vice versa. Gather information about how well people respond to your PPC campaign ads.

This includes looking at how many people click on the ad compared to how popular the keyword is.You also want to see how well the people who land on your site respond to your brand. Do they visit other pages on your site? Do they fill out forms on landing pages? Do they become return visitors? This information will let you know if the keyword offers value. You can then start building organic campaigns around the same word.

The same ideas work in reverse. If you rank well organically for a keyword that brings you few leads and little ROI, you will know there will be little value in creating a PPC campaign for that word.

Idea 2. Use PPC to target keywords that challenge you. Every business has keywords that provide immediate value to them. Unfortunately, many of these keywords also become highly competitive.

For brands that struggle to rank for these words, PPC can be the answer. Use organic efforts to create quality, targeted content for the challenging keywords. The PPC campaign can then immediately push the company to the top of the list, over rival companies you struggle to outrank. PPC and organic together will establish the brand in the space.

Idea 3. Coordinate campaigns for specific locations or times of the year. Many industries have certain seasons, locations, or times of the year when their products will be more popular. Developing campaigns for them can be a challenge, however, unless you use PPC and organic together. Use organic marketing to create content targeted towards the specific population. Then use PPC to launch ads that reach those most likely to respond to the campaign.

Brands need to use a variety of platforms and channels when they want to build themselves successfully online. The intense competition online today makes it a challenge for many businesses to rank highly on the SERPs. Understanding how PPC works can make it possible to gain the attention you want. Consider the benefits that this form of marketing has to offer and see how you can put it to good use.

We are beyond excited to announce Sprout Social has been recognized as one of Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work in 2018—the second year in a row we’ve received this honor.

This recognition is particularly meaningful to us because the Best Places to Work list is entirely based on feedback our employees have voluntarily and anonymously shared on Glassdoor. To determine the winners of the awards, Glassdoor evaluates all company reviews shared by employees over the past year. This year, we are proud to be recognized among United States-based companies with less than 1,000 employees.

Creating a workplace where all individuals not only feel comfortable, but inspired, takes the effort of an entire team. At Sprout, we are lucky to have more than 450 people stand behind that goal with each fueling our culture in their own, unique way. We’re excited that our amazing team has recently expanded, with the addition of Simply Measured, and we’re more committed than ever to our culture of open communication, team collaboration and inclusion.

So what did employees have to say about being part of Team Sprout? Below are just a few words employees shared on Glassdoor that contributed toward the award and that made us feel incredibly honored to be recognized:

“The training is superb, environment energizing, and the benefits and perks reign supreme! Lots of growth opportunity, too, especially with the new “Grow@Sprout” program. Employees are so diverse (awesome DEI initiatives happening) and multi-faceted, personally and professionally.”
— Finance Department Employee, Sprout Social

“You have a voice here – your personality, skill set, and opinions are celebrated at Sprout. The team is encouraged to speak up.”
— Anonymous Employee, Sprout Social

“The opportunity within the space, and specifically within the company – it’s just the beginning at Sprout. The people and the culture they/we create is truly awesome. The office itself (snacks, drinks, free lunch) is pretty inspiring. It’s a very ‘humble’ group as well, something you don’t see often in tech, especially within a company as successful as Sprout is, and will continue to be.”

— Account Executive, Sprout Social

Thank you to all our employees who share their valuable talents with us each and every day. We are so grateful for their contributions and look forward to another year of new and challenging work with our phenomenal team.

People who enjoy writing are now able to convert that passion into dollars quickly, thanks to the Internet. More specifically, the game-changing innovation is known as blogging.
Fortunately, blogging does not require much technical wizardry, if any. If you're capable of putting down inspiring copy, choosing the right blogging platform, and picking the right marketing tactics, you too can make money.
Curious about how it’s done?  Let's look at five ways you can build your audience and make money blogging.

1 Build Your Blog Audience

 

Use your favorite and most effective marketing strategies to bring people to your blog.  Building an audience is not a trivial pursuit, so don't hesitate to properly learn online marketing and advertising techniques if you're just starting out.
Begin with something simple, like using links to your blog from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Proceed to other options like video marketing (YouTube), email marketing, and search engine optimization techniques as your audience grows.

2 Allow Your Visitors to Buy or Donate

 

If you write about specific topics (e.g. gardening, dog training, golf) that easily lend themselves to making purchases online, consider setting up a PayPal merchant account or the equivalent. This way, motivated readers can show immediate appreciation for your advice and you earn cash from original or affiliate products (see below).
See also: The Most Profitable Online Niches Markets Revealed
On the other hand, if you are wary of selling and marketing for profit, why not leave a coffee cup image to collect donations for your excellent information and brilliant insights? It won't earn you as much money as affiliate marketing or contextual ads, but the number of donations may give you an idea of your earning potential.

3 Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is tough when you have to chase after new customers one at a time.  However, with a blog, you can strategically place great products in front of a loyal audience who are likely to know, like and trust you.
Whether you choose items from ClickBank or individual companies, ensure that these items are high quality and are aligned with your values and those of your audience. Check out the rules for earning commissions (e.g. first link versus last link purchases, full disclosure requirements, etc.) to ensure that you are properly rewarded by each program.
Note: you can see all of our affiliate marketing articles here.

4 Make Money Blogging with Contextual Advertising

Contextual ads give you a way to monetize your excellent content by showing readers relevant ads that may interest them. If they click through, you earn a small fee (commission) as compensation for hosting the ad. Small fees that add up over time…
The service effectively does all the work once you set the parameters: amount of ads, size, placement on your blog etc. Your selection of keywords will determine the quality of the appearing ads, and hence the amount of money you make.

5 Original Content is King

 Making money from blogs is great, and a number of people are able to earn a full-time income from it. Above all, though, your blog is meant for providing meaningful information to readers, so maintain your integrity as your income increases.This means sticking to original content, including product reviews of items you've actually used and can wholeheartedly recommend. Those being said, use all the creative and ethical techniques to attract attention to your best offers (e.g. embedded product links within text and/or images).
Conclusion
Making money from blogging can encompass different levels of financial compensation, ranging from weekly coffee change to a full-time online business. Whatever your income goals are, they are achievable with a little bit of work, some luck, and a willingness to grow your targeted reading audience with tried and tested marketing techniques.

Can you really make money blogging by turning your personal passions, knowledge, or experience into a real income on the internet?
Close to a decade after the Wall Street meltdown, people are still finding it tough to recover past losses and make ends meet. Fewer and fewer of us can count on steady, lifelong employment, and for those who are so fortunate, the salary and benefits (if any) are barely enough to meet our basic needs.Second job, anyone? In America, two-income families are the norm, but think of the havoc it wrecks on your daily life. You’re so exhausted by the time you get home from work, you barely have enough time and energy to make dinner and help the kids out with their homework. Even that becomes difficult if you work at more than one place, whether evenings or on weekends.
The reality is we are moving to a freelance and gig economy where more and more people are making money on their own terms through a side hustle. And of the most popular side hustles is to create an online presence and make money blogging.
It's no surprise that more and more people are looking for information on how to start an online business to generate extra income (or even full-time income) on the internet.
The Internet has made blogging mainstream, to the point where there may be over half a billion blogs online as you read this article.

While income generation is not the only reason (or even the best reason) to blog, opportunities do exist for people to create supplemental income with a blog. 

If you are new to blogging or have just recently started a blog, congratulations! I hope your main motivation is to provide valuable content for your readers because that’s how you will establish expert status in your niche in the long-term.However, there is nothing wrong with making some extra money through blogging and several simple methods exist for getting the ball rolling.
It should go without saying that in order to make money with a blog it's best to start off by choosing a profitable niche market; something where there is a proven marketplace that intersects with your own passions, interests, and expertise.
Once you've done that, it's just a matter of getting website traffic, building your email subscriber list, and making money online. Let's take a look at some of the fastest, easiest, and most profitable ways you ca make money online with a blog.

1. Google Adsense

Google Adsense might be the fastest and easiest way for a beginner to start earning passive income with a blog. The basic ideas behind Adsense is that you can display Google Ads on your website and when a visitor clicks on those ads you get a percentage of the ad costs. You've certainly have seen ads on other people's websites; you can have these ads appear on your blog or website as well.

Adsense is a contextual advertising network that places partner (business) ads on your website. It’s easy to set up—all you have to do is copy and paste some code given to you from Google in the places you'd like the ads to appear on your website.Google will then show ads from advertisers that are a match to the content on your website so that ideally your website visitors are seeing relevant ads.

Don’t worry that your blog niche won’t be able to draw quality ads to your site. Google Adsense is one of the biggest networks on the Web, so you should get a healthy enough list of clickable sites to attract your readership.
And Google is smart enough to only show ads on your website that are relevant to the content on your website, so in many cases this can enhance the user experience on your site and the ads can be helpful.
Just make sure your content is of the highest quality!
Though Adsense is a popular option, I think that affiliate information marketing is also an excellent way to make virtually passive income online.

2. Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates is the long established in-house affiliate program run by Seattle-based Amazon.com—the biggest online retailer in the world today.

It offers bloggers the chance to earn commissions by advertising Amazon products on your website—provided visitors click-through from your blog to Amazon.com and make a purchase.

The basic idea with Amazon Associates is that you can get a tracking link that is unique to you that links to any product sold on Amazon.com. If someone clicks on the link on your blog and goes back to Amazon and purchases the item, you are credited with the sale.
There are many ways you can promote Amazon products on your website. You could include a product catalog (pulled from Amazon.com) on your blog, you can write product reviews and link to the products you recommend on Amazon, and you can have a recommended resources page on your website; just to name a few.
The one caveat about Associates is that it probably suits bloggers who write about merchandising, retail products and shopping a fair bit. Logically, it will help your performance if visitors arrive at your website already predisposed to buying.
The program works by getting Amazon links, banners, or widgets (e.g. slideshows, ‘My Favorites’, ‘Wish List Widget’) onto your pages.
One added benefit is that if someone clicks on a link from your website to Amazon and ends up buying multiple items (not just the item you are promoting) then you would get credit for the entire sale! Imagine you recommend a book on Amazon, your visitor goes to Amazon to buy a book - and while they're there they end up buying a new TV, a Sony PlayStation, and some other things... you get credit for all of the sales. Not only that but any sales that are made in the following 15 days from that customer are credited to you as well.
Another way to make money with Amazon is by publishing digital books on Amazon Kindle.

3. Affiliate Marketing for Digital Products

As I mentioned above, on of my favorite ways to make money on the internet is by promoting digital information products as an affiliate.
Just like Amazon.com is a marketplace of physical good sold on the internet; there are also marketplaces of digital products sold on the internet as well.
One of the most popular digital product marketplaces is Clickbank.com. You can search the Clickbank marketplace for products related to your marketplace and promote them on your website, write product reviews, etc.
Just like with Amazon, if someone clicks on the link and goes back and buys the product you are promoting, you would get a commission for a percentage of the sale.
One attractive feature of promoting digital information products is that the commissions tend to be higher than that of physical products; ranging anywhere from 10% to 50% or even higher. As an example, if someone is selling a digital information product for $500 with a 50% commission - you can earn $250 per sale. This is much higher than commissions on physical products due to the high profit margins.

4. Create E-books and Information Products

Regular blogging is the ideal training ground for creating e-books, still one of the most popular forms of information products being sold by online entrepreneurs today.
Consider your blogs as “free” information that you offer to readers to demonstrate your expertise. With time, they become your fans and are ready for more in-depth material. This is your opportunity to make money—by presenting your e-books for sale alongside your free blog.
Just make sure that the e-book builds on your blog output—don’t simply rehash what they have already seen! After all, these people are now paying customers and will get upset with old information. Later on, as you become more established and your archived material becomes more extensive, poll your readers to see what topics they’d be interested in learning more about and potentially what topics of e-books they’d be interested in purchasing.
Again, you can sell an ebook for a much higher price than a regular book and benefit from a much higher profit margin.

5. Offer One-on-One Coaching

This is one of the quickest and easiest ways you can turn your expertise into money. The fact that you are publishing a blog and providing information in your market makes you an expert in your niche. In many cases people want to get personalized advice directly from the expert in their market.
You can simply put up a page on your blog offering one-on-one coaching to answer any questions they have or give them advice for a handsome fee.
Notice that I avoided putting a specific dollar figure on the amount you can make from blogging. It will come down to your work ethic, your skills as a writer, your ability to generate targeted traffic, and plain old good luck. It’s a bit like baseball: everyone played it as a kid, only a small fraction make it to college ball, an even smaller number become professional, but only the cream of the crop makes it to the majors.
You have to decide where in the blogging “big leagues” you want to end up.
The reality is that as more and more people from all over the world come online, the harder it will become to get attention online and generate income. That's why it's so important to focus on building your email list, so you can follow up with your visitors, build a relationship and increase sales.
That being said, there are countless success stories out there, and the formula for success is surprisingly simple. It’s just up to you to get it done!

What does 2018 hold for developers? What trends will change the way they work? TNW spoke to developers across a number of segments, and asked what they thought next year would bring. Here’s what they said.

All about the containers

Containerization is a great idea. When you put a bit of code into a container, you’re essentially packaging it in a certain way. It contains pretty much everything you need to run the software — like libraries, tools, settings — and binds it into an executable that you can deploy pretty much everywhere.
Containerized software is consistent. It runs the same no matter what machine you put it on. And because it’s isolated from its environment, and from other containers on the same system, they’re a lot more secure.
Like I said, it’s a great idea. And thanks to projects like Docker and Kubernetes, containerizing software is really easy. In 2018, you can expect this to become even more popular.
Kit Merker, VP of Business Development at JFrog, agrees. “The world needs more reliable software – secure, up to date, performant, resilient to failure – in order to keep all of our daily critical systems running,” he said.

“The introduction of a near-ubiquitous container computing platform that can run democratically on a myriad of open and closed platforms becomes a fundamental building block of Planet Earth’s information, commerce, government, social, education, health, transportation, energy, and industrial systems. The more we can interoperate a world-scale computing infrastructure the better.”

AR and Machine Learning will become even more commoditized (and easy)

Building AI-driven software used to be hard. Building mixed-reality applications used to be hard. That’s not the case anymore.
Let’s start with augmented reality. Over the past year, Facebook and Apple have thrust their own AR development technologies into the mix. ARKit in particular is a revolution, and people are using it to do some really cool things. And thanks to the WebXR project, it’s now possible to build sophisticated AR apps using web technologies.
Gabriel Kwok, Lead Frontend Engineer at mobile ad platform, Kiip thinks 2018 will be an “exploratory year”.

“With the release of ARKit and ARCore for iOS and Android respectively, AR capabilities will become more and more mainstream and developers will be challenged to push their imagination and incorporate AR as a differentiating factor in the sea of mobile apps. Despite advances in AR software, we’ll continue to grapple with hardware bottlenecks.”

On the AI front, you can expect much of the same. AI is making its way into almost everything, and it’s largely due to the same trends we’ve seen in the augmented reality world: simpler, free developer tools that lower the bar for entry significantly.

Data-Driven Developers

Next year, developers will increasingly take an data-driven approach to problem solving. Monitoring and analytical tools that allow them to identify, break-down, and resolve complex issues in their code.
Tague Griffith, Head of Developer Advocacy at Redis Labs, concurrs. Speaking to TNW via email, he explained that failure engineering and failure analysis will continue to grow and become more codified in 2018.
“Consider databases: there’s this idea of building tools and systems that validate whether databases do what they claim,” he explained.

“Netflix started the trend of the Chaos Monkey, and techniques like ‘failure introduction’ are becoming more mainstream as we start to understand the complexity of systems. Software is key part of our everyday lives and so much of our personal and health data is on our phones, available in cloud. In light of this, automated testing of failure and security analysis will keep building.”

JFrog’s Kit Merker made the case that data-driven analysis can result in significant performance improvements:
“When you first start to improve your development infrastructure you see amazing initial results. It’s like when you start lifting weights you get linear improvement for some time. But eventually you have to dig deeper and do more nuanced improvements to eke out a bit more performance,” he said.

“Measurement of every facet of development from idea to code to deployment to customer feedback will be expected and will help mature development teams focus on incremental gains. This means that those who are only just now investing in improved developer infrastructure might feel like they are making huge strides, but in reality they are scratching the surface of what’s possible. And what got you here won’t get you there.”

Go will be a hot language in 2018

Go is a fun language to work with. Like the majority of compiled language, it’s blazing fast. Unlike other languages, it’s built with concurrency in mind, and makes writing code that performs parallel tasks a doddle.
Syntax wise, it’s really easy to wrap your head around, and reads like a happy compromise between C and Python. It also has a thriving developer community that have created libraries and frameworks which extend the language further.
Recently, I’ve been playing around with Pixel — a dead simple games development platform for the Go programming language. Go can also be used to create web applications, although it primarily thrives as a systems language.
Redis Labs’s Tague Griffith reckons 2018 will be a bumper year for Go, explaining “Go the language is gaining a lot of popularity. It’ll become the new system language that developers turn to for performance-sensitive software, where control is key.”
That said, it won’t be the language of 2018. As was the case with last year, that crown belongs to JavaScript.

Developers will enter the industry through vocational study

Finally, here’s a prediction of my own.
Developers typically enter the industry through one of two ways: they’d go to university and study a computer science related topic, or they’d teach themselves how to code. But in recent years, a third option has emerged: vocational study.
More precisely, I’m talking about coding bootcamps.
Coding bootcamps are (typically private) educational institutions that teach software development in an intensive manner. While a traditional computer science degree takes place over four years, a course at a coding bootcamp lasts just a few months.
Crucially, bootcamps emphasize practical skills over theory. That’s because they typically aim to bring people to junior developer standard in just a few short weeks. That doesn’t leave much time for Djikstra’s algorithm.
Coding bootcamps are booming. Some, like Coding Dojo, have become a legitimate brand, with branches across the United States. One, Flatiron School, was acquired by WeWork earlier this year.
Developers are flooding the industry from these bootcamps. A huge part of that is due to cost. While the upfront cost of a bootcamp can be as high as $15,000, that’s nothing compared to a four-year degree. You can expect that trend to continue, especially while employment outcomes from traditional computer science courses remain dismal.

Bring on 2018

If you want to read the previous year’s predictions and see how right (or wrong) I was, you can check them out here. And if you want to tell me your own predictions, shoot me an email.