No need to reinvent the wheel.

For more information on him, you can check out his books or website.

Source: http://www.nuffy.net/pics/misc/advertising/creative_commercial_12.jpg

The first part of the study consisted of following  4,739 participants over a period of 20 years. They asked them to rate their level of happiness. Likewise, they also rated the happiness of their networks (neighbors, family, friends), their network’s networks and their network’s network’s networks. What was found? Happy people have happy networks. Additionally, your happiness can be increased by people whom you have never met.

The second part is conducted online where they pulled basically the same experiment but with college students on facebook and happiness was rated by smiling photos. The same results were found.

What should we take away from this? Surround yourself with happy people, tell those people to do the same and pass it down, and you will be a happier person.

More detailed

It's a very nice!

Leadership – We all want it but what exactly makes a good leader? Luckily, you are not the only person who has asked this question. Social psychologists have studied what makes great leaders and have found interesting results.

For those of you who know the basics, check out this free “7 SEO Sins” email report from StomperNet

http://stomping2.com/7-deadly-seo-mistakes/

Enjoy

Your new role model.

Get Energized
You cant go about your day if you don’t have any energy. So to make sure you have the right dietary idea:

• Eat breakfast. Preferably something with carbs and alow glicemic index. I’m talking oatmeal.
• Get all your vitamins. Vitamins should be supplements, not your daily supply. Get your daily requirements of protein, vegetables and fruits and you’ll feel a lot better.
• Get sleep. Each person’s body requires a different amount of sleep. Make sure your leave time for your body to fully recharge overnight.
• Exercise for a short period of time each morning to get the blood flowing for the rest of the day.
• Drink lots of water. Most people don’t drink enough water which leads to quick energy loss.

Excuse removed: I’m too tired to do this now.

Make a Game Plan
Make it complete. Take it from the very, very top – as if you haven’t done anything yet. First, establish a general goal (e.g. create a successful business grossing $100k per year). Next, make a short term goal (e.g. generate $5k gross in first month of business). Then plan out all the steps needed to make that short term goal happen (e.g. develop marketing plan, register business, develop product, hire VA, test and examine results, etc.) Be as specific as possible.

WRITE it all down on a piece of paper (neatly) and stick it next to your work area. This will serve as a constant reminder for what needs to get done.

Excuse removed: I don’t know what to do next.

There should only be two hands.

Plan Out Your Time
Make sure you know what you are going to do, when you are going to to do them and for how long. Write it out and tack it next to your game plan. STICK TO IT. If you find yourself with extra time on your hands and want to get ahead (maybe do two days worth in one day) feel free, but don’t think of its as “I did double yesterday, don’t need to do anything today”. When you start substituting, it starts working in reverse as well. “I don’t feel like doing it today, I’ll just to double tomorrow.” Tomorrow rolls around and you get nothing done again.

If you can’t make a time based plan, maybe you aren’t ready to set your plan in motion.

Excuse removed: I don’t have enough time.

Determine Your Motivation
Why do you want to do this? Really think about the reason. This is the drive that will keep you going when you feel extremely lazy so it better be damn good. If you ever feel like not following your plan and time schedule, simply thinking about your motivation should be enough to put you back into the rhythm.

Excuse removed: All of them

Yeah we are

Finally. I’ve been holding back on buying the first edition for the revised one to come out since a friend recommended it to me.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

The subject of the book is behavioral economics, the irrational decisions we as humans make in life. More specifically, when it come to money decisions. This is a (I would hope) growing career especially since the economic collapse and everyone who is interested in either business or psychology should read up on some concepts developed by this field. The best way to show you how great this field is, is with an example.

MIT Economist Subscription Pricing Study

So back in the day, Dan Ariely noticed something weird about economist.com subscription options.

Web only – $59
Print only – $125
Web + Print – $125

Well well. A regular pricing model would have continuous price increases as value offered increases but here we have web+print for the same price as print only. He decided to run a survey at MIT (where he teaches).

He sampled 100 students and presented them with those three options. 16 chose web only, 84 web + print, and unsurprisingly, none chose print only. Since nobody chooses the print only option, it really has to place in their pricing chart right? So he took out the print only option and gave the survey with only those two options. Results:

Mind Blown

I’ll give you a minute to let that seep in. The number of print + web subscriptions dropped from 84% to 32% (which would be a loss of $3000). How could removing an option, that no one chose when available, have such a dramatic effect on a buyer’s decision? The answer, human’s are irrational. Having the print only option sets a reference value point which establishes the worth of the print only option. Without the reference, customer’s do not have that value established and find that the web only option is a better decision.

I’m sure he explains it more clearly and with more detail in his book, which is chock full of such research studies. Adding this book to my slowly growing library. Read it.

What I gathered from the article is that as opposed to the current Monday through Friday, 9-5 grind, jobs will become a lot more freelance based. Company X needs to get Y done. Find a person/team/company to do Y and leave. This makes FAR more sense than the current setup.

Lets face it, we spend more time jerking around than actual heavy-duty working while “working”.

You wish you could pull this off

The freelance model is far superior. It costs the company less money, people don’t waste their time dilly dallying on company time and work better. The problem with this method is that it is very high-risk for the employees. There is no steady income, no insurance, no benefits. Those who perform poorly won’t get hired for any jobs and will have to switch careers. Think of it as natural selection at the work place.

I’d like to hear from people who currently have such jobs and what they think about a freelance work based employment.

Grocery shopping - a natural high image: personalnewtrition.com

Ecommerce is the future (and perhaps already the present?) of shopping. As we spend more time in front of the screens, smart businesses bring their products to their customers through the internet. Can’t beat convenience.

So if you want to get in on the ecommerce rage, you need to be smart about it. Simply having great products is just not enough these days, you need a unique selling point, effective marketing and a website that converts prospects into customers.

Imagine this scenario, you spends thousands of dollars advertising your ecommerce site in the hopes of selling your new line of combination sofa-clocks. You drive hundreds of targeted prospects to your site but only manage to convert a handful. Whats wrong? Maybe your targeting the wrong keywords. Maybe your product isn’t any good. Maybe your site blows.

The smart thing to do is change one variable at a time and see the results produced but this costs money and time. The alternative is to find proven tactics that work over many sites and will most likely work for you.

Just got this in my e-mailbox from Marketing Sherpa.

New Ecommerce Research – Website Tactics that Boost Conversion

Perfect. Read the article then come back here.

stats don't lie

Perpetual shopping cart
Here is one you wouldn’t think would be number one. As a shopper, you would not expect that a showing of items in your cart on every page would increase your likelihood to purchase. Yet the world’s largest ecommerce seller has the most enhanced version of the cart (item, description, price, etc.). So join the 38% who make more money than everyone else.

Optimizing/Customizing Internal Search Results
Just read and follow the points listed on the site. Most of these features are built into ecommerce scripts. If not, it may be a worthy investment to hire a coder to make the necessary adjustments. Pay special attention to the last tip there, “most likely to generate associated sales”. If you have product A and comparable but more expensive product B, you’re first instinct may be to push product B harder. But if product A leads to sales of product X, Y, and Z more often, it’s more effective to push the ‘cheaper’ model.

Enhanced Display
Not only does this allow the viewer to get a better view of the object they may buy, but it also increases the quality of the company. If you have a professional looking website, you put the prospects into the frame of “We do what we can to help you make the best decision and we take our work very seriously”. Cha ching.

Live Chat
Read Tim Ferris’s Four Hour Work Week and get a firm understanding about virtual assistants (VA) and outsourcing. Or, you can hire a pre-built online live chat assistance company. This is the most expensive change you can make to a website so save it for last. In fact, only install live chat after you’ve implemented the other changes and had them running and tracking statistics for a few months. That way, you can successfully track your ROI.

Targeted cross -sell/up-sell
I think Amazon nailed this perfectly with their “People who bought A also purchased B”. I find myself browsing those suggestions more than anything else.

Product Comparison Grids
Who doesn’t like these? A easy-to-follow, side-by-side comparison between two products you want to choose between. Once they’ve established which product is better, they are basically committed to buying it. All you need to do is convince them to buy from you as opposed to anywhere else.

So, like with all other aspects of business (and many things in life), do your research before jumping in. If you spend your time and money wisely, you can put your business and website ahead of the rest.