I read recently that parts of the brain respond the same to watching someone else do something as they do when the person does it themself. To those parts of the brain, a vicarious experience is just as real as an actual, first person experience.

For example, a video of a kid unboxing his new...
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Your customers have 3 brains. No, I'm not saying they're mutants or aliens -- I mean 3 parts of their brains are involved in making decisions. If you want them to choose you, you need to know which one to talk to and how to do it.

The "Lizard Brain"

The first is the part...
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Executive Summary: Read it! Don't think you can catch the vision by reading book reviews that list the 6 main concepts. If you do, you'll miss a lot.

I read several good books a few months ago, but haven't yet gotten around to sharing insights I got from them and writing reviews. I'll probably spend...
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Internet marketers love their buzzwords. Whenever somebody comes up with a catchy one, they all stand in a circle, sing a song, do a dance, and beat it to death. And then they beat it into dust.

Then they beat the space where it used to be.

About that time, they start looking around nervously...
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Who's to blame if an internet marketing system doesn't work? The seller, for selling a faulty system? Or the buyer for their half-hearted effort at implementing it?

The question has been hashed over ad nauseum, and the answer is obvious enough: there's plenty of blame for both.

On the one hand, some systems would work...
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One of Dr. Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion is reciprocity -- when you do someone a favor, they tend to feel obliged to return the favor. I've heard this plenty of times before, but I recently read an article that got me thinking about it again.

A few days ago, Dr. Cialdini tweeted a...
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In a guest post about Google Instant at Tech Crunch, Eli Feldblum wrote:

It's been nearly two weeks since Google Instant launched, and ... we're finally starting to see some real data about how the new Google search experience is affecting organic traffic levels and other facets of SEO. ... Google Instant is slowly changing...
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Back in July, Shane Snow posted an article on Mashable titled HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power Your Business.

Common game elements like points, badges, leaderboards, and levels are proven (and increasingly popular) ways to engage customers and encourage profit-driving consumer behavior. Foursquare is a great example of why these work.

At the time,...
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Gurus who half-way understand what they're doing give half-way good advice. One such piece of advice is to talk about the customer's problem in your headline.

Makes sense, right? You've got to tell the customer what problem you're going to solve, or they won't be interested in the product.

Well, that's true, but how you...
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Offering freebies as incentives to join an email list is standard practice in internet marketing. Most marketers focus on getting as many signups as possible by focusing on the freebie and downplaying the email subscription. But is that the best approach?

Amanda Gagnon wrote:

Mentioning email first weeds out people who are only interested in...
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