Psychotactics

It was 2004.
We were promoting the Workshop in Los Angeles. As part of the marketing promotion, we put one little audio testimonial on the website. No, it doesn’t matter what the testimonial said.
What matters, is that over 1200 people clicked on that one link to listen to the testimonial.
Now why would they go clickety click? [...]

You know the feeling of getting stuck, don’t you?
You set out to write something: Maybe an email, maybe an article.
And you sit there at the computer completely disgusted. Because no  matter how much you try, and whatever you write, the words just don’t seem to flow.
So why don’t the words flow?
To understand what causes [...]

Do you sometimes feel you’ve run into a rock star?
Not just any rock star, but the one that really commands the respect of everyone around? Well, today we’re we’re going to speak to Lynda Weinman: the rock star of software training. Peachpit Press calls Lynda Weinman is the best-known and highly respected teacher of web [...]

This article has been removed. My apologies.
Instead here a super interview between Lynda Weinman and I. In case you’re wondering, Lynda Weinman is one of the founding members of Lynda.com. Lynda.com started out as a video site when video was um, big trouble to download. Today they get hundreds of thousands of visitors [...]

As a retailer, which is the most important sale of all? Is it the first sale, second sale, third sale or future sales?
Actually the answer is: “All of the above.” But you knew that already didn’t you. What you probably didn’t know, is the importance of the third conversion.
So what’s the third conversion?
The third conversion [...]

Have you ever struggled to read the text on a web page? You’re keen to read the material, but not sure why you’re struggling.  And it’s not because the language is difficult.  And it’s not because the topic is unknown. Yet there’s something that’s driving you batty.
It’s something on the page itself, but you can’t [...]

I was sitting at a cafe one day, when a client was raving about my articles. Of course, I was smiling from ear to ear–as you do when someone is a big ‘fan.’
“So how come I’m mesmerised by your articles?” he asked. “What’s your big ’s-e-c-r-e-t?”
“One word”, I said.
Every article boils down to one word. [...]

Do you remember the time back when you were ten years old?
You do, don’t you?
And you remember the day you got your allowance, right?
So what did you do with your allowance? I’ll tell you what. You carefully put it in the bank, so that it could earn an interest rate, and some day you’d earn [...]

If you’re sending out a newsletter, how do you benchmark your success?
Is it by open-rates? Or something else?
The answer, sadly, doesn’t lie in open-rates
Open-rates are based on the factor of whether or not your article was um, opened. I say um, because open-rate is a crazy issue. When a client um, opens your article, it [...]

Imagine you had a fairy godmother.
And she gave you one wish: The wish of ‘perceived expertise’. This ‘perceived expertise’, means that your customers would look atyou and say: “There goes the expert in the field. I only want to
work with her/him.”
I had such a godmother. And I got a wish from that fairy godmother in [...]

You’re watching TV. It’s Extreme Makeover time.
They take this wallflower-looking person.
And they cut. And they snip. Boy, do they tuck! And about 2 weeks later, the Extreme Makeover artists transmogrify their subject into a work of captivating beauty.
You watch and say, no…can’t be…can’t be the same wallflower. Ah, but it is. So what say we [...]

People often ask: Where do you get the time?
Or instead they’ll say: I can’t be bothered to go into forums etc., because then I never get any work done.
And they’re right. If all you ever do is go into forums to waste time, or to just hang around, then you’ll end up doing very little [...]