I’ve never heard of this guy before & don’t know his background but I just watched a video of Dan Areily speaking below & went and bought his book straight away!

Answering the question NO we are NOT in control of our own decisions!

The video is 17 minutes long and it’s worth watching every second of it.

It shows a great example of how a simple & what might seem a meaningless change to a website can make a massive difference when it comes to making sales.

The video is very funny & very informative. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Dan Areily, decision making, persuasion

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past year you probably know what a retweet is. But just in case…

What is a retweet?

A retweet is when you share someone else’s tweet with your followers.

So for example lets say TechCrunch just posted a tweet about the iPad and I wanted to share this with my followers on twitter, then I would share the following: RT @TechCrunch: The iPad And Chrome OS Netbooks Are On A Collision Course http://bit.ly/9EtlLm

The RT at the start of the post stands for Retweet.

How to craft a retweet link

So to create a retweet link all you do is copy the persons Twitter message & at the start of it add RT @TheirTwitterUserName

How to craft a Retweet This link

But lets say you want to create a “retweet this” link. One your blog or email subscribers can just click to automatically retweet your content.

To create a ‘manual’ retweet link. One that can just be entered into the browsers address bar to update a twitterers status you should create your retweet link in the following format:

http://twitter.com/home?status=insert+what+you+want+to+say+here

Make sure to include all the + sings as these represent spaces to the browser. So give it a try.

Here is a manual retweet link for a post I did on how to make your first sale online. Click it and “magically” all the retweet details will appear in your Twitter update box. (Once your logged into twitter of course!)

http://twitter.com/home?status=RT+@markflav+How+To+Make+Your+First+Sale+Online+http://bit.ly/9pA3kN

Technorati Tags: create retweet, Twitter, twitter retweet

When you first enter the internet marketing arena a daunting task is making that first sale.

If you’ve created a product of your own or you are promoting an affiliate product the first step to success is getting those first few sales under your belt.

And believe me the feeling you get when you make those first few sales is worth all the blood, sweat & tears!

Here are just a few ways to help you get that first sale.

1. Take part in forums in your niche & establish yourself as an expert in your particular niche or industry. By helping people with their problems & questions you will gain their trust & when you recommend your product or service people will be more inclined to buy from you as you have already helped them.

2. Build a squeeze page/opt in page offering a free report or video solving a problem for customers in your niche. Supply this list of people with great helpful content & promote your products to them.

3. Build a content driven blog that provides help to the consumers in your niche. Include your opt in form in the blog so as to build your list & submit your posts to places like:

* Digg
* Stumbleupon
* And the forums you’ve established yourself as an expert in

The bottom line is create great content that will help people, build your list & promote your product or service to them.

Technorati Tags: first sale, internet marketing, internet sales, sell online, selling online

Well it’s everywhere! It even made the main news here in Ireland. The iPad has arrived!

I don’t know who Apples PR firm is but damn their good. The hype created for this product had reached critical mass & then like moses parting the red sea Steve Jobs appears to save us all & make our lives better! Well at least that’s what they want us to believe.

I’m a big Apple fan. I use an iMac as my desktop & would be lost without my iPhone but I’m afraid this is not an apple product I’ll be adding to my repertoire of gadgets for three simple reasons.

Reason 1: The UI & Operating System are more an advanced iPhone than a trimmed down snow leopard. Disappointing.

Reason 2: No Camera. Would be nice to be able to do video conferencing on the fly.

Reason 3: I could see myself & anyone who gets one buying so many accessories for the damn thing that your better off carrying your mac on your back!

Here’s the official Apple video for IPad.

What do you think? Like the iPad? Will you be getting one? Leave your comments below.

Technorati Tags: apple ipad, ipad

According to wikipedia (a ‘reliable’ source I know but hey what ya gonna do!) Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island.

As of 2009, its weekday circulation of 377,500 was the 11th-highest in the United States, and the highest among suburban newspapers.

Now about 3 months ago Newsday made their online news site NewsDay.com a paid subscription. So if you wanted access to Newsdays articles online you have to pay 5 bucks a week.

Now this may not seem like a lot but Newsday is one of the first non-business newspapers to charge for their content online. And how successful was it? It was and is a CATASTROPHIC failure. 35 people have subscribed to their service!

The revamp of the site reportedly cost 4 Million & their 35 customers should bring in about $9000 a year. This site is the perfect example of a business with massive web traffic but just terrible sales funnel, a product that can easily be sourced for free, a major failure in understanding their market & what I can only assume is absolutely no communication with it’s website visitors.

I mean the site gets over 1,500,000 million unique visitors a month. I’m not even going to attempt to calculate the sales conversion rate but I’m sure there’s a lot of zero’s after the decimal point. ( If you like your maths leave the conversion rate in the comments below)

The lesson to take from this?

It can be very easy to become bogged down focusing all your time on generating traffic and tweaking your website and that’s all well and good but if you don’t understand and interact with your audience, know what they want & develop a relationship with them, no matter how much you spend on a fancy website & traffic you’re not going to succeed online.

Got any input on this story? Are you one of Newsdays 35 Subscribers! Leave Your Comments Below.

P.S. I went to their to site to check out their sales funnel, do the same & let me know what you think.

Click Here To Be Successful At Marketing Online.

The Profitable Essence Teleclass is being held by Nancy Marmolejo.

You can learn more about Nancy here.

This class is for coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs who:

* Want to create a business they love and make money at it, but don’t know where to start (or if they’re sure if it’s even possible)

* Keep investing in program after program but still haven’t seen any financial results in their business

* Are feeling burned out working in a business that just doesn’t seem to “fit” them anymore

* Are ready to get in the driver’s seat and blow the top off their business this year

Click Here To Sign Up For The Free Teleclass

Technorati Tags: coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs, Nancy Marmolejo, teleclass