Reddit mentions: The best marketing & consumer behavior books

> Not a single company cares what a consumer wants.

I think this is your overall thesis and the base of your argument. Don't get me wrong, any company's first motive is always profit. But if a company doesn't deliver the experience they promised to their customers, they aren't going to last very long before a superior competitor takes their place. This is more easily observed in tech industries since the rise and fall happens so quickly but the consequences of bad marketing are inescapable regardless of industry (inb4 comcast).

> They built up ★$ based on this italian authentic espresso/coffee house model. Once they cemented a reputation with the actual service, marketing took over. Get rid of employee training, get ride of benefits, maximizes advertisements and store design to emphasize the perception of what ★$'s is. It has little to to with substance now, it's about showmanship.

The positioning of starbucks changed in the consumer's mind. This mind sound like a load of horse crap but this is the process marketers go through, try to figure out where you are in the consumers' minds, be more like that and hope it works out. If it sounds superficial, it's because it is. It's nothing like a science, it would be better compared to art. You sometimes just have to feel out the right move to make and go for it. Starbucks realized fewer customers cared about the quality of their coffee, and more cared about the free wifi and cozy locations with nice decor where they could meet people. That's the value of starbucks now, so that's what they ran with. Does it suck for everyone that liked the old starbucks? Of course, but there are thousands of other coffee shops (at least where I am) that do the authentic coffee experience thing with more attention to detail than Starbucks ever could at its current scale. You may call it doubling back on his word (which it is, admittedly) but I would call it adapting to a changing market. As you said, the bottom line is showing profit to the shareholders.

>Very few people NEED a smart phone, but it has become as ubiquitous as car keys. Why? Because we are hairless apes that like shiny things. That is what marketing is about.

Other than hairless apes, we are also incredibly dependent on social interaction and iPhones offered a way to satisfy that need.

A popular mantra is that marketers "create needs" but in reality they just find needs and people later realize they have them.

>I've taken enough psychology and philosophy courses to have a pretty good understanding of the human psyche.

By the way, I didn't mean to call your credentials into question I was just trying to get a feel for your background. Although I would suggest that you look further into the difference between psychology and organizational behavior. There is a huge difference between what one human will do and what a group of humans will do, might interest you to read Why we Buy which delves into market research and all that. It's actually fascinating how in-depth researchers will go to ensure that the maximum amount of product is moved.

>I like the noble idea that marketers are there to help a consumer, but I've never seen any evidence of this.

Well it's not quite that noble. Their main focus is still on making profit. But the end goal is to have both the company and the consumer profit. That way the customer is more likely to come back for more. It's just like bartering with more steps and numbers in between, no one's trying to screw anyone over (for the most part) they're just trying to find a purpose and something to do that works, and if that thing is selling overpriced coffee or smartphones or whatever, as long as everyone's happy I can't find an issue with it.

>People will find the goods they need, they don't require assistance in that. Marketing is to sell you stuff you didn't need.

If you're talking about satisfying the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs then yeah, but humans get more and more complicated as they satisfy more and more needs. People might not know they wanted instagram but that little notification that someone they care about liked their post might bring their day from terrible to great.

It's easy to say all that shit is superficial, and if you're still struggling to eat then yes, it's not something that should be worried about. But increasingly we have a growing population of lost, worried people who don't know what to do with themselves and who don't understand why they feel bad. Advertisements and the discovery of new things that could lighten your day can be a little blessing of a distraction for someone with very little other purpose in their life.

And it doesn't have to get that dark. Sometimes you're walking down the street feeling a little peckish and then you see a big sign for pretzels and you think "yes that would hit the spot!" And you get one and if it's good, it's a positive experience and you're distracted a little longer by that happiness.

Also, since I have a feeling this argument is coming, I'm not arguing that distracting yourself from finding the truth and your purpose in life is a good thing, and taken to the extreme it could be devastating. But you can't spend your entire life trying to find your purpose every waking second because you'd go insane. Distractions can ease that little feeling of depression and anxiety that some people feel is only a few bad days away from creeping back.

>Cheers! Thanks for indulging my asinine debate.

You as well, and I don't think it's asinine, I think it's something a lot of people are thinking about but not talking about and it may become an issue in the upcoming years as the line between government and business becomes more and more blurred, and I think it's important we try to establish a precedent sooner than later.

I tried to track down the "women control X% of spending" stat in another post about it, and was unable to find it. Here is an edited version of my post detailing the digging (the post I was responding to claimed 60% of spending):

>Not really. Saying "control" 60% of the wealth does not appear to have an actual source anywhere.

> First, "women control 60% of the wealth" does not have an obvious meaning; "control" is not the same as "own", and without a clear definition it is hard to know what "control" means in the context of married couples. And I dug and dug but couldn't find a primary source for that claim. A business news article discussing the 60% figure cites "Virginia Tech" as a source, but it doesn't link to a research paper; it links to a nonfunctional landing page for a "Women in Leadership and Philanthropy" council. This council does not do research and none of the links on their landing page have any citations to any research. They link out to another dead link that is intended to go to The Woman's Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University.

> This group does appear to do research, but primarily on philanthropy and charitable giving; I can find nothing that is direct research showing how "women control 60% of the wealth" is defined.

> Searching elsewhere, I find a similar-ish 50% stat that cites the BMO Wealth Institute, which links to this white paper.. This paper is a summary of various stats and achievements of women, and does mention the "controls 50% of the wealth" statistic alongside noting many of the concerns typically brought up in these discussions, like women's relatively lower income, or lack of advancement etc. The citation for women controlling 50% of the wealth is yet another dead link to the Family Wealth Advisors Council. Searching the article title, though, I found the actual link to Women of Wealth, which uses the same stat for women's control of wealth and cites Power of the Purse by Fara Warner, a book from 2005.

> Now, I don't have access to the book in full and have to rely on Amazon's preview feature, but from that preview the only mentions of women controlling wealth are in the foreward, which the statistics appear pulled from, and early in Chapter one, which predicts women will gain 85% of the wealth generated between 1995 and 2010. This statistic is said to come from Conde Nast, but is not cited; the statement before and after from different sources are. I cannot access the full set of citations for Chapter One, but nothing else in the book I can find mentions Conde Nast so it doesn't seem likely it was cited prior to page four. Further googling for Conde Nast claiming such a figure was not fruitful, although to be fair a prediction of growth between 1995 and 2010 would have been made prior to 1995 and is unlikely to show up on the internet. And it is important to note that Conde Nast is a media company, and as such their useful definition of "control wealth" would skew towards, say, who makes spending decisions in married couples even if that wealth is dependent on the other partner.

> So what's the point of all this, exactly? Well, it's to say that the 60% figure, in addition to being extremely unclear, doesn't appear to have any obvious primary source; the closest thing I can find is a 2005 book that mentions the wealth control stat and a wealth control projection without clear citation. I did find plenty of examples of people citing the BMO report, which was ultimately sourced from Power of the Purse through the forward of a more respectable sounding report.

> I suspect, but cannot ultimately confirm, that the 60% control statistic ultimately exists either due to marketing projections from the early 90s (which would explain how, with no sources earlier than 2005, it has updated from 50% control to 60% control), or that its based partially on marketing projections and partially on ????? from the foreward of Power of the Purse. This stat does not appear to have been actually confirmed independently, but it has been given more and more legitimacy as it jumped from a book to a (relatively) smaller wealth group to a major bank to being mentioned on a landing page for a university group to being represented (falsely) as research from a major university.

So what's the point of all this, then? Well, it's to point out that your article citing female spending power is also unsourced and claims even higher numbers for female spending, and falls into the same trap about not actually defining what spending power means. There's simply no good reason to believe such a huge claim without any real citations. E: Additionally, as noted in the WSJ article linked in another post, most every source or potential source for this statistic appears to originate within marketing groups trying to push marketing aimed at women. That casts some doubt on how meaningful these terms are, given it may simply be marketing groups realizing that you can't market primarily to men for household products both genders use.

I'll do the best I can to reply to both the reply you referenced as well as your director's cut.

> The concept that he alluded to is called the Marketplace of Ideas -- it's a very well-known and time-worn theory of free speech.

Your argument here is that the Marketplace of Ideas is popular, therefor it must be valid and true. This is an example of the Bandwagon fallacy.

The Marketplace of Ideas is a system gamed easily, just like how an actual marketplace is gamed easily to cause certain products to become the better selling ones and not necessarily the best product. It's duplicitous in it's nature in that it advertises "Variety" and "Fairness" and "The Best Ideas will naturally Rise to the Top" but in actuality it's controlled by those who run the means of dissemination; the Store (Social Media) and the companies willing to sell the most attractive product regardless of quality (Politicians). Cambridge Analytica is a prime, recent example of how easily the system can be gamed and how effective gaming that system is.

This isn't a new criticism, either, and is one that is specific to the modern world and our environment and circumstances. If you, as you say, aren't intellectually lazy and would like to challenge your view on this, I'll recommend a quick starting video:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94tms2pIjYs

 

and the gentlemen's book: https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235

 

> Your argument is the basic underpinnings of censorship, which is essentially reduced to "Well, the public is just too stupid for rational thought, so we need to make sure that they aren't exposed to pernicious speech."

 

You're now committing a strawman fallacy. At no point in time did I call anyone stupid or even lazy. In fact, I specifically stated that wasn't the case at all and was simply acknowledging the reality that most people, regardless of whether they ought to fact check properly, will simply process what is conveniently placed in front of them and already adheres to what their normal intuitions and beliefs are because challenging that is time consuming and mentally stressful. People are busy and/or lazy, whether you want to accept it or not. Politicians are counting on it.

 


>
I would just add that I think we must be discerning consumers of information. You don't go to a grocery store and feel overwhelmed by all the different brands of macaroni and cheese, or spend hours struggling to decide what lunch meat you're going to make sandwiches out of next week. You have lots of choices, but you filter them down to what is relevant - what do I need, what do I want if I have a little extra in my budget - and then you check out.

 

Not sure if you realize it, but you're actually proving my point in your analogy. What you're not doing is acknowledging that the products that you are seeing in that marketplace aren't sorted by value per quality. In fact, the whole PLACEMENT of product in a supermarket is 100% about what company makes the store the most profit and therefor gets eye-level placement; not to mention all of the other products that simply don't get any placement at all due to not "paying" enough (via lack of wholesale discounts to the store). Does this system make sure that you get exposed to the best products worth your money while you're strolling down the aisles? Of course not.

 

> When people talk about information overload, I really think they're just trying to pass the buck.

This is an ad hominem argument. Why are all people suffering from information overload actually just trying to pass the buck and be lazy? I'm not sure I understand your argument here other than "I feel this way."

You then go on to elaborate the following points:

• Not all news is worth paying attention to.
  
• People should ration wisely what they spend their thought cycles on.
  
• Politicians lie, therefor take what they have with a large grain of salt.
  
• People generally only read what is in their echo chamber, which Facebook can't fix (it can, see Filter Bubble book).
  
• Bias exists everywhere, especially when talking about complex things like how the country is run.
  
• We all want the simple 15-second soundbite, but this is a bad thing.
  
  I hope you don't think I misrepresented anything you said up to this point with my summary. I agree with all of these individual points except for the idea that Social Media companies are powerless to help. They can in fact, and are culprits in the current climate of things as it exists today.
  
   
  
  > So when you say information overload, I say this. If a person doesn't have the time to really look into something themselves, and appreciate the complexity of it so that they do it carefully, to listen to both sides of the argument and try and fact check and draw their own conclusions, then I don't think that issue matters very much to them. I think that they want to feel like they're informed without actually doing the work to be informed. They want the credit without doing the work. They don't want to think. They want to be TOLD how to think.
  
   
  
  Again, you're making an ad hominem argument about how people are lazy and that if they don't spend hours and hours researching and properly fact-checking a given topic, they don't actually "care" about it.
  
   
  
  This doesn't make any sense at all, when you try to extend that mode of thinking to things that you entrust to experts every day. Do you trust your medical doctor? Do you trust your mechanic? Do you trust your accountant? Do you trust your insert service professional here ? My guess is that you don't research everything that you are presented with by these types of individuals. You probably did some initial research to figure out who people recommend, or who has what qualifications, but ultimately after selecting the person that you chose, you take their expertise at face value and don't research every diagnosis to the level that a medical professional does or look at engineering manuals the way a mechanic does, etc.
  
   
  
  You do the best to find qualified opinions and then trust in their diagnosis of the topic at hand. This is how most people go about making decisions or holding opinions on complicated topics.
  
   
  
  > And I'm sorry, but I don't think my rights to draw my own conclusions should be stepped on by the government, or by corporations just because some people are too busy, or lazy, or otherwise uninterested to actually think for themselves. And I don't think anyone's rights to say what they believe, even if its a complete falsehood, should be trampled on because those busy/lazy/uninterested people might believe it.
  
   
  
  
  Another strawman argument. I'm not saying that fact-checking is something that the government or corporations should be in the business of at all. I'm saying that the system needs to be fixed so that it isn't so easily gamed and swayed to benefit those that are actively set out to deceive people, and that part of the solution to this is the acknowledgement of the problem (the system is easily gamed) and actively demonstrate proclivity to correct for the loopholes that generate people's Filter Bubbles.
  
   
  
  In sum, I'm not advocating for censorship at all. I'm advocating for strengthening the systems by which people predominantly consume their information so that when people inevitably try to come to a conclusion on a topic, that they do so having been exposed to as close to 50% one side and 50% other side as possible instead of 95% one side and 5% other side.
  
  
   
  
  Give the truth a fair shake is all I ask.
  
  
   
  
  <3

Continued from the comment this is responding too since I got cut off......

​

He has acknowledged publicly that he knows his fans are on the younger side (I couldn't find the clip, but he says that he thinks his fans are around 8-16 y/o's; it's in Nerd City's video on this topic which I linked above). Kids this age don't frequently have disposable income of their own, at least not enough to keep up with his ever-growing merch line full of "limited edition" pieces that you're encouraged to "get right now because the Jake Paulers sell everything out," [https://youtu.be/yY51qiMf_QQ?t=754]. At $45 for a hoodie and $25 for a shirt (although, to be fair, there is a "fan appreciation sale" on right now, so if you're dying to be a hip Jake Pauler, cop your merch now), I'm guessing the vast majority of people typing their credit card info into his merch site are parents wondering why in the hell their kid wants to wear such an ugly fucking shirt so they can look like an absolute asshole who torments his friends and family with his brute-force style of "comedy" and "it's just a prank, bro".

​

I'm glad that Shane addressed this topic and made it clear to him that even people who like him personally think that he should tone down the incessant shilling of products. But I didn't see any of this register with him at all. Honestly I was waiting the whole series for this moment because I think it should have been the main subject of the documentary. Not, "Is Jake Paul a sociopath?!!?" but "Is what Jake Paul is doing, intentionally or not, illegal or unethical with regards to his young key demographic". This, to me, is the real issue with Jake, not whether he and his ex were really dating or just in it for the views. There is a difference between "tea" issues and real issues, and I feel like the real issues were completely swept under the rug in this case. I love Shane and I'm glad he made this series, but I feel like he should have been much tougher with Jake when bringing up the serious stuff. Sorry for the long post, I honesty don't know why this gets me so irritated, but it does and I didn't know where else to post this. If you've read this far, you deserve a cookie. Also, if you've made it this far you might think about checking out the book Consuming Kids, by Susan Linn [https://www.amazon.com/Consuming-Kids-Hostile-Takeover-Childhood/dp/1565847830]. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and you might too (#notsponsoredbutshouldbe).

​

Heads up- yes, this is a long post, but I really think that some of this needs to be said. Also, all of the videos that I link to and cite are videos that I clicked on RANDOMLY when looking at his uploads page on YouTube. The videos I link are the first ones I looked at- I didn't spend time going through his content to find perfect sound bites- this was literally what came up just by randomly selecting things to watch; I honestly had so many clips to reference that I left many of them out because this was already getting too long. So keep that in mind- I could have stumbled upon some rare bad examples of Jake's behavior and I have no evidence that this holds true for everything he does- except for the fact that it came up in every video I clicked on. So take it all with a grain of salt, but please keep in mind that this is a serious issue.

​

TL;DR: Shane didn't hit Jake nearly as hard as he should have regarding the issue of advertising to children. There are so many examples of him breaking ethical and legal standards that he can't just dismiss the issue because he doesn't feel like he's doing it maliciously. Someone needs to make him realize that just because he doesn't understand why something is wrong or doesn't agree with idea that it's wrong, that doesn't mean it's not wrong!

Quick tips:

1 - Read some marketing/growth hacking books

https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Growth-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Breakout/dp/045149721X

https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Hacker-Marketing-Primer-Advertising/dp/1591847389

2 - Make your site more clear that you're selling earbuds. on the first impression, it looks like I can sponsor a Panda or similar.

3 - Work on your SEO more and create a favicon.

Great favicon generator for multiple platforms - https://realfavicongenerator.net/

4 - Since you're helping a charity contact local news, online blogs, charity outlets etc to get an article or a link...

5 - Create more site content. Really sell the reason why you're helping the Pandas and also why your earbuds are worth buying. Create a video to explain all this perhaps

///////////

1. How do you recommend marketing a new product and company?
   
   There are tons of blog posts, books on this. No one here will give you a better answer in a comment then reading a well thought out blog post or book.
   
   ​
   
   
2. What is the best way to do targeted ads?
   
   I am learning this myself better. So no comment
   
   ​
   
   
3. How much money should I expect to spend on ads before I start seeing any sales?
   
   Same as above
   
   ​
   
   At the end of the day, it's just to keep pushing and stay positive, 1% progress a day and you should be happy.
   
   ​
   
   Best of luck with your business and for the future.

Would love to add anyone on Goodreads if you use it too :) [Add me](https://www.goodreads.com/thedoerco
)

• Tested Advertising Method
  
• Ogilvy on Advertising
  
• How to Change Minds is a sales book, but it's got an easy to understand framework to understand how people make decisions that I have found useful for marketing
  
• The Ask Method Gives some great jumping off points on how to ask questions for marketing research, and how to organize that information to make decisions about your marketing and your product
  
• Positioning and Repositioning by the amazing marketing strategist Jack Trout of Disney and Coke, are good foundation reads if you don't know anything about marketing. If you know what a USP is, skip Positioning but I did like Repositioning. I did like Positioning as a refresher of a variety of different concepts that I have read more detailed individual books on.
  
• Integrated Marketing Communications to learn about more broadly how to make all of your marketing communications work together towards a common business goal. The book itself is about using marketing campaigns across different channels (tv, radio, print, online) in a coordinated effort, but it will help you understand how to use email, social, paid ads, and other marketing systems you develop together.
  
  Second Influence. Getting Everything You Can is good if you are basic in marketing, I would not recommend it for people who are more advanced.
  
  If you don't know what a "business goal" is, you need to read this:
  
  
• Scaling Up Every marketer should understand the processes that drive growth in businesses, because you are trying to manipulate those levers with marketing. You can also reverse engineer your prospect's business and explain the gains of your services in the terms of processes that drive their revenue when you're pitching them, too.

This is a great idea for a challenge. I'm not so great at budgeting but I always enjoy reading about other people's money-saving victories.

Budget cooking resources. I only know of two budget cooking cookbooks for vegans, Eat Vegan on $4 a Day by Ellen Jaffe Jones, which I don't have, and Vegan on the Cheap by Robin Robertson, which I do.

https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Vegan-4-00-Day-Conscious-ebook/dp/B006IS83W0/

https://www.amazon.com/Vegan-Cheap-Robin-Robertson-ebook/dp/B00BKROO22/

Vegan on the Cheap is a good money-saving cookbook, especially if you're fast in the kitchen. The thing about trying to budget is that you often have to trade time, creativity and effort for money. Some of the recipes in the cookbook are geared toward making your own staples rather than purchasing them at the store. Others use affordable ingredients like potatoes, cabbage, lentils and winter squash to create tasty main courses. Each meal lists its supposed cost although food has gone up in price since this cookbook was published, so I'm not sure how helpful that is.

While I don't own it, Miyoko Schinner's The Homemade Vegan Pantry is a cookbook of staples. I suspect it's also money-saving for that reason. Maybe those who have this cookbook can weigh in on whether it is?

https://www.amazon.com/Homemade-Vegan-Pantry-Making-Staples-ebook/dp/B00NRQXT70

These are a couple of college cookbooks that say they have affordable vegan recipes, though I have no personal experience with them. Maybe someone can weigh in on them? The are:

PETA's Vegan College Cookbook

https://www.amazon.com/PETAS-Vegan-College-Cookbook-Delicious-ebook/dp/B01CO4HH4Q

Student's Go Vegan Cookbook by Carole Raymond

https://www.amazon.com/Students-Go-Vegan-Cookbook-Recipes-ebook/dp/B003EVJKIU

There is a new money-saving vegan cookbook in the works that won't be out until June, Frugal Vegan by Katie Koteen.

https://www.amazon.com/Frugal-Vegan-Affordable-Delicious-Cooking-ebook/dp/B01MQ3O7DK/

Finally, I'd like to recommend a book on money-saving that is entertaining as well as educational, The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Promoting-Alternative/dp/0375752250

Dacyczyn and her husband's dream was to raise a family of six kids, but to do this, the Dacyczyns had to become radical money savers. They tried and tested many money-saving strategies, and eventually began to publish a newsletter. Their newsletter subscribers contributed suggestions of their own. This book is a compilation of all their newsletters. It is somewhat dated, since they were published in the 1990s, but many of the money saving tips in it can still be applied.

Did you know that soy flour sold in bulk makes a good egg substitute in baked goods? I didn't either, until I read this book. Did you know that you can calculate the energy costs you accrue when you turn on the oven for an hour? This book shows how it can be done. The book also has some strategies for how to grocery shop -- the authors take in account not only prices at the supermarkets in their area, but also the cost of gasoline when they make multiple trips.

They're not vegan, and many of their strategies were too radical for me, but I really enjoyed reading about their creativity and ingenuity.

These are all the resources I know of, off the top of my head, but I'm really looking forward to hearing what books and blogs others have tried!

Edit: I see you actually answer a lot of my questions on your front page. Didn't read it before. Um...maybe lots of text on the front page isn't a great idea either? Perhaps a website also needs a "landing strip" to slow down the minds of shoppers in the same way they use the concept in big box stores? see: Why We Buy by Paco Underhill for more on this concept

Another vote here for removing/reducing your use of flash. In a simple site layout like yours, its just not necessary. I feel like the site is very bandwidth "heavy" for delivering relatively little content. Maybe just the gallery could be flash, and the other, non-dynamic parts of the site could be more conventional code of some type?
Also, if your photos are really huge, there are a number of ways to make them take up less megabytes while still preserving image quality. Adobe Photoshop's "save for web" feature does this well, can't think of others at the moment, but i'm sure they're out there.

There may even be a lighter way to handle the gallery itself. Not sure. Might want to ask over at /r/webdesign
Sometimes even old-school frames will get the job done.
See: http://www.edmunddavidson.com/

Last thing, the photos need to be better. It doesn't help if the pics are huge if they are also blurry and poorly lit. Build a cheap light tent and use a tripod with a timer. Clarity is key.
http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent

As for your knives themselves, the stuff looks good for beginning pro work. Nice clean lines on the blades. Bit clunky in your handles though. Handguards could be a little less square on some of that stuff, and the handle scale to metal fits are a tough bastard to get perfect aren't they?

Beyond that a number of questions:

• Are you forging or just doing stock removal?
  
  
• Do you do your own heat-treat or outsource it?
  
  
• Are you making your own damascus or buying pre-forged bars?
  
  
• Do you offer any kind of guarantee or warranty on your knives?
  
  
• Do you provide sheaths for your knives? if so, can we see them?
  
  
• Do you currently hold, or hope to obtain an ABS journeyman or master smith rating? (not that you need it...plenty of fine knifemakers out there who prefer not to deal with them, but it does convey some bragging rights if you can pass their test.)
  
  
• How about an inspiring picture of you in your workshop? The custom knife community is built on personal relationships between the makers and customers. We need to know who you are. (also helps if you have a huge gnarly beard :)
  
  
• Can you make me a katana with a blade steel folded 1 trillion times and can cut through a tank barrel? (hint: the correct answer is no.)

I’ve been reading Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You by Sam Gosling and it is very interesting. I think people on this sub would like it since we all like snooping around and dissecting information haha. It’s almost like MTV’s Room Raiders but from a doctorate in psychology’s viewpoint. There’s subconscious meaning behind what types of pictures you hang on your walls and even which walls you hang said pictures on. He can go through someone’s room and paint a pretty accurate portrayal of their personality without ever meeting them. I would think it would be a good read if you’re dating around and want to get a better feel for someone haha. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s very interesting so far!!

I found out about Snoop because it was mentioned in another book I’ve been reading Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat by Hal Herzog. It’s a book on anthrozoology and talks about the history humans have had with animals, and some moral conundrums we have about them. Are we instinctually afraid of snakes or is it learned behavior? Do people really look like their dogs? (This one was interesting! Human couples that live together start to develop similar facial structures. That’s not true with dogs. We don’t start to look like our dogs but we may pick dogs that look like us. Women with shorter hair are more likely to adopt dogs with perky ears instead of floppy. And students were able to match humans with their dogs with a higher accuracy rate than they would by just random chance). Why do some cultures eat bugs but we think that’s gross, or why do some cultures eat animals that we keep as pets? They talk about the infamous trolly problem and replace it with animals and you can see your own morals start to shift and be questioned. With humans you’d think it’s better to pull the lever to save 5 lives instead of 1... but now replace that problem with 5 birds vs 1 dog and see if your answer is still the same. Very interesting.

Edit: oh oh! One more. And Then You're Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara. The author did an AMA on reddit which I found interesting so I bought the book and read it in a day. And the chapters are set up so you can just flip around and read what you’re interested in. My favorites include what happens if your window falls out of an airplane and you get sucked out, how many bees you’d have to get stung by at one time before you died (1,500 honeybees), and what happens if you’re in a free falling elevator (jumping won’t do anything. Lay down flat on the ground to disperse the impact... and because if you’re standing up once the elevator stops your intestines will continue to fall and impact themselves out your bottom. And then you die).

I would optimize your website for sales! Here's a few ideas off the top of my head.

1. When I came, I had to physically look for the sales button in the middle of the navbar - This should stand out, at the end of the bar different color or in an entirely different location like fixed somewhere.
   
2. Your setup isn't very good for SEO - Top p[age slider etc... It could be optimized a little more!
   
3. Homepage needs products. What should people buy, what is most popular, top seller, weekly promotion, something that shows you guys are selling.
   
4. I see you have a Twitter - Awesome. Now, get Facebook, Pinterest (this one for sure. If you brand your profile right, every girlfriend will be giving this to her BF next holiday) Instagram, Snapchat, etc. You could even run some ads on here, there's subs that would be receptive of the right promotion. You're selling a male lifestyle, so platforms like instagram and snapchat are going to be huge for building an image around your lifestyle. I use FB to earn shares and likes with content, inevitably the word of mouth of the internet. I use Twitter for hashtag exposure and getting discovered by completely new people, or connecting with people otherwise impossible. Snapchat, IG, great for building an image.
   
5. If you haven't already, break down your target market to a tee. Then separate marketing duties and find out the optimal way to use those tactics to reach the consumer, or perhaps the person who will be shopping for the consumer - ie. Mom, wife, girlfriend, friend
   
6. Partnerships. What goes with a good beard? Good coffee, good scotch, a classy barber, some cufflinks.... Find some partners. Network, become friends, rub each others backs.
   
7. Sponsor some people. Youtube channels, guys with bad ass beards - Who's the ones that care about their beards in quantities? Perhaps fashion oriented guys, maybe it's students, whisky lovers, business owners, whatever your focus is, reach them with industry influencers.
   
8. Remarkable content is king, still. What is your target interested in? Write a weekly piece that offers content they like. Style guides. Mens accessories. 5 beard styles that get you laid. 10 of the most successful people with badass beards.
   
9. Speak to your customer. You are not selling what you do, but why you do it. It's all about pushing the lifestyle. If you reach your target with a lifestyle that applies to them they will give your product a try. This TED talk changed my life - https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en. This book as well - https://www.amazon.ca/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/0195573560/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459360271&sr=8-1&keywords=how+brands+grow
   

First of all, what makes you think I am not from a developing nation?

Let's please get past this third world bullshit. You can do better.

Secondly, implicit in your question is the idea that customers want cheaper work, not better work.

This is simply not true.

If you make the conversation about price then people will almost always look for a cheaper option.

But sometimes people want to work with people who are more pleasant, and will happily pay more.

Maybe clarity of communication is what they are after, and they will pay more for someone who speaks english as their first language, someone who instantly understands what they are after.

A lot of the time clients want quality, and they know they will have to pay for it.

My point is that there are lots of ways to compete, and price is usually the lowest common denominator. So there are so many different kinds of better, and there's probably a market for most of them. As a freelancer your time is scarcest commodity in the equation, you only need a hand full of well-paying clients who want your version of better to sustain a business.

If you are used to competing on price then maybe its time to look at what you do best and start competing on that instead. Speak to your last 5 clients and ask them what they loved about working with you and what they thought you could improve on. That's always a good place to start work on how to differentiate yourself.

Sean D'Souza also has some excellent writing and thoughts about developing your uniqueness in his book The Brain Audit and on his blog. Definitely worth checking out if this is something you want to explore further.

My current company has me selling off this god awful fucking outdated book and "technique." So obviously I do what I think is best for the modern era.

I get the core content of what he's trying to convey, but my sales leadership is more outdated than this dude's outdated pop culture references.

I think the best sales books are The Challenger Sale, The Challenger Customer, and The New Solution Selling

AND!!! Personally, I think, especially as you progress into a more advanced sales career, THE takeaway of what it is to sell in a modern world is best encompassed in The Challenger Customer...it more or less boils down to the fact that customers are more informed than ever, old-school "slick" sales techniques do not work, and by the time the customer is meeting with you, they are like 75% into the buying process.

The days of being the smooth talking sales guy are over (thank god!).

> Even if you conflate terminal and instrumental values, you can act irrationally from an objective viewpoint.

I agree.

> To your second point: If I know that I should be studying, but I also know that at this moment, I would rather relax and watch a movie, which option is the rational one?

There's actually a book on this point I'd love to recommend to you. There's nothing that says first-order desires and second-order desires can't be in conflict. As to which one objectively is going to be better for you in the long-term I'd say we both know which one is obvious. We may have a highly unhealthy habit of smoking while at the same time, desiring the wish that we had the ability to stop, as it's bad for our health.

> Or

> If I sacrifice my social life, my hobbies, my girlfriend etc. so I can spend more time on my education, I will achieve better results long term. Is it rational for me to sacrifice all of those things?

Depends on all the factors we can think of that carry weight. We as human beings make complex decisions like that all the time. As a hypothetical of course, I can't give you a definitive answer, since reasoning about counterfactuals can be very much at odds with how we process a complex decision when actually confronted with one. The most I could say about the hypothetical is that the rational choice could go either way (depending on what information I had, but again, perfect symmetry of information is seldom available, in any choice).

> What is the rational balance of discounting value according to time?

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here. If you'd clarify I'd appreciate it.

So I've been trying to track down the source for this claim for almost an hour now, because I'm a sucker for econometrics and I would love to see a breakdown by asset class. Business Insider cites this report, which cites this presentation, which in turn cites this book. I can't track down an online copy, so if anyone can tell me where the author got the information from, do let me know. I couldn't find any source for the suggestion that the percentage of wealth held by women is expected to rise to a much higher percentage in the coming years -- Warner only claims that the total amount held by women will rise, but so will the total for men (meaning that the percentages could stay the same, or change in either direction).

With that said, I'd be cautious with an analysis that looks purely at wealth without any accompanying explanation. About half of all wealth is home equity, which is jointly owned and as such most likely counted under both genders. Moreover, women live on average four years longer, meaning that four additional years of compound interest on pensions and home equity. On the other hand, women earn less than men on average and as such end up with fewer assets to earn interest on. However, there is a fairly well-documented effect by which male pensioners deplete their savings much faster than female pensioners. As such, it is not at all clear where we should expect the distribution of asset ownership to end up resting, and we don't really know what a 51% split even tells us.

Hi.
Well. Its difficult to say you are not giving any details :)

Who are you sending your emails to? How did you get those emails? What are you writing on those emails? Are you making an offer right there? Also. What type of web projects do you do? Pricey ones (long term projects)? Cheap ones (quick-turn around ones)? Do you have a well defined idea of what your customer would be?

Selling is hard, you need to perfectly understand your customers, why they buy and also why they don't buy. I recommend you this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Audit-Customers-They-Dont-ebook/dp/B00COQFUNU

Also look for your competition. Try to identify the ones that you really would like to become and try to figure out what they do, how do they reach their customers, how is their sales process.

In software, specially long-term engagement projects, sales are a process. You need to obtain leads, then nurture your leads, gain their trust, and eventually you'll get a sale from them.

Hope this helps!

Cheers

Please read My Coffeehouse Nightmare before you consider this.

One of my family members works in the restaurant & hospitality industry, and apparently there's a running joke about how to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune and open a restaurant.

Your idea is fantastic, but you need to have more stuff to sell, that will bring in foot traffic (preferably in a section where people aren't hanging out just reading and having their one-coffee-per-hour). Book stores, including successful used book shops, put a lot of work into their layouts and what books go where (you want the fast sellers and the stuff that draws in the casual browsers up front.) To this end, you might want to read through Why We Buy (which is a cool and eye-opening read regardless.)

BTW, I'm not saying "this is how you become successful and make lots of money", but rather, how you stay financially afloat in the face of rent, insurance, salaries, infrastructure overhead, etc.

Rawrtherapy - Good question.

A few things. You currently have a cold list so you need to see the level of engagement and what their issues are. Hiring epicshoelace sounds like a good start ;).

Start simple. Say, "Hi. We haven't chatted in a while. I wanted to get back in touch. What's the number 1 thing your struggling with in (whatever industry your business is in)."

See how many people respond. 10% would be an excellent number if you got that much.

Then collect the responses and see if there are buckets of issues. Now you have information for your next product or service you can offer them.

Ryan Levesque has a book specifically on this topic. I haven't used it myself but it's worth checking out.

As a way of background I have newsletter where I share proven case studies of successful entrepreneurs. A lot of them are people who have built online lists. If you’re interested let me know and I can PM you the link to the newsletter or if you have any questions.

I was in a hurry when I wrote this. There is book called The Brain Audit that explains better how to position yourself from the psychology of what a person does when they want to buy something.

I really do sincerely want you to succeed. Seeing anyone going out there like this is ballsy. Feel free to hit me up with any questions you have. I'll try to answer them. Also, I'm not a marketing guy, I'm just fascinated by this stuff.

I'll throw out The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (related Wikipedia article), which discusses splinterization of the Internet driven by innocent personalization algorithms. Regardless of what position you take on that particular problem, I think it's representative of the sort of non-technical social issue that will increasingly come up in the software field.

A more technical book I've always liked is The Zen of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash. Michael Abrash is one of the old brilliant iD guys, bouncing around all over the place and now at (ugh) Facebook working on the Oculus Rift. The technical parts of the book were hilariously outdated when it came out, focusing on 8086 assembler when the 80486 was already widely available. It's still an excellent read for approaching optimizing low level performance, as well as being a great work by a very good technical writer. You should be able to readily find PDF copies on the internet.

FILTER BUBBLE people...

Unless that browser was logged out of Google AND all the cache and ALL the history was cleared this is not necessarily happening to everyone. I just did the search and got all candidates and I am a Trump supporter.


Filter bubble is simple to understand. If a huge baseball fan googles "red socks" what he will get is results for the baseball team.

If Santa Clause googled "Red Socks" he is going to get results for red socks for his feet.


Google does this intentionally in order to be able to sell better targeted advertizing.

This is a problem because diversity is very important for progress. Without being exposed to new or information that you may not like you are given less chance to expand your knowledge.

Great book on this topic is

The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think

Dude, I'm super fucking frugal. Lemme help ya out.

First: you get bills reduced by threatening to cancel, call and say you want to cancel. They will offer you some kind of deal. Prior to doing that shop their competitions so you know when you're getting shafted.

Coupons and sales: Weekly you get the fliers for the grocery stores and what's on sale. The front page has their loss leaders, these are items that they are either just breaking even or losing money on, just to get you in the door to spend more money. Coupons can be found online and in sunday papers, coupons combines with the weekly sales fliers = mucho savings.

Cloth diapering is cheaper in the long run, if you choose not to go that route then combining coupons with sales is the best way to do it.

In my area milk is cheapest at costco, but it's two gallons at a time. If you don't think you can drink a whole two gallons in about two weeks then open one, pour some a glass of milk, drink it, put the top back on the jug and stick it in the freezer, taking a glass full out from it will allow for expansion and the milk will last two weeks from when you defrost it.

Buy this book it is worth every penny and then some.

ETA: Get clothes at consignment sales (mothers of multiples sales etc), stuff there too, or craigslist, thrift stores etc.

Try really hard to breastfeed, if you can do it you'll save tons on the formula, alternatively you can get donor breast milk from hm4hb etc. Once babies are old enough for solids making your own is cheapest, especially if it's just the stuff you guys are eating, for example yesterday we had rice, chicken and peas for dinner, I pureed the leftover peas and gave them to Ben today. Personally I've found my immersion blender to be the best thing ever for making baby food.

Nice find! I wonder if this is based on the Susan Linn book, Consuming Kids, the Hostile Takeover of Childhood (which is an excellent read that clearly outlines the history, the problems and possible solutions). No time to watch the documentary right now, but I'll save it for later. If it's as excellent as the Susan Linn book then I hope people will take the time to watch it (or why not buy the book while you're at it? :D )

I have a couple of reading suggestions for you.

http://www.amazon.com/Voluntary-Simplicity-Outwardly-Inwardly-Revised/dp/0688121195



http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Amy-Dacyczyn/dp/0375752250/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344868366&sr=1-1&keywords=amy+dacyczyn

This second one won't seem to be relevant to your interests, but trust me, it is. You can read it for pleasure, and the philosophies and stories in it, I think, would benefit you greatly.

While I agree with you that SF is certainly "known", there's a reason brands (and, you could definitely treat/consider a city as a brand) continue to advertise. Colgate's been known for a LONG time, but if you talk to their CMO I doubt he/she would ever be content that people are "familiar enough" with Colgate for the time being, so they'll drop their ad spend for the next decade or so until they need to re-up brand awareness.

Good book that explores the subject (with a scientific slant) -
http://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/0195573560

To be clear, I don't know why a city that already has more demand than supply for all that is "SF" and yet clearly doesn't want to let itself get on with the times and grow needs to advertise, I DO feel that were it trying to capitalize on its growing popularity, hosting the Superbowl would re-inforce and further that agenda.

Came across this http://www.experimental-psychology.de/ccc/docs/pubs/Carbon2010b.pdf academic article that touches on this.

"The potential of changing appearances has been intensively and explicitly used by the consumer product industry. As design aspects of consumer products are constantly increasing in importance (Carbon & Leder, 2005a; Carbon, Michael, & Leder, 2008), changing the products’ form is one instrument to stimulate market success due to novelty and innovativeness aspects (Hirschman,1980; Kreuzbauer & Malter, 2005). According to the Most Advanced Yet Acceptable (MAYA) design principle, such a change should not be abrupt, as beholders prefer designs that are advanced (novel, innovative), but also familiar enough to still be manageable (Hekkert, Snelders, & van Wieringen, 2003)."

Also, there is a really good book that touches on MAYA design and aesthetics Cute, Quaint, Hungry And Romantic: The Aesthetics Of Consumerism

[r/tSoD mod here] This is wonderful! And thank you for sourcing the majority of them. This has an amazing amount of potential. Please do keep updating this list if you come across any more potential cues.

Ps. For object based cues, we were thinking of drawing from something like this book. Any feedback on this?

This is an interesting question. I can't answer from the point of view of a streamer, but it struck me because it kind of sounds like the challenges that Seth Godin talks about all the time. I just read "This is Marketing," recently, and he had some great tips in there (a short read). Chief among his recommendations were to find your core, target audience and speak to those people. Even if it's only a smaller group (say a couple of thousand as opposed to millions), if they are your real target audience, and you're putting out consistent content (or services or products in the business case), then it will be much more successful in the long run (again, this is according to a marketing guru, not me!). https://www.amazon.com/This-Marketing-Cant-Until-Learn/dp/0525540830

It's not focused on just one single company, but "Hacking Growth" includes a number of stories about how early-stage companies figured out user acquisition...

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

https://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Growth-Fastest-Growing-Companies-Breakout/dp/045149721X

Did you just downvote yourself? Haha, but mine is this. I love this man, here is his latest book which I highly recommend.

Sounds like a train wreck in the making.

As part of the deal, get some training in day to day operations. Most of these guys are so used to how the business runs they aren't even conscious of dozens of little details. Find out through observations as much as what they tell you. Employees can help -- if the business isn't churn 'n' burn.

If you're keeping the employees, find out their strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, etc. Too many of these have no concern about employee interaction with customers, and these employees are the face you show the public. Don't get a new logo. Because these people represent your branding in ways no graphic designer can even comprehend.

Develop a "dashboard" for financials. Know what your margins are, because small time retail is harsh. If you and your accountant are on speaking terms, coming up with a few key indicators to look at that tells you at-a-glance how the business is doing.

You have "the book." That's the current owner. Don't close it just yet, that's your best book -- if you know how to read it.

Next, see where the losses are. Shrinkage. See what you can do to reduce it because that's money hemorrhage.

For example, if you have clothes on hangers ...right by the front door, alternate how the hanger hooks face. Something simple like this can keep a shoplifter from grabbing a whole rack and making a dash.

Once again, every business should have a few dozen of these tricks-of-the-trade. Be sure to go after them with the owner. And developing some of your own should be on your list of things to do.

My suggestion on reading would start out with Why We Buy by Paco Underhill. Consumer behavior 101. If nothing else it tells you how to read your customers like a book through observation. Not what they say, what they do.

Visual merchandising has many margin growing ideas. Learn them.

Marketing is vital for your business. First is knowing the difference between consumers and customers. Best thing you can do is have a database of best customers you mail to.

Don't have one? Owner doesn't keep track? Get one. Get every best customer into it. Learn how to market. Not how to slash prices -- how to market your business. Slashing prices, the "sale" is the price you pay for not learning to market.

Despite what everyone and their brother tells you, if your marketing hinges on running discount sales, consider your marketing a failure in need of immediate attention. Know marketing. Know copywriting. Know customers.

Finally, do update the business. Integrate online sales with retail purchases. Do innovate with an integrated online/offline mobile presence if at all possible. Evaluate and consider making over the physical retail space, if needed.

Don't get caught up on bells and whistles and surface decoration that does, literally, nothing for the business. Test everything and become a fanatic about testing. If you want a mentor, take a look at how this guy does it. All the crap designers sell today? That's to make up for the owner's lack of interest and enthusiasm.

Learn that design -- real design -- can be a strategic asset and not vapid junk. Design your business, do not decorate it. Worst thing you can do in retail is misunderstand design. Move up the design maturity continuum.

Accounting will tell you there's a problem. Design can tell you what the solution is ...if you're not splashing about in the shallow end. Accounting gives you the numbers. Design drives the numbers.

When Gateway was closing all its stores, along came Apple to eat everyone's lunch. Why? Everyone else was looking at the numbers, running their business by the numbers. Apple focuses on driving the numbers.

This is so not about S corp versus LLC. You do not want to have to fall back on limited liability shielding -- the last resort when all else fails. Figure this out and get it out of the way -- quickly. Avoid failure. Grow the business.

That is a repost or Churnalism derived from Daily Mail (A UK based news paper with a readership bases of >50% female and was started with women in mind, often equated with the same practices as fox news.) which is a repost or Churnalism from 72Point (News, PR and Survey Specialists, in other words marketing firm), they did a survey on behalf on NPower (a central heating company) for a cash back incentive. The "study" was of 2000 customers, no details are given about how many customers were male/female, no ages or any other demographic information can be found, and as far as I can tell the "study" has not been made public.Your link at least does not claim that Emily Stag is a researcher, in fact when quoting her, it does not point her name out at all. Daily Mail claims she is a researcher, the original very short Press Release that was given by 72Point simply lists her as "Emily Stagg, from npower hometeam 50".
She is however according to her Linkedin the Campaign Planning Manager(which means marketing) for NPower.

I have no idea as the validity of all the sources listed above by ENTP, but the
>80% of wealth is spent by women

Is a rounded down number from the figure 88% coming from the following book.

Pocketbook Power: How to Reach the Hearts and Minds of Today's Most Coveted Consumer - Women

Written by the late Bernice Kanner Her Amazon books

TLDR: Your link Is nothing but a marketing ploy by Emily Stagg to get her company some national news time, I've never read or heard of Bernice Kanner, thats the source of the 80% number, but the book is their to check for source info.

Okay! The author was a lady who back in the 70's (I think) had a newsletter she sent out that was finally consolidated into book form. She was raising a bunch of kids and trying to save $ so she & her family could have the house & lifestyle they wanted on just her husband's salary. Here's the Amazon on it:

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Promoting-Alternative/dp/0375752250

You may be able to find it at a library. She was pretty popular back in the day.

You need two things. The actual business knowledge, so read some technical books on the different facets of business. law, accounting, management, sales, automation, etc. Then how to think like an entrepreneur. A lot of the other book suggestions here could be boiled down to a one page summary and the rest is a lot of hot air. If you want to think like an entrepreneur, I'd suggest "Crush it" or "Thank you economy". Still lots of hot air, but he talks about the mindset, which is the definite key to being a successful entrepreneur.

I read the Tightwad Gazette books years ago. I think that's what got me started on the FIRE path. She also had a military husband and they ended up with 6 kids sort of accidentally, but they still retired early. It might be a little dated but she inspired me a lot even though I never had a lot of kids. I think her overall mindset is what impressed me the most. I think she still gets interviewed pretty regularly.

The Thank You Economy is a pretty good book detailing the "why" behind social media being a necessary component for business.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Thank-Economy-Gary-Vaynerchuk/dp/0061914185

For a really interesting discussion of this, check out Why We Buy. It provides a fascinating look into some of the surprising things that shape consumer behaviour.

Have you read Why We Buy? You will love it, if this is how you feel about shopping. Paco Underhill invented the science of studying people as they buy, why they respond to things like this. Funny funny book. It was assigned reading for my master's Consumer Behavior class.

I recently enjoyed reading No One Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart, which does an excellent job of summarizing the problems with an overreaching libertarian view.

Most of it can be boiled down to tragedies of the commons, but that particular book is good about providing real-world examples and offering actual solutions, rather than just a lot of abstract hand-waving.

> You do realize personal income includes stocks right?

Most working-class men don't have any stocks; I don't see how this is relevant.

>And capital gains are taxed differently than payroll is.

Most working-class men don't have any capital gains; I don't see how this is relevant. I said "social taxation" meaning "payroll taxation" (since in many non-US nations, these terms are interchangeable). Do you understand what "an average male employee" means?

> More so women in the US own the majority of the wealth in the US.

Seems to be not supported by either 2014 annual BMO report, nor by 2015 one. It comes from a BMO presentation titled "Financial concerns of women", which references a PDF presentation by a counceling company that hosts its site on Wordpress platform, which references a publicistic, non-scientific book that is believed to be an originator of "women control 80% of spending" myth that is being widely criticized.

It has nothing to do with women being the primary taxable income recipients.

I completely agree with Creativity, Inc. and the design of every day things

A few that I would recommend on top of the list from OP


Why we Buy:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Science-Shopping/dp/0739341928?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0


Predictably Irrational
http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expanded-Decisions/dp/0061353248/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464902735&sr=1-2&keywords=irrationality


Decoding the New consumer mind:
http://www.amazon.com/Decoding-New-Consumer-Mind-Shop/dp/1118647688

I don't understand the argument. You're keen that I'm being delivered personalised results, but insist that I am the only person in the world who aren't given identical results to you. And that's somehow related to the religion of the original creators of the content people are linking to.

“Differently from the rest of the world” is what keeps me from walking away. I shall retire from the conversation with these links. To people who live in the same world as I do. Where people get different results, based on where they are, what tracking software they allow, what language they've set their browser to, what OS they're using and what the search engine / ISP want them to see.

• TED talk
  
• Mandatory wiki-link
  
• Book: DE, ES, FR, IN, IT, UK, USA
  
• MIT

My favorites are:

https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Online-Customer-Service-Guide/dp/0470637706

https://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Economy-Gary-Vaynerchuk/dp/0061914185

and Jeff Toister's books https://www.toistersolutions.com/books

I'd be happy to send you a copy of The Ultimate Customer Service Guide and one of Jeff's books.

There's a fascinating book that you might find interesting! It's called Why We Buy and it looks exactly at the question of the role of shopping in peoples' lives. https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Science-Shopping/dp/0739341928

I also liked his book [The Thank You Economy] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Thank-Economy-Gary-Vaynerchuk/dp/0061914185), not sure if it overlaps this one, if anyone's read both please chime in.

Why We Buy ,a retail bible.
The Knack ,real life advice.
Good luck!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684849143

this one does a pretty good job.

http://www.amazon.com/Cute-Quaint-Hungry-Romantic-Consumerism/dp/0306810476/ref=sr_1_1/105-7908670-8662020?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181421999&sr=8-1

It was great. I'd read half of it, before my friend stole it from me because he couldn't wait. I never got it back, unfortunately.

Yeah man, I'm looking for the ebook of 'Hacking Growth' by Sean Ellis. Can you hook me up? Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/045149721X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Oh no, I took that as anecdotal. And I will say off the top of my head, Why We Buy by Paco Underhill is a really interesting read about retail marketing/psychology. It's probably a little borderline for a lot of people reading this thread since some of it is about following shoppers around in a very spyish manner for behavioral research, but it is really interesting nonetheless for anyone regardless of profession. I'd suggest it.

For anyone interested in a book about this, check out Why we buy. Gives a good insight into the science of shopping.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Science-Shopping/dp/0684849143

Sweet, one sane person in this whole thread. Thanks for bringing some actual science to this discussion.

If all these designers think that color doesn't have a direct impact on the psychological impact of buying decisions they should probably switch careers.

Listen guys, its been proven, and yes scientifically that color does affect people. And in tremendous ways. As a successful graphic artist it worries me that all these people in here don't think about this or apply it to their advertising.

I highly suggest all you disbelievers pick up this book while not related to just color, it will be an eye opener on WHY people buy the way they do. If you are in advertising (and the majority of you are) you should probably do some reading before posting about how colors don't impact someone.

Sure people are going to be exposed to colors and feel them in different ways, but the majority of us look at red and feel warmth, anger or anxiety depending on the context of the color portrayed. This is the reason why Hospitals have whites, greens and blues. They are calming, healing colors.

I can't believe I just had to type this up in a sub about graphic design. Our trade really is diminishing.

For others interested in this topic: I highly recommend a book called The Filter Bubble that explores how algorithms impact our social and political lives.

I like your idea of the 1 pager to grab email addresses. Is there a piece of information you could turn into a white paper to sweeten the audience building effort?

It's going to be hard to test tiered pricing with a 'coming soon' - but once you have an email list put together you will be in a good position to get feedback from people who could actually buy your product. Maybe check out Ask by Levesque.

As for speed - one way to test your offer would be buy some targeted traffic from Facebook and see how many leads it results in.

I need a citation to back this up? I think you're just avoiding a discussion and the post definitely wasn't addressed to you otherwise. The point is, people regularly do this and you're more than likely kidding yourself if you think you don't avoid a discussion with someone and prefer to be around like-minded individuals, it's simply human nature.

Here, if you're really interested in the subject, buy and read this:

https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235

I'm from California and I see what you're saying, with people equating Trump to Hitler and things like that, which I personally think is insulting for people who were actually affected by the Holocaust and things like that. I've literally heard some people say that Trump was going to put gays and immigrants into internment camps once he was elected, which is possibly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

I think Facebook is purposely designed to be an echo-chamber, so that it guarantees people stay on there longer. The more you see people that agree with your views, the more likely you are to use their platform, the more you use their platform the more Facebook learns about your likes and dislikes and the better they can show you things that you like and remove things you dislike, and the cycle continues
Here are some interesting sources that talk about how social media acts as an echo chamber of sorts:?

https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/24/486941582/the-reason-your-feed-became-an-echo-chamber-and-what-to-do-about-it

?

The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn, is highly recommended. Thrift is a state of mind, and very helpful to those who take the time to learn.


http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Amy-Dacyczyn/dp/0375752250

You know how people bitch and moan about people posting "stupid" statuses and updates they don't care about? Well, the solution is to bring you information that is relevant specifically to you. The trend is to "personalize" the Internet for you instead of presenting you with an otherwise overwhelming amount of information.

You see it everywhere: in social media, news, and search results. There is a shift towards cultivating the mass amount of information available to you, for you. If you have 800 friends on Facebook, it's significantly more difficult for you to chronologically view everything that's happened. Using algorithms based on your likes, shares, page views, and general preferences, Facebook "curates" the information coming at you and presents to you the most relevant information. There is an insane amount of information available to you. If you were shown every status, every comment, every picture, everything that your friends posted in chronological order, it could be overwhelming or disinteresting to you.

The same thing happens when you use Google as well. The search engine "learns" from your searching patterns & preferences, then extrapolates "who you are," and returns appropriate search results. For example, if a sports fan searches for "panthers," they're likely looking for information on the football team. However, a nature-lover would likely be looking for the animal.

TL;DR there is a lot of information available to you, so the goal is to present you with relevant news to your interests

For more information, see:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing/dp/0143121235

Not specifically for advice on media start ups, but Gary Vaynerchuk's books deal with social media marketing, and I think are critical for any up-and-coming business, but especially if you're in the digital media industry and want to engage with folks directly in this way.

[The Thank You Economy] (https://www.amazon.com/Thank-You-Economy-Gary-Vaynerchuk/dp/0061914185/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1510421556&sr=8-1&keywords=the+thank+you+economy&dpID=41L836nMSGL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)

[Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook] (https://www.amazon.com/Jab-Right-Hook-Story-Social/dp/006227306X)

I don't have any experience in this but heard that "Ask" is a good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Counterintuitive-Discover-Customers-Business/dp/1939447720/

A few marketing books:

extremely practical how to do stuff book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategic-Database-Marketing-Masterplan-Customer-Based/dp/0071773487/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411566902&sr=1-11

inspirational:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Purple-Cow-Transform-Business-Remarkable/dp/014101640X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411566950&sr=1-1&keywords=purple+cow

truthiness:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/0195573560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411566974&sr=1-1&keywords=how+brands+grow

There's a fantastic book on this topic named Why We Buy.

Oh! Found it via an old bookmark. The Filter Bubble.

https://www.amazon.com/Filter-Bubble-Personalized-Changing-Think/dp/0143121235

Thanks!

Influence by Cialdini is a must read for just about anyone, in any occupation.

As a business owner, Predictably Irrational is a must read. As is Why We Buy. The Way of the Weasel is also a good one.

If anyone is interested there is a book that explains this in detail, Its called drunk tank pink and its a very interesting read.

http://www.amazon.com/Drunk-Tank-Pink-Unexpected-Forces/dp/1594204543

I wrote a term paper on a similar topic (The filter bubble and collaborative filtering). Got a lot of information from this book, which is a really good read even without writing a paper.

Your money or your life. Old, but I think it has worthwhile messages. And you could get it second-hand.

Ditto for "the completentightwad's gazette".

The Filter Bubble - good read on this...

There's actually a good book about this phenomenon called [Why We Buy]
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1416595244).

Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood is a great book and talks about this very thing.

I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/One-Makes-You-Shop-Wal-Mart/dp/189707106X

Pocketbook Power: How to Reach the Hearts and Minds of Today's Most Coveted Consumer - Women

by Bernice Kanner

McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (April 9, 2004)

From the back cover:

>Women control 88 percent of all purchases.

>Women handle 75 percent of family finances.

>43 percent of those with assets over $500,000 are women.

>One out of every 11 women in America owns a business.

>Women influence two out of every three of the 3 trillion dollars spent in the U.S. each year!

TIL that author Bernice Kanner is a "scumbag MRA who makes generalizations about women".

Someone wrote to The Tightwad Gazette about how they would sew designer tags onto generic clothes that they sent their children top school in.

I've heard women are cleaner than males on average*. http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.322. I've heard it here specifically.

What about this? https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Promoting-Alternative/dp/0375752250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485351961&sr=8-1&keywords=tightwad+gazette

You should read the book Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Science-Shopping/dp/0684849143

it explains a lot of the psychology and "tricks" used in detail with a lot of case studies

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond by Paco Underhill
http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Shopping-Updated-Internet/dp/1416595244

The Tightwad Gazette is available as a single volume. http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Tightwad-Gazette-Dacyczyn/dp/0375752250

Consumer choice theory don't real - neoliberals

https://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-Marketers/dp/0195573560/

Here's a book about it. The author owns a business that studies how people shop and then implements plans to get them to buy more. Why We Buy https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Buy-Shopping-Updated-Internet/dp/1416595244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485965941&sr=8-1&keywords=why+we+buy

this was interesting.. it reminded me of a book that I read called Snoop...What your stuff says about you. http://www.amazon.ca/Snoop-What-Your-Stuff-About/dp/0465013821

Cool. No worries. Learn about Seth Godin's new Book "This is Marketing.."

https://www.amazon.com/This-Marketing-Cant-Until-Learn/dp/0525540830/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541191580&sr=1-1&keywords=Seth+godin

You can also learn about the analytics tools that are used by the company. Hubspot must have lot of stuff about the tools as well.

You will be able to crack this interview.

Paco Underhill, mad scientist of retail science recommends as few mirrors as possible, because mirrors disctract shoppers, and can break a shopper's concentration. That is why they are often hidden in dressing room areas and not out on the floor. I can't speak to the stores that you were in, but you are correct, in general mirrors are actually disappearing from many retail stores.

Allright, I'm calling BULLSHIT.

First, they CAN get their credit cleaned up enough to get a freaking 50% mortgage on a paid off house. I just ran some figures and even with higher interest rates, a 10 year mortgage at 7% interest is going to run them $570.00 a month. If they work on their finances they can probably get closer to 5% which is $476.00 a month (if they live in the county a USDA mortgage might be as little as 3%, which is $434.00/month).

If they can get the USDA mortgage, which puts them at just over their 'budget', they can find the rest of the money by getting rid of their storage unit, selling the shit inside and NOT paying that bill anymore. Seriously, if it's been in a storage unit for 13 years, they don't freaking need it.

That is pretty cheap for a living expense, AND it's only a 10 year note, so they'll own it free and clear in the not-to-distant-future.

I'd suggest, if they are up for it, a 'gift' of The Complete Tightwad Gazette and anything by Dave Ramsay or Clark Howard.

They are making a financial problem. They can freaking fix this. And if they have NO credit, that's different from BAD credit, and frankly with NO Credit and owning a house free and clear, there's PLENTY of mortgages you can get, so that is BULLSHIT.

Pointing a gun at your foot and then pulling the trigger is not an adequate reason to fuck up your kids lives.

The actual 'study' is a BMO fluffpiece that starts by talking about the history of superheroes. It links to this as its source, which in turn finally links us to the source of the statistic that the first two were misusing, which comes from this book. The book does not cite its sources, and just looking at the data I can see in the 'look inside' section, it seems like the author is cherry picking stats to try and make women feel empowered. This is fine, just not very scientific.

But, what we can do is look at her claims.

In the foreword of the book (presumably written by someone else, though I can't find who), the author makes a claim that women in the US control half of all private wealth at $14 trillion. A cursory google check shows that in 2005, when the book was written, private wealth in the US was about $60 trillion. Now I'm not a mathematician by any means, but I do believe that is closer to a quarter, not half.

In the first chapter, the author claims the number is $13 trillion, jumping to $20 trillion in the next 15 years. Given that we passed $93 trillion in 2016, $20 trillion by 2020 is sure as hell not going to be 'half'.

The short version of what I'm saying, I guess, is that you need to stop believing everything you read on the internet without actually checking your sources. Especially when the claim is fairly ridiculous on its face.

Eli Pariser has been preaching about this problem for quite some time now. Here is his book, "The Filter Bubble" further condensed into his Ted Talk. From the description, "As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy."