Are you going or about to start college? You need to study what will make you the most money. Below are average 2008 starting salaries.

Visual & Performing Arts $35,073
English $35,453
Liberal Arts $36,715
Business Administration/Management $46,171
Economics $51,062
Computer & Information Sciences $58,677
Chemical Engineering $63,773

Reverse psychology in marketing

Did that title of this blog post get you to click on it? My article still may suck, but it illustrates the advantages of using reverse psycology in your marketing campaigns. The internet is full of marketers trying to sell you products. What your Internet marketing campaigns really needs is something that shocks the person you’re trying to reach. You need to surprise the visitor and one of the ways to do this is use reverse psychology. The more you say you don’t want the visitor to do something the more curious they become and want to do what your saying.

How to apply reverse psychology to your marketing campaign?

Lets say you are an SEO firm. On your home page you could have something like, “If you don’t want to get ranked in the top 10 Google search results than don’t buy this product.” Or “If you want your web site to continue sucking than don’t get us to help you.” Or “If you want your competition to continue to kick your ass in search result rankings don’t hire us.” It’s fun to think of these and the possibilites are endless!

T-Mobile Text Charges

Company fees are one of my biggest pet peeves. Fees are a company’s back door way to increase earnings by screwing their customers. Companies surprise the customer with charges that unless you read the fine print didn’t know existed or how much those charges would be. Take for example my T-Mobile cell phone bill this month. I called customer service regarding my $45 charge in text messaging. Even the customer service women at T-Mobile didn’t know what T-Mobile charged per text, she thought it was $0.15. I said T-Mobile charged me $0.20, and then she remembered that T-Mobile did recently increase the overage charge for text messaging to $0.20. My question is I own a Blackberry and pay for the “data package” and have 500 text messages included in my plan why the f*** does T-Mobile charge extra to text? Shouldn’t I have unlimited text? Why is text considered a separate entity from data?

Another pet peeve of mine… ATM Charges

The bank should be paying me for putting money into their depository. Banks shouldn’t be trying to take it away. Banks across the country are raising ATM fees because they so horribly mismanaged your money by loaning it out to people that couldn’t pay it back that they need to raise even more money. Banks want to screw you even more so they can stay afloat. Citibank, Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are all starting to charge non-customers as much as $3 per transaction to use their ATM machines. On top of the fee the other bank charges me my bank adds an additional $2.00 charge. I sometimes pay as much as $5.00 to take money out of my bank account.

I think people need to get more upset about fees all they are is a sneaky way to raise revenue for companies with broken business models and shrinking revenues.

Do yourself a favor if you want Elmo Live buy it now before Christmas nears. Elmo Live WILL be the hottest toy of Christmas 2008 and if you don’t like waiting in lines buy it now. Kohls.com just sent me an e-mail stating that Elmo Live is in stock. Limit 3 Elmo Dolls per customer and receive free shipping on each order.

“Why Believe in God? Just be good for goodness’ sake” is a new ad campaign will appear in Washington D.C. buses starting next week and run through December. The The American Humanist Association is responsible for this ad campaign. One of the goals of the humanist association according to their web site is to “develop and advance humanist thought and action.” According to Wikipedia humanism is defined as “a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appealing to universal human qualities, particularly rationality. It is generally compatible with atheism and agnosticism but doesn’t require either of these.”

As a marketer when I saw a picture of this ad on a Washington D.C. bus I was turned off by it. The goal of a marketer is to make a compelling case why someone should agree or disagree with your message. It’s not to manipulate and/or belittle what they believe in. That’s why I’m so disgusted by preachers asking for money on TV (manipulative), or the charities that show the faces of poverty while depressing music plays in the background (manipulative). We shouldn’t be belittled or shamed into making important decisions. People should always have the freedom to believe what they want. Freedom of speech is also about freedom of thought.

Track flu trends throughout the United States link to the Google Flu Tracker. The following information was taken from the Google web site, “We’ve found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional systems.”

This is one of my favorite pictures I took of Yellowstone Lake over the summer.

More signs of a struggling economy appeared today with Circuit City filing for bankruptcy protection. In doing so the company hopes to stay alive during the holiday season. The company was concerned that if it did not file for bankruptcy protection vendors would without products for black Friday and the holiday season. “Circuit City announced a week ago it planned to close 155 of its more than 700 U.S. stores by Dec. 31. It is laying off about 17 percent of its domestic work force, which could affect up to 7,300 people (http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5irmWZmMlki7isG4T9NmoHzSlAMJwD94CADT80).”

After one of the worst stock market collapses since the Great Depression will Christmas 2008 retail sales collapse as well? This is the question that as been on my mind during the past week. With economic uneasiness combined with the presidential elections the last thing on my mind is what I want for Christmas or what presents I’m going to give away.

It’s not just me feeling this. According to a recent Forbes.com article consumers aren’t just cutting back on spending they’re staying out of stores altogether. “According to the ICSC-Goldman Sachs index, retailers had their weakest October performance since the index’s inception in 1969. Sales fell 1.0% compared with a 1.0% gain in September. Of the 16 retailers reporting results on Thursday, Thomson Reuters said 60.0% missed expectations and only 33.0% beat (http://www.forbes.com/equities/2008/11/06/retail-october-closer-markets-equity-cx_mp_1106markets41.html).” I recently spoke to my immediate family regarding gift giving this holiday season and we all agreed that we wished to cut back. After seeing house values decline across the country, portfolio values dropping by almost 50%, witnessing a historic presidential election, gift giving seems trivial. For the past several years giving presents seems more like a dollar for dollar exchange of goods rather than real gift giving defined by giving something and not expecting anything in return. The most meaningful thing in my family has always been getting together, enjoying each others company over breakfast, and after breakfast visiting the relatives for the extended family Christmas party.

This year I can’t name one thing I want or need. I believe Americans will start saving once again, living within their means. Retailers could be in a lot of trouble this Christmas.

I went to the Seattle Auto Show yesterday. Here’s a picture of me in one of my dream cars, the Audi A8. I think Audi in terms of fit and finish is hands down the leader. No one matches Audi’s level of quality. That’s why my next car will surely be an Audi, hopefully the Audi A8. Sorry for the picture quality, it’s a cell phone camera.

Here’s a professionally taken photo of the Audi A8

Picture of me in the Audi A8

More from the Seattle Auto Show

2009 Audi R8

Lamborghini, impractical, but still love this car

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