Issue# 2683

• WEALTHY: The “what I need” economy (Jon Herring)
• HEALTHY: The power of three cups a day (Kelley Herring)
• WISE: Harry S. Truman on learning

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• Are you sharpening the wrong skills? (Bob Bly)
• What’s working on your landing page? (Howie Jacobson)
• It’s Fun to Know… about twittering food trucks
• Add “malfeasance” to your vocabulary

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Retailers Reflect a Changing Economy

By Jon Herring

What is good for individuals and for the economy in general is not necessarily good for retailers. For example, it is a good thing when people stop using their home equity as an ATM machine. And it’s a good thing when they increase savings and pay down debt. But these improvements in consumer balance sheets can be a drain on the balance sheets of retailers.

Like it or not, consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. And that makes retail earnings an important barometer for the economy. So what are retail earnings telling us… and how can you profit?

The biggest lesson we can take from retail earnings is that our economy is not only slowing (that is obvious), it is also changing. We are moving from an economy based on “what I want” to an economy based on “what I need.”

That is why retailers that sell necessities (like Wal-Mart) will continue to show strength, whereas retailers that focus on luxuries and rely on discretionary spending (think Coach, Tiffany, and Saks) will show weakness.

Two companies that exemplify the shift in consumer buying trends are deep-discount retailers Family Dollar (FDO) and Dollar Tree (DLTR). Market research firm Nielsen recently reported that high-income shoppers (from households making more than $100,000 a year) increased their spending at dollar stores by 18 percent in the second half of 2008 as compared to 2007. Not surprisingly, both of these companies are near their all-time highs, while the rest of the market founders.

And speaking of relative strength, one of my favorite retailers in this market is AutoZone (AZO). When the economy tumbles and money is tight, people are more inclined to fix their old car, rather than buy a new one. Need evidence? AZO is also within spitting distance of its all-time high. Few companies have shown this level of resilience, and in a down market that is what you should be looking for.

[Ed. Note: Jon Herring is an investment analyst with Investor's Daily Edge, ETR's sister publication. Get a free subscription to this valuable wealth-building resource right here.]

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“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”attributed to Harry S. Truman)

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For the Pro, School Is Never Out

By Bob Bly

Recently, I casually mentioned in my e-newsletter that I was taking a writing course. One of my readers, JN, was absolutely shocked.

“YOU are taking a WRITING course?” she asked incredulously.

Her implication was that, for me – given that I have been a writer for three decades – taking a writing course is either frivolous or silly… a waste of time and money.

JN could not be more wrong. “School is never out for the professional,” I answered.

It’s my observation that folks who are really at the top of their field are constantly reading, studying, learning, and attending lectures in their specialty. Why? To raise their mastery and skill to an even higher level.

On the other hand, those who are at the bottom seem to feel they have learned everything they need to know at college, trade school, or on the job. And they exhibit little or no desire to spend more time learning any of it better.

This attitude seems lazy and counter-productive at best – and dangerous at worst.

Can you imagine going to a doctor who didn’t keep up with the latest medical research? Of course not. So why is the idea of a writer taking a writing class so surprising?

JN’s reaction reminds me of an American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) weekend writing conference I attended many years ago. The person sitting next to me and I were both studying the curriculum in our conference brochures.

“This looks good,” I said, pointing to “A session on how to write book proposals.”

She sniffed haughtily. “I don’t need to go to THAT. I am ALREADY an author… and I have written a published book.”

At the time, I had written 30 published books. But I didn’t tell her that. I went to the session, and I learned a lot – enough to publish 45 more books (and counting).

Maybe JN thought that, seeing as I presumably know how to write, I would be better off taking a course in flower arranging or bookkeeping or PowerPoint. But, as busy adults, you and I have extremely limited time. We can take only so many courses. And you will get a far better return on your investment in education by taking courses in things you are already good at – your strengths – rather than areas where you are weak.

Why?

Your strengths are what make you successful. The other stuff doesn’t much matter.

In his book Strength Finders, Tom Rath writes: “People have several times more potential for growth when they invest energy in developing their strengths instead of correcting their deficiencies.” Yet, notes Rath, 77 percent of parents think that a student’s worst subjects, those they get the lowest grades in, deserve more time and attention than the subjects they are best at.

Think about it this way…

In a horse race, the winning horse can earn tens of thousands of dollars more than the horse that “places” (comes in second) or “shows” (comes in third). Yet often, especially in major races, the first-place horse beats the second-place horse by only a fraction of a second. Therefore, if the horse and jockey make a massive effort to improve in speed and beat their previous time by only a second or two, they can win instead of place or show – and make the owner and the jockey a lot richer.

On the other hand, a racehorse is a lot less powerful than a Clydesdale (those humongous horses that pull the Budweiser beer wagon in TV ads). If you strength-trained the racehorse for years, it could probably get stronger. But it would never get even close to the Clydesdale in strength… and it wouldn’t earn a dime more on the track.

Many things about success are counterintuitive, and the notion of training is one of the most counterintuitive of all.

Most people, when they see classes being offered, gravitate toward those on subjects they are weak in… hoping to improve their skill level from minimal to acceptable or to learn something new. For instance, I am not an expert in search engine marketing, which is a hot topic in my industry. So, to correct the defect, I signed up for the Direct Marketing Association’s Certificate Program in Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

I am taking the class now – and, yes, I am learning a lot about search engine marketing. But I have also learned something else. Namely, that no matter how much I study search engine marketing, I will never know more than a small fraction of what the top gurus – like the ones who wrote the DMA program – know about it.

So does that mean I quit the program, give up learning SEM… and never optimize my website? No. I am still learning SEM. And my website will be optimized. But not by me. I did something a lot smarter than trying to learn how to do it myself. I went out and found a top SEO consultant, who (with my assistant’s help) is optimizing the site for me.

As you can tell, I am a big believer in being a specialist and hiring specialists.

I have found that, with rare exception, most people are only really good at one thing. In particular, I am wary of freelancers with hyphenated expertise (e.g., “writer-designer,” “illustrator-photographer”). I find that these folks are usually good at only one of their two skills and mediocre at the other.

There is so much to know, no one can know it all. And trying to do so is futile. As Thomas Edison once said, we don’t know one-millionth of one percent about anything. Given the overwhelming amount of information in the world today, and our increasingly limited time to master it, I am convinced that we get the best ROI on learning and training by focusing on our strengths – and learning to do what we do well even better.

I agree with the late direct-mail consultant Dick Benson, who said: “Do what you do best in-house; buy everything else outside.”

[Ed. Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 70 books. To subscribe to his free e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and claim your free gift worth $116, click here now.

You may already know a lot about making money on the Internet. But no matter how much knowledge you have, you can always learn more. Get Bob's expert guidance in how to make money online right here. And hurry - the price goes up $100 at 5:00 p.m. today.]

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Advanced Internet Marketing Tactic: Have You Tested Your Landing Page Lately?

By Howie Jacobson

You know all about the value of testing your marketing copy, but are you doing it on your landing pages?

Let’s talk about some tests you can run having to do with placement. Don’t worry about the copy at the moment. Just where things go on the page.

First thing is to know what your visitors are already doing on your landing page. So throw up some analytics. Google Analytics is quite good – and quite free. (If you have a Google AdWords account, Google Analytics is part of it.)

I like Crazy Egg for visually friendly analytics. I especially like their Confetti feature, which shows me where people are clicking on my page. I can view that info in aggregate, by keyword, by time to click, or by browser. With that info, I can figure out if the links and forms and BUY buttons are in the right place, or if my visitors are bailing before getting to the good stuff.

Once you can see where the problems are, set up tests that aim to overcome them. The first iteration of my home page, for example, featured a giant “Buy the Book” promo near the top right. I wasn’t getting many opt-ins, and since I make about 90 cents royalty per book, it wasn’t the best use of that real estate. It wasn’t even what most people wanted to do on my site, as I found out from Crazy Egg.

Nobody was trying to buy the book. Nobody was signing up for my free first chapter. But everybody wanted free advice from the chat box. So I removed the chat box (if you want advice, now you have to pay for it), removed the book promo, and changed the offer for the opt-in.

As a result, my subscription rate has quadrupled, and I now have over a 10 percent subscribe rate on my home page.

[Ed. Note: Howie Jacobson (www.askhowie.com) is an Internet marketing expert specializing in pay-per-click advertising. In fact, he literally wrote the book on the subject: AdWords for Dummies.

Find out how Howie increased his income by five times - by accident - and how his unintentional good fortune can make YOU rich right here.]

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Put This in Your Cup to Slash Stroke Risk

By Kelley Herring

Here’s another reason you should be enjoying tea: It can reduce your risk of stroke.

A recent study published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association shows that drinking at least three cups of green or black tea daily can slash stroke risk by 21 percent. What’s more, each increase of three cups was associated with an additional 21 percent reduction.

Researchers believe the effect may be due to an amino acid in the tea called theanine.

Because most tea is high in fluoride, choose a safe, fluoride-free alternative (like Body Ecology’s Green Tea Extract) or consider a theanine supplement. There’s approximately 20 mg of theanine in one cup of tea, so 60-120 mg in supplement form would give you as much theanine as the people in the study were getting.

[Ed. Note: Nutrition expert Kelley Herring - founder of Healing Gourmet - has created a revolutionary 7-part health transformation program called Your Plate, Your Fate that reveals how you can protect your health and optimize your weight by maximizing the nutrients in your food. Get all the details and learn how to get 3 bonus books right here.

For more advice about which foods you should - and shouldn't - be eating to stay in top health, sign up for ETR's free natural health newsletter.]

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* Highly Recommended *

How to Get Recession-Proof Cash Pay-outs of Over $3,000 a Month 

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It’s Fun to Know: Twittering Food Trucks

Craving Mexican… but don’t know where your favorite taco truck is parked today? Thanks to Twitter, that’s not a problem in several major cities. The roadside vendors send out daily tweets about their location. And they let regulars in on “secret” menu items that are available each day.

(Source: Associated Press)

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Word to the Wise: Malfeasance

“Malfeasance” (mal-FEE-zuhnts) – from the French for “to do evil” – is wrongdoing, misconduct, or misbehavior, especially by a public official.

Example (as used by John McCabe in Cagney): “Cagney family conjecture was that Grandpop Nelson, with the temper of a dozen Furies, had likely committed some malfeasance in his native town forcing him to change his name when he left.”

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