Archive for January 9th, 2009
power of the picture
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Random on January 9, 2009
i just checked my blog stats…turns out my Liskula Cohen post had 46 views…significantly more than my next highest post. Now the writing there wasn’t too original…what I think made that one stand out was the picture of 5 BEAUTIFUL women that I inserted in the post and used to post to facebook. people see beautiful women, they click on it…both guys AND girls.
so does sex still sell? is that how to attract people to read content…good looking people in pictures? well, here’s another test run. part of an adalytics experiment 
UPDATE: per Timothy’s comment below, i think that he’s right. bigger audience may not be the desired audience! i guess the question is, does my targeted audience click through more when there is a picture of a good looking person rather than a nice winter day?
i also want to say, thank you photo loader (flickr creative commons plug in) that allows me to pull pictures about anything. it makes for very quick posts, and I think posting a picture in a blog is helpful for breaking up text!
how to obtain goals
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Goals on January 9, 2009
this is a blog post from timothy ferris (4-hour work week). he summarizes Leo Babauta’s book, the Power of Less. He talks about how impressive Zen Habits is, which is Leo’s blog.
given my goals for 2009, i found this post very helpful. My goals seemed reasonable two weeks ago. Now i’m starting to wonder what % of them I will complete. this post helped. Here are the main takeaways:
- Should work on one goal at a time for a set period of time
- Perform the goal routinely each day (either same time, or triggered after an event you do each day, like brushing your teeth)
- Goal should be measurable, and the steps to the goal should also be measurable
- Work on one goal at a time
Yes, i wrote the last one twice. i have a hard time with that, and to accomplish my goals, I will need to do that!
Good luck with your goals in 2009!
the secret…comical book review
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Humor on January 9, 2009
thanks Bill Ryan for posting this on facebook.
this review is worth reading, particularly if you’ve heard of the book or read it.
Payroll Report: is the worst yet to come?
Posted by Adam Ainbinder in Business Analytics on January 9, 2009
I don’t know if you saw the December payroll report, but what a way to end the year. here’s a good article from the WSj about the “scary report”.
A quick summary:
- Unemployment dropped to 7.2%. Historically, not too bad, but is this just going to get worse?
- People are dropping out of the labor force FAST. People are discouraged, which is no surprise. But as more unemployed drop out of the labor force, unemployment will just get worse (by definition).
- Average weekly hours fell. 33.3 hours in December (7.7% decline – lowest 3 month average decline on record)! Busiest month of the year? is this impacted by part time workers? If this is true, then what’s the need to hire?
- Broad based decline. Almost all sectors affected (education/health services and government increased)! not good
Employment is usually the last thing affected in a recession. I believe that we still have a long ways to go. The reductions in payroll reached a year high of 524k, and prior months were revised upward by 154k. Where do you see this going? 10%? 12%?
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