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Carnival of the Capitalists

November 27, 2007

The Carnival of the Capitalists for 11/26 is up at Money Walks. Some posts I’d like to discuss for this week’s carnival:

  • Please, Lord, not another trademarked leadership concept
    Wally Bock had me at "I’ve even turned the page upside down to see if it made more sense that way." I’ve had a few people tell me that I needed a "hook of a brand-like name" for what I do. I haven’t listened so far, and I like it that way. Thanks for the entertaining read, Wally!
  • Get Demographic Market Research for Free
    Dax’s advice about ZipSkinny is great, but that wasn’t the important part of the post for me. As my head is still in blogland after Monday’s post on feeds, I’d like to point out a little trick Dax used for building his subscriber list. First of all, he submitted his post to a carnival. That brought in traffic. Then, knowing this was going to be the high-traffic landing page today (instead of the home page), Dax inserted this little message into a bordered box: "If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don’t miss anything. Thanks for visiting!" With something that simple, Dax brought in new subscribers and gave them an easy offer in plain English to build on to the current subscriber list.
  • Psychological Effect of 99-Cent
    I had to think about this one a while, because (like most people) my shopping behavior is so automatic that I don’t see what I’m doing while I’m in the process. I have discovered that I am actually a round-down-er. That is, if I see $5.99, my mind thinks $5. In a way, the 99 cents philosophy really has no meaning for me in that sense, because $5.49, $5.99, and $5.95 is all $5 to me. I also wonder if debit card usage has changed our perceptions as well—does 99 cents even matter when you’ll never count out a single cent when paying with plastic? Harvard Business backs up my theories a bit by saying "When people pay with credit cards, they’re less likely to remember the cost—or consume the product." But are they less likely to look at the price all together when paying by credit or debit? MIT thinks so: They found that auction bidders paying with plastic were more than twice as likely to bid than auction bidders paying with cash!
  • Don’t Let Your Car’s Value Go Down “Like a Rock.” Buy the Vehicle that Keeps its Value the Best
    What bothered me about this article is the idea of purchasing a car based on the desire to sell it some years later. It just reminds me of how disposable our whole economy is now—"starter cars", "starter homes", and "starter families"! I also had to laugh that the phrase "like a rock" in the title was a direct play on the Chevy advertising slogan, because my husband and I both own Saturns. Sure, they are not high on the resale list, but we also paid a fraction for them that the VW owners paid for their cars, we get to fill up with regular gasoline (unlike the premium gas required by the VWs), and, between the 2 cars, we have over 200,000 miles driven with very minimal work done. In the long run, our Saturns will cost less and run longer—which is just perfect if your goal is not to keep disposing of your car every few years.
  • The Startup Team or The Startup Idea: What’s more important?
    This is kind of a "chicken or the egg" argument, and really that makes it all too simple to be able to judge which one is truly more important. The article does make some good points about hiring a team though, and that is noteworthy. Also of note, getting once again back to blog design: The comment and trackback links for this post are on the right side of the page, which goes against the grain of having them in the body as most sites do. While it’s good to be different, it also made me have to search for them for about 5 minutes. Many people don’t read sidebars, and would have lost their desire to find these links after a few seconds. (For further reading on this subject, Skellie over at Skelliewag does a great job of explaining why adhering to standards is a good thing.)

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One Response to “Carnival of the Capitalists”

  1. Small Business Essentials on December 7th, 2007 1:16 pm

    Carnival of the Capitalists…

    The Carnival of the Capitalists for December 3rd at One Man Band. Of note:

    Business Blogging
    Blogging, is it worth the time and other insights to online marketing
    Susie Kleiner’s comments about the time she spent researching and learning stu…

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