One of my coaching students recently asked me whether it’s better to offer a free trial or a $1 limited time trial as an incentive to sign up for a paid newsletter subscription.

The answer involves the vital role of tracking and testing throughout your entire sales funnel.

Generally speaking, a free trial is likely to convert more visitors initially, but the $1 trial may be the better choice over the long term. Such generalizations have little place in business. The only way to determine the right answer for your business is to track and test the process from beginning to end.

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Want to upload and share your video on sites like YouTube, Revver, MetaCafe, Google Video, and more, but it’s too cumbersome since you have to log into each one and upload multiple times?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could do it all in just one step?

Recently, I stumbled upon a free — yes, free! — video submission service, which allows for automated submission of your video to not one, not two or three, but to all the 12 big video sites all at once — including YouTube, MySpace, MetaCafe, Revver, Google Video, AOL, Yahoo!, and more.

Plus, there’s no setup, and it’s free to boot! It’s…

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Some of the tests results I love to follow are those from The Poynter Institute. Their eyetracking studies are some of the largest ever conducted in this space.

While their tests are primarily done for, and funded by, major newspapers, their studies are incredibly revealing nonetheless. For instance, they've tested how readers read stories in three different formats: tabloid-style (folded vertically), broadsheet (larger size, folded horizontally), and online.

Of course, my interest is certainly focused on the online version. But their newspaper studies are very revealing in terms of what captures people's attention, how they read, and how much of it they do read.

Their website has come out with five key findings. (Their full report is due out in a few more weeks from now.) But let's take a closer look at these findings, and my interpretation of what they mean for the web.

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Just a quick message.

I’m going to post a new article later this afternoon. But I realize that sometimes I don’t broadcast an email notice to you. Either I simply forget, or I don’t have the time.

The RSS-to-email notification is still being upgraded, so until then, the only way to make sure you’re notified of any new blog posts is to subscribe to my RSS feed.

RSS feeds allow you to add the blog to your favorite RSS reader (like FeedDemon, Newsgator, etc), or start page (PageFlakes, NetVibes, YahooWeb, Google Reader, etc).

I highly recommend that you add my feed.

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Something’s been going on. Something behind the scenes that you may not know about. Something that’s been helping me increase the effectiveness of my websites and blogs.

Right under your nose. Er, I mean finger.

As you know, I’m a fanatical tester. And I test constantly. But what you may not know is that, it is not only limited to split-testing copy.

Well, let me let you in on a secret.

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Hold on tight.

On Thursday night, I will be on a conference call with Armand Morin and Marc Quarles in preparation for the launch of a new product so revolutionary, it’s going to completely change the way you look at copywriting for the web, write your copy, split-test your copy and optimize it.

And no, it’s not “Video Generator.”

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