The new year is around the cor­ner. It’s a time for res­o­lu­tions. A time for change. And some­times, those changes need to be drastic.

On Decem­ber 16, 2009, while we con­duct our reg­u­lar weekly webi­nar for our Suc­cess Chef stu­dents, we will be mak­ing a major announce­ment about rad­i­cal changes we’re mak­ing to our cur­rent busi­ness model…

… Changes that not only affect our stu­dents but also might affect the Inter­net mar­ket­ing train­ing indus­try as a whole.

So we’re open­ing up this live class to the pub­lic for the first time. For this one time, we’re invit­ing every­one who wants to join us on this webi­nar, and not just our pay­ing students.

These changes might sur­prise you. Or shock you. They even might make some peo­ple mad. But they must be made. And together with Sylvie Fortin, author of the con­tro­ver­sial Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, we will be announc­ing those changes on that spe­cial webinar.

The rea­son is sim­ple — but it’s not what you think. We’re not sell­ing any­thing new. This is not a typ­i­cal pro­mo­tional or sales pitch webi­nar. It’s a spe­cial announce­ment, one we’ve been itch­ing to make for a very long time. All I can say is, “It’s about time!”

We recorded this very brief video and wrote this open let­ter to explain.

I remem­ber 10 years ago.

In the wake of rumored pro­pos­als to reg­u­late the web, in 1999 the CRTC, com­pa­ra­ble to America’s FCC, offi­cially declared that the Inter­net is not a broad­cast medium.

Now, that rul­ing was sig­nif­i­cant for many reasons.

Tech­ni­cally, the Inter­net is a medium. But the gov­ern­ment based its deci­sion on the fact that the web is inter­ac­tive with its audi­ence — unlike other uni­di­rec­tional, one-​​way broad­cast media such as the TV or radio. As a result, reg­u­la­tors con­cluded the Inter­net could there­fore police itself.

(The “Net Neu­tral­ity” debate of late is a per­fect exam­ple that it is different.)

Nev­er­the­less, my point here is not a polit­i­cal one but a marketing-​​related one.

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If you ever won­dered how to out­source your work using new and cre­ative ways that get it done faster, cheaper, bet­ter, and eth­i­cally, too, then you need to watch this video.

Called “crowd­sourc­ing,” this rel­a­tively new out­sourc­ing tech­nique — I say “rel­a­tively,” as the term may be new but the tech­nique is as old as out­sourc­ing itself — enables you to cull spe­cific skills from the pub­lic at large.

Often, for lit­tle to no cost.

Whether you’re out­sourc­ing already, plan­ning on doing so, or just want to save time and money, this is for you. Crowd­sourc­ing also allows you to bypass free­lance bid­ding sites that can turn out to be expen­sive and risky, often with less than desir­able results.

This two-​​hour train­ing video is com­pletely free.

In it, Sylvie exposes some of the best-​​kept secrets to get stuff done. Some of which have never been revealed until now. It was orig­i­nally recorded from a pri­vate online webi­nar to our Suc­cess Chef stu­dents, but we’re mak­ing it avail­able for the first time.

The video might be free, but you must reg­is­ter to watch it, as we high­light Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity in the back­end because that’s where the video comes from. How­ever, you get imme­di­ate access to this video on the next page. You can unsub­scribe eas­ily, anytime.

Click here to watch this amaz­ing video.

A recent study found that 65% of online shop­pers are “win­dow shop­pers,” and take on aver­age up to 33 hours to make a pur­chase — often over secu­rity concerns.

Some inter­est­ing find­ings show that most peo­ple who aban­don their shop­ping carts don’t do so permanently.

They tend to return within the first day to com­plete their pur­chase, likely after they had a chance to shop around, review their secu­rity, or prac­tice some due diligence.

Accord­ing to WebProNews who reported on the study, “65% of all shop­pers will wait a day or more to com­plete a pur­chase.” The most notable find­ing was the idea that just increas­ing secu­rity and buyer con­fi­dence can increase con­ver­sion by 11%.

Inter­est­ing, yes. But far from surprising.

In fact, I often tell my clients and stu­dents that, in order to boost sales, you should be a “con­ver­sion con­trar­ian.” In other words, don’t focus on increas­ing con­ver­sions. Not at first, any­way. Instead, you should focus on decreas­ing some­thing else…

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I once took a media com­mu­ni­ca­tions course in which I dis­cov­ered an inter­est­ing exam­ple of the way the mind works. I soon real­ized how this applies to copy­writ­ing as well.

As part of a given les­son, they showed a video­tape of a tele­vised news­cast dur­ing which a jour­nal­ist was about to give a live report on a for­est fire dev­as­tat­ing the mid-​​west.

The news anchor said: “We now take you to Sally Smith, report­ing live from above the scene of the fire…”

He then turned around to face the back­ground screen, which gave a live bird’s-eye view of the rag­ing fire, and asked: “Sally, tell us, how big is the fire?” In a voice par­tially drowned by the whizzing sound of heli­copter blades, Sally reported:

“John, it’s so big, it’s cov­er­ing well over 140 acres of land… that’s about 200 foot­ball fields back-​​to-​​back for you and me.”

What is this telling you? A lot more than you think…

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As expected, my last blog post gen­er­ated quite a num­ber of com­ments. Some were insight­ful, even a few of the neg­a­tive ones, and I appre­ci­ate them all. Thank you.

How­ever, from most of the com­ments I’ve read, includ­ing some of the pos­i­tive ones, it seems a lot of peo­ple missed the point I was try­ing to con­vey. They thought it was about Face­book user­names and there­fore no big deal.

Well, it wasn’t about Face­book specif­i­cally. It was about hav­ing integrity and respect, and doing what’s right.

They missed it, and that was prob­a­bly my fault. My pas­sion for the topic and oppo­si­tion to the con­cept of “friendly extor­tion,” which I blogged about in the past, caused me to write more force­fully than the norm, and I was less than clear than I should have been.

Face­book wasn’t the prob­lem. It just so hap­pened to be the tool used in this case. It was more about the scarcity mind­set and the sense of enti­tle­ment peo­ple have in think­ing this was accept­able behav­ior and that we should tol­er­ate it.

So I wanted to clear the air. I recorded this quick lit­tle video after I woke up this morn­ing — oh, and please ignore the fash­ion­able bed-​​head hairdo.

Please let me know what you think…

My son, Tyler Fortin, is 16, artis­tic, and ambi­tious. I’m so proud of him, and here’s why.

As a drum­mer for 30 years (I started when I was 11–12), I fol­lowed in the foot­steps of two of my uncles who were drum­mers. I played in high-​​school and garage bands.

But at the time, I didn’t own a drum­set and played mostly on other people’s drumk­its. (I bought my first real kit in my mid-​​20s.) So I learned very s-​​l-​​o-​​o-​​o-​​w-​​w-​​w-​​l-​​l-​​l-​​y-​​y-​​y.

Last Christ­mas and on a whim, I bought my son an elec­tronic drum­set. I thought he might like it, but didn’t expect much. Plus, with an elec­tronic kit he can play on them with head­phones so as to not dis­turb the rest of the household.

Tyler wants to be like his dad. How that makes me feel is indescribable.

I play in a rock band. Granted, my son’s style of music is a lot heav­ier than mine. But the other day, I let him play on my kit and he took advan­tage of it to record this video (this is only after a few months learn­ing the drums, all on his own, which blew me away!)…

When it comes to double-​​bass — play­ing with both feet — he’s def­i­nitely kick­ing my butt. Tyler’s pretty good at pro­duc­ing videos, too! He even uses dif­fer­ent cam­era angles. Watch the whole thing to see what I mean. It’s only about three minutes.

(Tyler, I love you so much, Son. You make your Dad so proud of you.)