Wednesday December 12th, 2007: Issue #870
Thanks to everyone who emailed me with thoughts and anecdotes about the usage of the word ‘yay’ - or as I now think it should be spelled, ‘yea’ - when used to describe size, height or length. As in ‘it was yea high.’
The word is unusual in that it can only make sense when used with a hand gesture to show what it is referring to. That in itself leads me to a supplementary attack of curiosity: are there any other words that need a gesture to give them contextual meaning? And is there a term for such a class of words?
If not, I propose ‘gesticulants.’
The prime source of all word origin knowledge, the Oxford English Dictionary, lists the specific adverbial use of ‘yea’ as having originated in the 1960s, but several Kickstart readers have reported hearing it from parents and grandparents ten or more years before that. I believe the OED only uses printed or recorded sources, so unsubstantiated earlier use from recollections may not count. Does anyone have any documented evidence?
Kickstart certainly goes off on tangents at times. That’s what makes life interesting!
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Here’s another random thought.
Do lipreaders recognize accents?
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Thanks also to everyone who has been using my Keyword Hacker LSI tool. The feedback has been incredible and almost entirely positive.
I’ll leave it up for everyone to use until the end of the week, so feel free to enter your keywords and find out all the connected words that the search engines will like to see on web pages and in articles.
You can access the tool at http://www.keywordhacker.com/lsiplus/
If you missed Monday’s Kickstart, I wrote an article on what latent semantic indexing is all about and why you need to pay attention to it to make your web pages and articles more attractive to both real readers and search engine spiders. You can read that article on the Kickstart Archive at http://kickstartarchive.com
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I’m a bit puzzled.
Judging from the many, many emails I get, a very large number of Kickstart readers are newbies to Internet marketing. Some are not even newbies yet - they are people who see IM as something with potential, but haven’t made a start yet.
Most of the emails I receive are asking me how to get started, or for explanations of basic IM concepts. I’m always happy to reply and help out wherever I can.
So when I mentioned the new book by Nick Marks on Monday - ‘The Baby Boomers’ Guide to Online Income’ - I genuinely thought that as it is a really good primer for absolute IM beginners, it would be snapped up.
But only one person bought it.
Contrast that with more advanced books I have recommended recently where 50-100 Kickstarters grabbed them within minutes.
Did the sales letter put people off? Did I fail to motivate in what I wrote about it? Is it the Christmas effect? Or are newbies less willing to buy information products that can help their businesses than more experienced people?
I’m aware that by writing this it may sound as if I’m complaining. But I’m absolutely not. I am really just puzzled. Even more, it is important that I put stuff in Kickstart that you want to read, so if products aimed at the entry level of Internet marketing are not required, should I stop writing about them?
I would welcome feedback - from newbies and experienced Kickstarters alike.
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Last year, one of the most impressive people I saw presenting at seminars was a very nervous young man by the name of Rob Benwell. It was his first ever seminar, but talk about starting at the top! He was up on stage, quivering with fear, at Yanik Silver’s London Underground.
Yes, Rob was nervous. Yes, his presentation was wooden and unpolished, but boy oh boy did he deliver.
Rob may be familiar to you as the author of the mega successful ebook ‘Blogging to the Bank’. He makes a lot of money online and seems to be able to explain how he does it in ways that people can understand.
But it isn’t Rob I’m really writing about today. It is Matt, Rob’s older brother.
Matt was in debt, in a job he hated and looking at a dismal financial future. Sound familiar?
What Matt had, though, was a brother who knows a thing or two about Internet marketing. So Matt called Rob and asked him to give him some pointers. The result, after Matt managed to get Rob to talk in a language a non-IMer can understand, was almost miraculous.
Out of that, the pair of them have got together to create a new membership site - one that I joined this morning. It is called Quick Fire Profits.
The content that I’ve had a chance to examine looks excellent value to me - the site is priced very low at the moment, but the content is potentially priceless.
Take a good hard look here: http://www.urlnex.us/qfp/
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An Inspirational Thought
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What is your WOW?
No matter how jaded you get, (and we all get jaded at
times), there is always something that makes you say
WOW!
I love WOW moments. They bring a whole new dimension
into your life. Either they teach you something you
didn’t know, or they open a door to a whole raft of
experiences that you never dreamed possible.
I try to have a WOW moment every day.
You may have noticed that I also love acronyms, so I
can’t resist making one up for this:
Wonderment
Opens
Windows
or
Wide
Open
Wonder
or
Wonderful
Old
World.
What does your WOW stand for?
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Who do you know who would love Kickstart Today?
Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
http://www.kickstartdaily.com today!
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The Quote of the Day
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Henri Frederic Amiel said:
“To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach
the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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Are you ‘fine’ or ‘fantastic’?
I wrote about this a long time ago, but it certainly bears repeating.
When someone automatically asks you ‘how are you?’ or ‘how’s things?’, what is your automatic reaction?
For most people it is ‘Fine.’ (Or some equally non informative answer).
What does that little word ‘fine’ mean?
In conversation it means a full-stop. Period. End of conversation.
It completes the automatic niceties, offers nothing that is unexpected and provides nothing of interest to the questioner.
Of course, that is the way it should be isn’t it? The social niceties have been followed.
NO!
Next time someone automatically asks you how you are, force them to actually HEAR your answer. Tell them ‘I’m fantastic!’ or ‘I’ve never been better!’ or ‘Bloody brilliant!’.
Enthuse.
And you know what? Their eyes will open a little wider, their ears will flap a little harder and their mind will suddenly be focused … on you.
An enthusiastic, non-automatic response just begs a follow up question. Your positive answer will spark a positive response. You may even get a smile.
For sure, you will make at least that conversation a memorable one.
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Fascinating Facts
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Seabirds have built-in sunglasses. Their eyes contain a reddish oil that filters out dangerous sunlight.