Has the American consumer become immune to advertising? Has marketing become a waste of your time and effort?

“Bullshit,” in the words of the Ad Contrarian, a/k/a agency owner Bob Hoffman.

“Here’s what the consumer has become resistant to: generic, undifferentiated products supported by smug, benefit-free advertising.”

FTW! Nailed it.

That’s the question a weekend New York Times article sought to answer. The fact is, there’s no clear-cut answer. But for us non-superstars of the Internet, my favorite Web hosting company is NearlyFreeSpeech.Net. Why? Their pay-as-you-go, pay-for-only-what-you-use hosting plan.

Like many people, I own a bunch of domain names, most of which are nearly dormant, but I want to keep them online to satisfy the Googlebeast. Before NFSN I was paying GoDaddy $3-10 bucks a month for each domain, but now I pay literally a penny or two a day for a few of my sites, and nothing at all for most of the others.

One NFSN account can have unlimited domains, so I drop $5-10 in my account and it keeps me runnin’ for months. You can open up an account with as little as $.25. Disk storage? A penny/MB per month. That’s right, one penny per MONTH.

No sales reps, no commissions, no pressure. No tacky pinup girls or extreme political BS. Also, unfortunately, no tech support, except FAQ pages. That means NFSN is probably not the best choice for beginners. While most of their directions are clear and easy to implement, if you do have problems, you’ll have to figure it out on your own — or call your 14 year old neighbor.

PS: I am not afiliated with NFSN nor do I receive anything for this endorsement. I just like their service.

For me, it’s not really “writer’s block.” It’s more like a reluctance to apply the seat of my pants to the seat of my chair. Sound familiar? In his awesome book, The War of Art, Stephen Pressman nails it on (practically) the first page.

“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”

Whether you’re a writer, painter, or spreadsheet jockey, if Resistance is getting the better of you, Pressman’s short book is a must-read.

Here’s one way to overcome resistance that usually works for me. I wish I could credit whoever I got this from, but that’s been lost in the mists of memory. (If you know, please tell in the comments.)

OK, ready? Here goes.

Make a deal with yourself. Promise yourself that you will seriously tackle it — whatever you’re resisting — for just ten minutes. How hard can that be? I mean, you can endure anything for ten lousy minutes, right? (Except waterboarding, perhaps).

OK, grab your digital kitchen timer — a must-have tool for the productivity-minded. Set it for ten minutes. Now get going. Dig in and really give it your best shot. It’s only ten minutes, right?

When the timer goes off, if you’re still not into it, OK. Give up. Move on to something else. You did your part. You fulfilled your end of the bargain. You “win” (or lose, depending on how you look at it). Of course, if you’re like me, after ten minutes you’re back into it and (finally!) rolling again. You just needed a way to “trick” yourself into getting started. Congrats!

Try it and let me know how it works for you. And if you have a better way to get yourself started, by all means share it n the comments.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need a hit of Rolling Stones: “Start me up, start me up baby and I’ll never stop…”

Photo by rkreetch

“Sometimes, the easiest way to make the consumer happier with a purchase is to increase the price.”

- Jonah Lehrer, The Psychology of the Sale

Thinking of cutting back on your marketing during these tough economic times? It’s a natural reaction. After all, money is tight. But look back at history, as the New Yorker’s always-interesting James Surowiecki did this week, and you discover an amazing secret: when everyone else is disappearing off consumers’ radar, you can take over an entire industry segment.

“When the (1930’s) Depression hit… Post did the predictable thing: it reined in expenses and cut back on advertising. But Kellogg doubled its ad budget, moved aggressively into radio advertising, and heavily pushed its new cereal, Rice Krispies.”

And the result?

“By 1933, even as the economy cratered, Kellogg’s profits had risen almost thirty per cent and it had become what it remains today: the industry’s dominant player.”

Read the rest at: Hanging Tough: The New Yorker.

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