1. Akshay reads some posts on my site

2. Akshay emails me a question

“I’ve been thinking of an idea to pursue further education and have my company finance it in return for a major research project for quite some time. Your “Companies don’t care about money” post really inspired me to write a proposal but while I’m confident about my research idea, I feel much less confident asking them to finance it. Frankly, I don’t think I’m going about it the right way, especially as I have stated it in my last paragraph.

I’m better than where I started, just planning to walk in and talk to the CIO, but I still feel that this can be refined.”

3. I try to offer some help and we go back and forth a little bit

4. A couple weeks later, Akshay writes back again (I love the followup, making it 100x more likely that I’d help him again…so if someone ever helps you, be sure to let them know how it works out)

“I wanted to let you know that my proposal was accepted and I got hired as a consultant for the XXX organization today! The project is very open-ended with a lot of freedom on my end to mold it and the best part is it pays for my college tuition!”

How much is the project funding for? I asked.

“The project will last the length of my Masters degree (2 years) with summer internships included. I’m still negotiating the summer stipend, but tuition coverage alone adds up to $16,000.”

$16,000 for a few hours of work?

Not to be glib, but that sounds pretty good to me.

See also: Smart People Ask Questions and Don’t Quit Without Asking for What You Want.

My friend got both of these offers mailed to him recently.

Notice the different offers, the different designs, even the salutation “Dear ___.” This is how real marketing is done–not by handwavy marketers saying “I think red is better!” but by actual, rigorous data analysis.

Many sophisticated web sites use split tests to see what really works. For example, when you’re browsing Amazon, you’re often in an experimental group to see what page elements produce more clicks, purchases, or other target behaviors. Just recently, for example, I saw first-hand evidence of how changing an email’s subject line can produce a staggering difference in response rates (over 400%). Although the concept originates in direct marketing, you rarely see split tests offline because you usually only see one version of the test. My friend just happened to receive two different copies of the same mailing, although there are probably dozens more.

Does it make you queasy to think that the next email you get from JCrew or the next time you visit Bestbuy.com, it’s probably been tested against thousands of other people? Maybe. But I’d rather have a company optimizing reasonable offers by adjusting positioning, visual design, etc than by making opportunistic sales pitches to people who don’t know any better.

Somehow this became marketing + ethics day, but I just thought it was interesting. Have a great holiday weekend…shopping.

More on optimization in my delicious bookmarks here, here, and here.

PS–I’m sending out my newsletter tomorrow morning with links you haven’t seen. I’ll applaud Warren Buffet, mock Robert Kiyosaki, and point you to a bunch of non-personal-finance stuff I just think is cool. Subscribe, free, in 5 seconds.

1. I’m hosting an online chat tonight at 7pm PST, and I’ll post the chat URL here at 6:50pm PST. (Just click refresh on this post to see the latest updates.)

**UPDATE (6:45pm PST)**
The chat room is open closed. I’ll try to post a transcript soon.

2. I’m going to try to have a free-flowing chat–but if it gets too chaotic, I might ask people to AIM me privately with questions, I’ll write my thoughts in the chat room, and then we can all chat about it.
3. I’m going to avoid answering deeply technical/individual questions that only about 3 people will understand, as well as questions I don’t know the answers to. But I’m thrilled to answer questions about getting started with personal finances, personal entrepreneurship, choosing a career, taking risks, and all the other stuff I write about on this site.

See you tonight.

Anyway, I got a lot of emails from people saying “It’s easy to tear ideas down, but do you have your own? What do YOU think will be next?”

But I’m not a futurist, and I never said I was. Plus, they have notoriously bad results.

Still, I’ll take a stab at it: Companies have no idea how young people are using technology, and there’s a huge opportunity for people our age to educate them. We live it and breathe it. Older people do not. I was once hired to talk about blogs, social networks, etc, so I decided to have some fun with them. I can personally tell you that there’s nothing like opening http://www.myspace.com/forbidden (PS–not safe for work) to a room full of VCs.

Other things I find promising: Helping people work together online sounds like a pretty good thing, in whatever form, as does targeting the always-increasing luxury segment. So does creating a platform for political discussions and news. But really, take what I say with a big fat grain of salt. I’m just one guy.

And finally, I want to mention one thing. I’m tired of Quicken and MS Money’s arms race of more and more features. I don’t need 5,000 things. I just want an easy way to enter my spending, with automatic downloads from banks/CCs, easy categorization, and charts that show me where the money is going. Bonus points if you can aggregate data and let me compare my spending with others to see if I’m in the same ballpark.

If any of you are developers interested in developing a simple, beautiful personal-finance app, let me know. I will personally help you spread the word about it.

Big takeaways for me:

• I have pretty smart readers
• You guys hate a LOT of things
• I laughed out loud about 5 times reading the comments

See the comments here.

Here’s one of my favorites: A podcast called How to make money without a job

“some asshole Stanford graduate writing about how he’s better with money than you are”

“To-the-point budget advice from a cocky Stanford kid.”

Aww yeah. Make your own description: Add IWillTeachYouToBeRich to del.icio.us

Update: The descriptions have started rolling in. My favorite: “I was going to leave a comment, but it was too much of a barrier.”

Shhhh…Writers & Marketers Wanted For Founding Team Of A Secret Project

Update: Chris tells me the deadline to apply is tomorrow (Wednesday, January 11)

Henry Blodget, the infamous writer, was commenting about how Bernanke only has one stock (Altria), and how it reflects negatively on his intelligence/abilities as the future Fed.

To which Craig Newmark replied, “Yo, Henry, take another look at the chart.”

Here’s the chart of Altria:

I started playing around with some others stocks because I’m a big dork, and I got some interesting comparisons.

Feel bad about not getting in early? Well, me too. But imagine what today’s great companies will look like 30 years from now.