Preamble: In response to some excellent rebuttals as well as countless comments I’ve received on my previous post, “The Real Sinister Side of Forced Continuity,” I believe some people are missing the point of my argument, and I want to clarify a few things.

I’m not a lawyer by any stretch. But as a copywriter and business owner, I do know the rules enough to know that there’s a difference between “optional continuity,” “forced continuity,” and “hidden continuity.”

Optional continuity is self-explanatory. Forced continuity is a very common marketing practice (I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t mind it). In fact, there’s nothing wrong with forced continuity in and of itself.

What’s wrong is when it’s used in a wrong way.

The real problem, I believe, is that good marketers, including marketers using “forced continuity” in an ethical and legitimate way, are getting a bad reputation because some marketers unscrupulously misuse forced continuity.

The lack of transparency is the real culprit — such as hiding it or disguising it. Especially when it’s done on purpose. That annoys me. Because it’s no longer an issue of misuse. It’s out-and-out abuse.

But what bothers me more is how it affects us all. And it affects us all, both customers and marketers alike, in more ways than you think.

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Rant warning: what follows may offend some people. But I wanted to throw in my three cents on the topic of “forced continuity,” which seems to be the subject of a lot of debate these days.

Several well-known marketers have made offers of late with forced continuity. What it means is, the intended product you want to buy can only be purchased when you buy another (often, a continuous subscription) billed to your account every month or so until you cancel.

Forced continuity is nothing new. (In direct marketing, they call these “Til Forbid” offers.) It’s another type of offer, pure and simple. It’s marketing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is not the way the offer is made.

The real problem is its lack of transparency.

But that’s not what I want to rant about today.

What a lot of people seem to be missing here (and something my brilliant wife brought to my attention, which makes perfect sense to me), is that there is a deeper, much darker side to this whole thing.

Something all marketers need to be aware of…

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“If you don’t attempt to get over your doubts and fears, you’ll never discover how wonderful it is to live without them.”
– Colin McArty

“Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.”
– William Shakespeare

Beyond the unknown, you may have other kinds of phobias you will need to deal with. All fears, great or small, prohibit you from reaching your potential because they create self-imposed limitations. Since fear is generally the product of a low self-esteem, the most effective way to deal with your fears is to improve your self-esteem.

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In the autumn of 1996, I still remember that faithful week and a half when it all happened. My business went belly-up. They came to repossess my car. The landlord, eviction notice in hand, came knocking on my door. And my ex-wife packed up her things, saying, "I’m leaving."

But throughout this time, I had a flash of insight. One that changed the way I was thinking but didn’t realize it until later.

You see, Drop Your Goals And Manage Your Life is the result of years of writing in my journals, both prior to that event and following it. Why? Because…

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Recently, I made a mistake.

I want to publicly and sincerely apologize to Matt Mullenweg, lead developer at WordPress, for creating any misperception, posting misleading information or making statements that may be perceived as defamatory — the very thing I was objecting to in my post in the first place.

It was far from my intent.

My post seems to not only have pinched a nerve, but also as more and more comments poured in, I reread my post several times and saw that my points were either potentially wrongly communicated. So let me officially clarify. First, the story:

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