After the last, big, “mega-​​product launch,” and a bar­rage of me-​​too mar­ket­ing emails from the usual sus­pects, I’ve decided enough is enough. And it’s about time.

I’ve done some­thing I should have done a long time ago.

And I feel liberated.

I rec­om­mend you do the same.

That is, I unsub­scribed from 90% of the newslet­ters I was receiv­ing. I deleted fear­lessly. Unsub­scribed relent­lessly. Purged ruth­lessly. With­out blink­ing or look­ing back.

If you think it’s not a lot, let me give you a back­story. When I was the edi­tor of The Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Chron­i­cles newslet­ter over a decade ago (which has since been acquired by the late Corey Rudl), I sub­scribed to a lot of email newsletters.

Yes, lots. Like over-​​a-​​thousand lots.

I’m a speed-​​reader, so get­ting that many emails was never a big chal­lenge. And before you con­clude I was an email junkie, let me give you a few rea­sons in my defense.

For one, I wanted to be up on things. I wanted to stay abreast of new changes, new mar­ket­ing strate­gies, new soft­ware tools, and so on. (I still do.)

Sec­ond, it gave me a lot of fod­der while writ­ing edi­to­ri­als for the then pop­u­lar newslet­ter. I’m proud to have been instru­men­tal in help­ing them grow their list from 45,000 to 160,000 sub­scribers, and remem­ber that 160,000 back in ’98 was quite a feat!

And third, these emails served me well as they were also used for research pur­poses. As an up-​​and-​​coming copy­writer writ­ing a lot for the Inter­net mar­ket­ing crowd at the time, I wanted to see what oth­ers were say­ing, pro­mot­ing, doing, email­ing, and writing.

But this week­end, after last week’s ubiq­ui­tous mega-​​launch pro­mo­tional emails started clut­ter­ing up my inbox, it became the prover­bial straw that broke this camel’s back.

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I’m in the mid­dle of upgrad­ing this blog’s theme. It’s already two if not three years old, and some of the plu­g­ins con­flict with the theme. Above all, it takes a long time to load.

After some test­ing, I orig­i­nally thought it was my plu­g­ins, or the fact that there are too many of them. But it’s not.

A quick test over at Web​si​teOp​ti​miza​tion​.com revealed that latency was caused by too many uncom­pressed CSS line-​​items and javascripts, too many graph­ics, and the use of tables (rather than using posi­tion­ing through CSS 2.0+).

So after using the theme on Mar​keters​Board​.com by the awe­some design­ers at Inst​ant​Shift​.com (and pay­ing for a license to cus­tomize it), I’ve decided to use it for this blog and redesigned it to fit.

You’ll notice some of the famil­iar ele­ments are still here. But I still need to tweak some of the lay­out issues and col­ors, espe­cially with all the plu­g­ins. So bear with me. It should be com­plete by a day or two. Thanks!

In case you couldn’t make it this week’s webi­nar, I wanted to give you an “inside look” at the lat­est new 8-​​DVD sys­tem we’re releas­ing, with my col­league Ken Calhoun.

Espe­cially now, in this tough econ­omy, this sys­tem can be your “life­line to sur­vival.” It shows you exactly how to out­com­pete by cre­at­ing more com­pelling sales mes­sages. (Whether it’s in web­sites, emails, direct mail, ad cre­atives, Inter­net video, PPC ads, and more!)

It’s a full stun­ning 8 DVDs packed with dozens of proven, spe­cific tac­tics that can make a big dif­fer­ence to your busi­ness suc­cess. But just for a few short days, we’re mak­ing a very spe­cial offer!

If you order by our offi­cial launch date (that’s in early Feb­ru­ary), you can grab the entire 8-​​DVD, 10-​​hour sys­tem for about two-​​thirds off. That’s a dis­count of over 60%!

Why are we offer­ing this incred­i­ble sys­tem at such a low price dur­ing these next cou­ple of weeks?

Because the economy’s tight and we want to put this busi­ness life­sav­ing sys­tem into the hands of as many entre­pre­neurs and busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als as pos­si­ble, before the launch.

So head on over to watch the 9 video pre­view clips now.

The long antic­i­pated third and final install­ment of my wife’s shock­ing and highly con­tro­ver­sial exposé, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins cov­er­ing five more sins, is finally out.

It took a bit longer this time, and Sylvie explains why in the report. She also clears up a lot of mis­con­cep­tions about why she wrote this report. And in fact, this time she did it a lit­tle differently.

This time, she did it on video!

There are sev­eral reasons.

For one, she wanted to save time. Her recent surgery forced her to post­pone writ­ing this sec­tion, and peo­ple were clam­or­ing for it.

Sec­ond, it would also give you a chance to hear her pas­sion, and some­times, her anger. Plus, she ends with a heart­felt plea you def­i­nitely don’t want to miss!

Like parts one and two, she uses strong lan­guage and doesn’t hold back! Your dis­cre­tion is advised.

She exposes the final five sins, i.e., Tele­sem­i­nar Idiots, Brain­less Free­bie Seek­ers, Coach­ing Addicts, Time-​​Sucking Vam­pires, and Slave Own­ers. The video is on the same down­load page of the first two parts. If you haven’t signed up, do it now…

Go now and watch part #3 of Inter​net​Mar​ket​ingSins​.com.

Not a copy­writer or just start­ing out? Can’t afford a high-​​priced copy­writer? Need copy real fast to start sell­ing or to pro­mote affil­i­ate prod­ucts right away?

Here’s some­thing that might inter­est you…

Com­puter pro­gram­mer Robert Plank shares his quick and easy for­mula for writ­ing com­pelling sales let­ters fast.

Sure, noth­ing beats know­ing how to write great copy. But…

This pain­less for­mula will have your prod­ucts launched and your web­sites up and run­ning in less than an hour! (If you hate writ­ing copy or don’t have time, or you sim­ply need copy really fast, you’re going to love this.)

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It’s Thanks­giv­ing in Canada, so it’s time to give thanks. It’s also my birth­day. That’s why I’m the one who’s going to give you a gift (there’s only one con­di­tion, so read on).

I want to give thanks to all my loyal sub­scribers and read­ers. But there’s another per­fectly good and more impor­tant reason.

I need to make some room!

You see, I have 3,000 copies of one of my books in stor­age, and I need to get rid of them. Fast! So I’m fully pre­pared to give them away. For free. Let me give you some back­ground first…

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The lifeblood of your busi­ness is your list of cus­tomers and prospects. Wouldn’t it be great to grow it faster?

Accord­ing to the Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Center’s 2006 sur­vey, online adver­tis­ers are cap­tur­ing con­tact infor­ma­tion from an aver­age of between 5% and 10% of the peo­ple who visit their web­sites, and of those, only 1% to 2% become pay­ing customers.

That SUCKS!

How would you like to uncover a lit­tle known way to do 4 to 7 times bet­ter… with­out hav­ing to attract a sin­gle addi­tional vis­i­tor to your website?

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