A few days ago, Garry Conn lost his mind and pulled all the ads from his blog. I am not sure what he was thinking, but apparently he got some survey feedback that led him to think that his readers would be better served without the ads.

Never forget what Mark Twain said:  "Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics."

I actually like Garry's ads because he screens them so heavily. In fact, he has pulled several "sleazy" ads in the past and actually refused to take people's money. That's right, people have actually sent Garry money and he has returned it because he thought the products being advertised would be harmful to his readers. To put it in Garry speak: "My Blog, My Rules."

So, now after rethinking his rash move to pull ads off his blog, Garry is reversing himself and planning on adding the ads back. He is worried about "Whoring out his blog," but adding the ads back is a smart move in my opinion. According to Garry:

GCDC scores over 50,000 unique visits per month, generates over 100,000 page views per month, has over 50% search engine traffic and over 75% of the people that visit his site daily are first time readers.

So, ads should be very high value with all that traffic. Here is the thing -- he is giving up premium space and they are pretty cheap. He is offering banners and links starting at $25 per month. Details are here: Advertise on Garry Conn Dot Comm. No, there is not an affiliate program.

Is Garry Conn an Internet Marketing Whore? What do you think?
photo credit: Daquella manera

RSS feeds are cool, but to be honest with you, there are times when I get so busy it is hard for me to get to my reader. This, coupled with the fact that I am often mobile and don't have a great RSS reader for my BlackBerry means that I am never completely up to date with my RSS feeds. So, for blogs that I really care about, I subscribe by email. Email is great because I get it wherever I am -- in Outlook, on my BlackBerry, in GMail, etc. I "live in my email," so an email subscription is just the ticket for me for important things.

Now, one of the things that you always hear about email lists is that they are the most important cornerstone of an internet marketing business. Guys that are famous for information marketing will tell you that their lists are the real asset in their business. They document cases where businesses have fallen apart (due to partnership or other troubles), but were rebuilt later based on the strength of the surviving email list.

These ideas -- that email lists are part of the core of a legitimate and successful internet marketing effort and that they provide a convenience service to readers -- are why I started my own list. I have not done much with it yet, and I have no intent to monetize it any time soon. Still, I am convinced that lists are an important part of my long term strategy to provide value to my readers.

Now, you can imagine that as I am learning about internet marketing, I am paying attention to people that I have come to respect who are also successful. Note that there are many people who are sucessful that I do not respect. I have mentioned some of my favorites here before. When people I respect do things that make sense to me, I try to learn from them.

So, when Garry Conn decided to (finally) add an email list to his GCDC blog, I really paid close attention. I was one of the first people to sign up. Why? First, I am sure that the content in Garry's list will be great. Second, I expect Garry to be successful with his list, and I want to learn how to be successful with my own. Since Garry announced his list a few weeks back, I have been waiting patiently to see what he would do.

Yesterday, the wait was over. Garry published his first email to the list, entitled Blog Tips During Softball Practice. As a special treat for his blog readers, he made the first post public. The great thing was that it exceeded my expections. The bad thing is that I can already see that using Garry as a mentor for emails lists is going to be setting the bar really high for me. Maybe that's a good thing.

Anyway, I recommend that you check out Garry's post, and if you like it, I recommend that you Digg it.

Thanks,
Mark