No, says Paul Pearsall in his book ?The Last Self-Help Book You?ll Ever Need? (Basic Books, 2005).

?Settle for second (or third or sixth) best,” advises Dr. Pearsall. “In any life endeavor, there can be only one number one. Relax and enjoy being one of the thousands who fall short ? misery is the ultimate result when we link our sense of achievement to other people?s failures.?

What do you think? Should we settle for our lot in life? Or never give up trying to improve and do better?

And here’s more of Pearsall’s somewhat negative advice: “Stop trying to live up to your full potential. You probably don’t have much more potential than you’re showing right now, and striving for more will only cause disappointment.”

Is it just me, or does it seem to you that yet another of the new crop of self-styled marketing gurus is announcing yet another “Marketing Boot Camp” just about every other week?

How many of these do you attend per year? Do you think there are too many?

And of the ones you attend, how many are worth the $2,000 to $5,000 tuition fee? Or could you have basically gotten the same info for free reading the promoter’s e-zine or blog?

Also, does it bother you when every speaker ends his talk by handing out an order sheet offering you an expensive bundle of his videos, DVDs, and coaching services — and spends the last 10 minutes of his one-hour talk hard-selling you on his offer? Or do you find that perfectly acceptable?

A Web designer sent me an email the other day criticizing a long-copy promo I sent to my list.

“Some authors have not really grasped onto The Hard Sell Will Not Work on the Intenet,” she scolded me.

But wait a minute. Take a look at the money-making sites on the Internet. They are a broad mix: some soft sell, some hard sell, some short copy, some long copy.

Given the hundreds of hard-sell, long-copy Web and email promos that are making money hand over fist, how can this Web designer or anyone else possibly state as if it were a law of online marketing that “the hard sell won’t work on the Internet”?

What’s your experience in all this? Does hard-sell, long-copy work online? Or does the Web require a totally different approach: soft sell, informative, non-selling?