Yes, according to my subscriber GB.

“I don’t know anyone in today’s age, other than a very bored stay-at-home, who has the time or patience to read through all those pages of copy, and God forbid, having to sit through those horrendous dragged-out sales videos,” she says. “I’m at the point that if one of those videos comes up, there’s no message or product on earth that’s worth such a waste of time and I delete it on the spot.”

She is particularly critical of Agora Publishing, a company that has pioneered long-copy landing pages and video sales letters. “Agora needs an overhaul,” she says. “It’s no longer working for busy people. Needed: one page, short and focused with impact.”

The problem with GB’s argument is that Agora makes a fortune from those long sales letters and videos, to the tune of around $300 million a year — kind of demolishing GB’s premise that long copy doesn’t work for them.

Your thoughts?

A sign on the shop floor of a manufacturing facility showed a triangle. Each corner was labeled: one was GOOD, another was FAST, the third was CHEAP. The caption under the triangle said PICK ANY TWO.

It makes sense to me. If you are cheap and fast, you probably aren’t very good. If you are good and fast,  you can and should charge a premium fee. If you are cheap and good, you probably don’t allow customers to rush you.

If you are all three — cheap, good, fast — you are under constant pressure and probably not making that much money.

Which are  you — good, fast, or cheap?

I recently gave a one-hour phone seminar that was free.

You’d think FREE would  be a fair price. But Margaret isn’t satisfied.

“I did not sign up for the teleseminar because it would cost me an arm and a leg to listen in by phone,” she wrote.

There’s no pleasing some people.

“I would gladly sign up for a computer seminar where I could watch and listen over the Internet or you could send me an email that I could print off and follow the advice.”

By the way, the session was in fact a webinar and  you COULD watch and listen on your computer. This was made clear on the registration page. (We did not offer a transcript … because the session was free!)

As I say, there is no pleasing some people.

Lots of people think LinkedIn is the best site for corporate networking.

But according to a survey by the Creative Group, 56% of marketing and advertising executives named Facebook as their favorite social network, 21% picked LinkedIn, and only 4% named Twitter.

I don’t much care for any of them as I continue to find social networking a huge time suck and a thundering bore.

Content Is Cash: Leveraging Great Content and the Web for Increased Traffic, Sales, Leads and Buzz [Que Publishing] by friend and colleague, Wendy Montes de Oca — which hit #1 on the Amazon web marketing bestseller list in Sept. of 2011 — was recently nominated for the 2012 Small Business Book Awards. SmallBizTrends.com celebrates the best books that small business people and entrepreneurs should read. But this book also contains some high performing, virtually no-cost (organic) strategies for anyone looking to grow a business: marketers, editors, bloggers, online publishers, soloprenuers, freelancers, consultants, copywriters and webmasters. Voting started Feb. 1. Web surfers may cast one vote per day, every day through Feb. 16. Show your love and vote today! For more information, visit:

http://bookawards.smallbiztrends.com/marketing_2011/content-is-cash-2

I used to get 12 to 15 comments or more on my blog posts.

Then, I was silent for 3 months.

When  I returned to blogging this month, I got only 3 to 5 comments per post.

You can make the case that my lack of blogging for months diminished my readership.

And that’s the problem with blogging.

To maintain the recommended frequency of posts, bloggers write blog articles even if they have nothing to say.

And the result is drivel. As Willy Nelson says, “You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say.”

What happens when I have no news, information, or thoughts to impart?

Should I blog for the sake of keeping up with blogging?

Or should I be silent until a worthy idea occurs?

In an online ad to protest anti-piracy laws pending in congress, Wikepedia says, “Imagine a world without free knowledge.”

But should ALL knowledge be free?

Do you expect the attendant at  your local gas station to fill your car for free?

Do you expect your doctor to treat  you for free?

Do you expect the plumber to fix your leaky faucet for free?

A mantra you hear on the Internet is “information wants to be free.”

Does that mean those who create content are entitled to no rewards from it … and are expected to work for free?

What do  you think?

It was while working as a technical writer for Westinghouse in 1979 that I first heard the term “word smith” applied to writing.

“He’s a pretty good word smith,” my internal client said, referring to an engineer I was supposed to interview for writing a brochure; the engineer felt a mere writer couldn’t understand the subject and it would be better if he wrote it himself.

Now a relatively new term — content — further degrades writers and the status of writing.

“Writing” sounds like a craft or skill. “Content” sounds like something you buy by the can or by the pound.

I am seeing an ad in a lot of places on the web for “Writer Access,” an organization that promises to help you “get your content written.” They match you with a writer from a pool of thousands, again commoditizing the practice of writing.

The only ways for writers to avoid being a commodity:  (1) write a best-seller (2) write in a specific niche in which you are perceived as an expert and (3) write direct response copy where results can be measured.