I am feeling a little disgusting at the moment, because I just ate vanilla and cinnamon french toast with syrup and powdered sugar. I think maybe fat people feel like this all the time.

Also because I am writing this post on my iPad, DIRECTLY into the SETT interface, which I never do.

It's Sunday, so it's OK. (Rationalization win)

Anyway, I was just browsing through my email inbox and could tell immediately by the subject lines whether or not they would be interesting.

About 90% of them were promotional BS.

But the final 10% were cool stuff from people I enjoy hearing from.

A few observations based on my personal experience:

The people who show up in my inbox who I LIKE hearing from... I like hearing from MORE than I like hearing from the bloggers that I also like hearing from.

But the people in my inbox who I DON'T like hearing from are worse than the crappiest blogs. Because they just try to sell me things.

A lot of bloggers are really idealistic about content, and think it should all be free. That it's unethical to charge for information. Etc.

Horseshit, of course. They don't seem to realize that people love buying things. And that, in fact, if you really help people you will serve them better by charging for your information. People don't value free things, so they don't take action on free advice. Usually. Some do, but they are rare.

If you have amazing content, I want more of it. If there is a premium version of what you do, I want it.

In any group of people, roughly 20% will buy the premium thing just because there IS a premium thing.

People who do email marketing right understand this.

They give away tons of free advice that actually helps people, but they usually sell something too.

And the people who do email marketing right usually create much more fun and engaging content because the inbox is a tough space to stand out in.

I think more bloggers should sign up to email lists and apply what they do to their blog posts. Ben Settle, Perry Marshall, Matt Furey. They are some of the best at this stuff, all good places to start.

And similarly, I think all the people who keep clogging up my inbox with worthless promotions I don't care about, should pay more attention to bloggers and how they think about content.

The thing is, I don't care how much you try to sell to me... IF those same promotions are also informative and entertaining. Ben Settle, for instance, tries to get me to sign up to his $97-a-month print newsletter... in E-V-E-R-Y email he sends. And he sends one every day.

But his emails are so damn entertaining that I just don't care. I keep reading day in, day out. His way of doing emails have made a lot of people a lot of money, because it gets people to actually READ your emails.