[epub] inflated subscriber numbers

[Doug Green <flowers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I confess I haven't done a lot of promotion for my gardening newsletter in
the past six months. Paid work keeps getting in the way so net growth is
slow. That's been OK but tonight I decided to search out a few newsletters
to offer ad exchanges with.  

I searched several gardening type newsletters and in their promotional
material they made some pretty impressive claims about subscribers.  The
only problem they forgot was that their lists were hosted by egroups. ;-)
I went browsing over to egroups and found that one list was advertising as
being sent to 3000 subscribers but actually had 804.  There were several
others equally guilty of hyper-inflation of subscriber numbers.  Now,
either these folks are terminally mathematically challenged or they are
trying to fool me for some reason. Dumb or devious?

Take your pick folks but my money is on dumb.  I mean, when your list is
hosted by a company that makes subscriber numbers public and you triple or
quadruple the real numbers in your advertising - any fact checking at all
blows your credibility out of the water.  More than one person/newsletter
got weeded out tonight.

Moral of the story - keep your numbers (however large):-) in line with the
facts and you increase your credibilty. Distort your numbers and you've
lost the one chance you had to impress an advertiser.

Doug Green
Doug Green, author, newsletter publisher, gardener and sailor
My latest book "Gardening Wisdom" How to succeed in your garden 
using advice from old time garden writers. 
http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com to get your gardening questions answered.



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