Hi Mike,

Thanks - very stimulating post! :)

> Email and ezines you say?
> Most people are receiving so much and so
> many as to render electronic communication
> virtually meaningless. We just don’t have
> the time to go through it all AND THEN
> DECIPHER IT AND TAKE ACTION ON IT.

I partly agree with you here.... Though I do think there is a kind of analogy of an ezine, with a real life magazine. An ezine is a way of building a valuable "list"....

But what you say is true too - there are a "flood" of ezines out there, in CERTAIN areas. For example, there seem to be hundreds of ezines dealing with business and marketing! The reason why is because ezines are so inexpensive to distribute!

Here's where I think niche marketing can be very valuable.... What if you produce the ONLY ezine around about keeping pet hermit crabs? Every week (or every month), you could write various tips for hermit crab owners, to help them care for and interact with their hermit crabs.

(I'm a former pet hermit crab owner myself! If I still owned pet hermit crabs, I'd certainly subscribe to such an ezine....)

Because you'd have the only ezine for this market, your list will be much more valuable, and probably more widely read by your subscribers....

So, I wouldn't write off ezines. Many ezines are quite profitable.... Naturally, the larger your list of "quality" subscribers, the more profitable your ezine could be. In the hermit crab ezine example, you could make profits by selling advertising space to makers of hermit crab products, selling your own hermit crab products, or selling other people's hermit crab products for a commission....

(Hermit crabs may not be the best area to make a profit - I don't know. Feel free to substitute Siamese fighting fish for hermit crabs. ;) )

- Dien Rice