After weeks of thought, I've decided to end the Internet Marketing
Discussion List before it becomes less of a fond memory.
Frankly, I believe, even with the continued and active participation of a
good fraction of its membership, that the level of discussion on the list
has become less and less interesting over time, and we're repeating
ourselves ad nauseum for the most part. As moderator, I can't point to
anyone but myself as the contributor or cause of this decline; that decline
directly correlates to my decreasing lack of interest and time to invest in
the list.
The list has been fascinating to run, but it's taken up a never-decreasing
chunk of time in my life which I'm now ready to devote to other business
and personal tasks. The income that, until recently, sponsorship and
subscriptions have provided have covered the costs of staff, myself,
equipment, and other expense in running the list, but we're really at a
zero-sum at the moment. I don't want to make money off the list per se; and
my CD-ROM idea has gotten raspberries from list participants.
The spark is gone for me, and it's hard for me to put anything less than
100% effort behind what I'm involved with. Since I've lost my interest in
the list, and it's an idiosyncratic venture, it's time to shut 'er down. It
involves from five to ten hours per week of my time, and, after nearly two
years of this, I'd rather be biking, dining, working on other projects, or
writing.
To give you all an idea of the rest of my life, I now write three columns
for various publications, do major features for others from time to time,
am editorial directing the Adobe Internet Conference series, and -- to boot
-- run a web development company that handles 200K hits per day between its
various clients. Because of the list and the web development business, I've
been anchored to email for nearly two years without respite. I'm about to
take three weeks off starting late June, and I decided the time was right
to make the break.
The archives will stay active indefinitely, as will the marketing resources
on the web section we've put together at <<a href="http://i-m.com">http://i-m.com</a>>.
I feel that the list was enough of a piece of myself that I am not prepared
to let anyone else to use the name, the subscriber list, or its archives,
so please don't attempt to, or I will pursue action to combat unauthorized
use.
Thanks for all the fun, folks, and a great learning experience.
See you . . . out there.
Glenn Fleishman
Moderator