A reader forwarded me another marketer's email that said, "Are email agencies fucked?" And she (the reader who forwarded me the message) asked: "I wanted to know what you thought of this - is the writing on the wall for email copywriting?" That was two days ago. Yesterday I saw a promo (in my email inbox) with the subject line, "R.I.P. Email Marketing." And last week, I polled my readers on a different question, and got a response from a reader (and member of Daily Email House), who runs a 6-figure info publishing and coaching business. He wrote: "The sales from emails are really down, I sell maybe 10 % of my revenue through email, the rest is from ads and I am sending good emails, if I say so myself and almost daily." Is something in the water that I failed to notice? Or is email marketing dying? Any thoughts or better yet direct experiences?

I've been going through replies to yesterday's productivity poll. Thanks to everyone who voted. Spoiler: I ran the poll because I'm collecting market research in preparation for an affiliate promo I will be doing soon. Now here's an easy and possibly fun marketing riddle about that. It's called, "How to manipulate Bejako into saying yes." A few months back, I got an email from the owner of the affiliate offer I will be promoting soon. Here's the way the interaction played out: OFFER OWNER: Hey, I thought since you did really well with [previous offer I promoted from the guy], you might wanna take a look at this offer? I took a look. The new offer turned out to be a training on how to be more productive. I was confident the training would be valuable for my audience (the offer owner is a very successful and productive guy, and his previous offer was legit). But I just didn't believe it would sell, based on my experience, and that's what I told him. BEJAKO: "I honestly don't think I could do a good job promoting this to my list. Whenever I've tried promoting any kind of productivity or self-help stuff, I just couldn't get people to move and definitely couldn't get them to buy." But the offer owner had read Jim Camp's Start With No. He took my "no" as just the beginning of the negotiation, and he came back to me with another message. You know how this story ends. After that next message, I agreed to promote this productivity offer, even though I had reservations about how many sales I will make out of it. So here's the riddle for you: What did the offer owner said to me in his second message to convince me to promote his offer as an affiliate... even though I initially said no? I'll give you a hint: It's something that goes way beyond getting affiliate partners to agree to promote your offer, and is relevant whatever you are selling to whoever might be buying.