Thanks to your support, as of Jan 1st 2004, our newsletters ceased carrying paid ads from external sponsors.
I'd like to stress that our ad sales guy, Dan Zebroski was doing a great job (in fact he was about to sell out most slots for first quarter.)
The fact is, when I founded MarketingSherpa four years ago, it was from a gut-level need to serve marketers with useful, non-biased information to make their jobs easier. I had just been a marketer in corporate America for 14 years, so I guess I secretly wanted to help out my former self.
While all our sponsors were great folks offering services I felt we could recommend -- and none ever pressured us to alter editorial -- I felt slightly uncomfortable relying on vendor support to serve you.
Maybe it's because I'm at heart a marketer instead of a salesperson. Maybe it's because it's easier to serve one type of customer really well, instead of two. Maybe it's because we publish Buyer's Guides which require no taint of bias.
Plus, if I didn't have to carry outside ads, then I could slenderize issue layout and design.
So, thanks to your support, we've been able to make the changeover. You'll still get our content free for at least 10 days (from date of original posting on our site.) You just won't have to look at outside sponsors' ads anymore.
Instead, the ads will only be for best-of marketing handbooks and resources published by both us and many others which are available at reasonable prices at SherpaStore.com. We'll also sometimes promote trade shows we think are great in exchange for promotional consideration.
We may not make as much money as we would have otherwise, but this change feels "right" to me. And hey, I'm the Publisher!
