43 Folders

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Merlin’s weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin. We talk about creativity, independence, and making things you love.

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”What’s 43 Folders?”
43Folders.com is Merlin Mann’s website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.

Use the Interwebs to Get Rich!!! Promote Your New Product for FREE on Blog$!!1!1!

So, either I forgot about sending out a lot of requests to receive press releases or, more likely, an extraordinary number of people have suddenly decided I should be talking about their product on this site. Lucky me.

My mitzvah to you once and future senders of PR comes in the form of these million-dollar tips for promoting your product. Before you send email to (or, God forbid, telephone) Z-list bloggers like myself, please consider these friendly tips for not coming off as a complete tool:

  • Don't email anything generically business-y unless the recipient has expressly requested this contact
    • If your first email to me ever is a bulk mail press release, you're officially dead on arrival
  • Don't send PR and promotional materials to a personal email account
    • Not providing a "Send Crap About Your Product Here" link was not an oversight; wardialing personal email addresses is a nemesis-making workaround
  • Don't assume that someone responding to an email once 2 years ago equates wanting any kind of bulk mail contact today
    • Say Cheese
  • Do be insanely gracious about handling the recipient's request for removal from every conceivable mailing list you might have put them on
    • Getting attitude about problems I did not create is a major-league turn-off
  • Do research the site, learn what the blogger values, and then provide an attractive and highly individualized case for paying an iota of attention to you (hint: free stuff helps)
    • My three least favorite words this week are already "For Immediate Release" -- send me another unrequested press release with extreme caution
  • Do understand that no one has, to date, started a weblog in order to make your business successful
    • If I had, you'd damn sure be paying out the butt for it, believe me
  • Don't compound the annoyance by reading this and then penning a weepy, gothic epistle about what a meany-bo-beeny the blogger is
    • And, no, there's no need to apologize either; just...you know...quit it already

Thank you, friends, and good luck with opening the kimono to your paradigm-shifting productization of best-of-breed parallelization in whatever space you're currently in (viz a viz, the network effect &c.). May your vertical markets bear low-hanging fruits, may your bottom line be net net, and may you -- at the end of the day -- capture every eyeball you seek.

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About Merlin

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Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who created the website you’re reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today, Back to Work, and Kung Fu Grippe. Also? He’s writing this book, he lives with this face, he suffers from this hair, he answers these questions, and he’s had this life. So far.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written in the past few years is an essay entitled, “Cranking.”

 
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