Recently I have asked that question in a marketing related, private forum. The answers were quite interesting and mostly driven by fear.

• I don’t want to annoy my readers.
  
  
• I am glad to find something to write about every now and then.

Have you ever been not really in the mood for writing a blog post or a valuable message to your e-mail list members? I have to admit that I felt a bit like that this morning. So I browsed through a popular article directory and wanted to find one useful article, which I can republish and share with you. But before I found an appropriate article, I decided to write this one myself instead.

Here is the lesson I have learned about articles in article directories

• It seems that everybody who can write writes and submits articles to article directories. It takes some time till you find an author who has genuine expertise, who does not rehash the same facts as everybody else.
  
  
• The best and only good part of most articles is the title.
  
  
• Only a few really good articles from a few writers get re-published a lot.
  
  
• In most cases you could and should write a better blog article yourself.

What turns me off most are false claims, and assertions which are not substantiated by facts or resources. For example I read the following statement.

“Studies reveal that one newsletter a month is optimal in communicating with your subscribers.”

That’s Bullshit Marketing!

I mean, come on, even common sense tells you that this is bad advice. And the pseudo-expert author even tries to make it more believable by calling his source “Studies.” Where are the studies? Why doesn’t he refer to them? I guess I do not really need to answer that question, do I.

I start the new week with giving you excellent reading tips. Yes, I feel a bit lazy today, and I do admit it. However, the content I give you links for is worth your clicks.

In my Get More Done posts I have written about the importance of handling email the right way rather than getting overwhelmed by email. Tim Ferris (↑), author of the 4-hour-workweek goes one step further. He even outsources the handling of all of his email (about 1,000 emails per day) and only spend 10 minutes with it a day. Sounds cool? He even shows you his procedure that works for him and he actually wants you to steal it, modify it, use it for yourself. If you have trouble with handling the size of your inbox, you should learn from Tim.

Even, if you are not ready — but being not ready is one of the oldest excuses for procrastination by the way — you can apply some of the rules to automatic filters, autoresponders, etc.

Here is Tim's post: