For awhile, I ran contests among the readership, with various little “games” to play.
Niche Masters Who Can Kill You
My remarks to the second (and last) Online News Summit in 1998.
True Business
Roto-Reuter
Every once in a while I get a note asking why I use the credit “(Reuter)” instead of “(Reuters)”.
I Finally Nail a Copyright Infringer
One of the most irritating things about publishing online is people who think that if it’s online, it’s free — and they can copy it. Wrong! Copyright infringement is stealing.
H.U. — A Prequel
The “Honorary Unsubscribe” doesn’t exist yet, but this week’s Premium issue — the first Premium edition ever — had something at the top that previewed the idea:
A Premium Idea
The daunting task of using poor-quality email software finally make it too hard to publish True by email every week, so I came up with an idea: publish it every other week.
No Looking Back
My business plan for True predicted I’d be able to quit my Day Job two years after launch and work online full time.
The First Hundred
This week Jordan becomes the 100th country (that I know of) on my distribution list, less than two years after the publication’s launch.
Another Year, Another Dollar
Clearly, the “commercial activity online” taboo is a bit slow to die off, but my first paid ad is a good one. I wasn’t depending on ad income to survive …which is an awfully good thing! That’s what enabled True to survive in the long run.
True Joins the Web
Nearly a year old, This is True didn’t even have a web site until this week.
Trademarked Out of a Title
Around the first of the month I asked my lawyer to trademark “This Just In” — the title of the column and newsletter that is coming up on a year old. The request results in the first “uh oh” of the publication’s short life.
First Newspaper Client
The second income stream called out in my business plan gels with my first newspaper client carrying TJI as a newspaper column.
Maybe It’s A Tumor
This Just In continues to grow: I had three more countries joining this week: Malaysia, Korea and Finland.
Genesis: “This Just In”
Once I had the business plan set, I looked at the pile of upcoming bulletin board items and decided how I would format them — and started writing. Over the weekend, I designed what I thought a “plain text” email newsletter should look like, including how long I thought it should be, and finished the first issue.
How I Invented For-Profit Email Publishing
I “invented” for-profit email publishing on Wednesday, June 22, 1994. I’m not aware of any others who claim to have invented it before that time [but see the update below]. This is a brief description of what I came up with, and how.
Introducing My Blog
This obviously wasn’t written in 1994 (the date showing on this posting, and the date This is True was born, albeit under a maiden name) — blogs didn’t exist in 1994. When “web logs” — blogs — started showing up years later, readers kept asking when I was going to get one.