Articles like this always bring out the part of HN that simply can not understand normal people.
It's kind of funny that as a community we make a bunch of web apps paid for by ads, yet all swear we don't click on ads. We all swear that we don't read spam, yet somehow half the businesses on HN heavily use email marketing.
There are people out there that click on ads. There are people out there that click through emails. If you don't understand that, and your competitors do, you will get crushed.
I write code, and subscribe to a lot of newsletters.
When I get an email that provides me with some immediate value, and then pitches me to exchange some money to deliver more value, I'm probably going to open up my wallet.
Peepcode is a great example. I'm not going to spend time checking back to see if there's new content, but I occasionally get emails for them advertising a new screencast. It benefits me ("Hey, I'm partially interested in X, and I can get a good baseline understanding of X for an hour of my time and $Y"), and I know for a fact I'm not the only "hacker" who gets these emails.
It's kind of funny that as a community we make a bunch of web apps paid for by ads, yet all swear we don't click on ads. We all swear that we don't read spam, yet somehow half the businesses on HN heavily use email marketing.
There are people out there that click on ads. There are people out there that click through emails. If you don't understand that, and your competitors do, you will get crushed.