I am usually not a fan of firesales. With a few exceptions, I don't generally buy products from firesales. Reason? Many! Mostly I don't like them because either there is a lack of product-related support, or the products sold are crappy and useless. But there are a few marketers who I really like very much and whenever they host any firesales I make sure to purchase them right away! These are the few marketers who know what a firesale actually is. It so happened that I was so impressed with the products of a particular firesale that I contacted the webmaster and asked him when is he going to host the next firesale? His reply was rather vague, and he said that firesales have taken a beating these days. Think about it: he is one who makes a lot of money from firesales, and he himself has negative views about it. What do you conclude from it? :) Anyways, I didn't reply back to him, but at the back of my mind I knew how wrong he was! Firesales are certainly not dead, nor have they taken a beating. As always, the rule of Internet marketing is that, over time, only profitable businesses will survive. Websites that sell good products, be it on a stand-alone basis or in firesales, are extremely popular and will continue to be. His comment further reminds me of some other marketers who created websites claming that giveaways are dead, adsense is dead, email marketing is dead and the father of them all- Internet marketing itself is dead! So what is my take on these 'dead' sites? Are giveaways dead? Certainly not. And I am not saying this just because I happened to host a giveaway last year. The giveaway was not really huge, but my members and JV partners were extremely pleased with it, and that is what ultimately matters to me: more than making money, satisfying members customers should be the top priority of any business, online or offline. But I myself knew of many junk giveaway websites which didn't provide any value to members in spite of their big launches. And these giveaways fell dead on tracks. This prompted the 'gurus' to claim that giveaways are dead. But this is simply not true. The profitable giveaways continue to survive and deliver value, and people swear by these sites. The second point: is Adsense is dead? Now I am not an Adsense guru so I am not sure whether I am qualified to comment on this, but the fact remains that I do make money in adsense, however little it is, and that tells me that Adsense is not dead. However, adsense is certainly not suitable as a full time job. You can earn money through adsense through part time work, but if you want to make a full time living with it, there is a lot of hard work involved in it. If you want to succeed in the shortest possible time then adsense certainly should not be your goal. The third point: is email marketing dead? Not really. If it would have been dead then the 90% of marketers who use email marketing as a primary source of income would have been dead too! Don't you agree? 
Arrival of RSS doesn't mean that email marketing is dead. Forget using it- how many newbies who surf the internet everyday know the meaning of RSS? Internet marketing is certainly not dead. If anything then the B.S marketing is slowly dying. Do you know the reason for developing websites that claim a popular thing (such as Adsense or Internet marketing) to be dead ? Well, these gurus have two aims in mind. A) They want to scare you away. Once you move out of the market, that means thay have just nuked out one of their potential competitors. B) If you are one who won't move out of the market just because somebody said something won't work,then these gurus will scare you into believing that they,and only THEY have the right solution to your problems. For example,the guru who used to claim that adsense is dead was found out to have created a memberhsip site that is supposed to become an 'alternative source of income' for "ex-adsense" publishers. Bottomline is, they want to make the reality as scary as possible. Once you are scared, you will do two things: 1. Join their mailing list; 2. Buy whatever they have got to offer you, as a 'solution to easy success'. Believe it or not, this is a new marketing tactic, and an easy way to fleece the innocent consumer. You, as a newboy, rely on the so-called 'integrity' of the guru, and even before you realize it, you have been defrauded by that guru! Now,I am not saying that all gurus are bad. There are some gurus who are actually quite helpful to the newbies. But the number of such gurus overall can be roughly estimated at just 10%. How long will this continue to be like this? No one knows. But there is a solution to it. The next time someone comes up with a claim that something is 'dead', ask yourself: is it really dead? Always research and try to find the truth before you believe the next guru! Thank you for reading this far.
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