Assuming you just put in your email address into that annoying little light box, you will soon get an email from me. If you didn’t and now want to, feel free to fill out the form on the side of this page. I’ve been running this blog/site for a little over a year now. It had a humble start, but traffic picked up toward the end of last year. Some posts received thousands of hits, while others have had hardly any at all. Sigh, some things just don’t take off. Most likely, they weren’t well written. Despite best intentions, it does happen.

In the past, I almost always posted new updates on Facebook. Recently, I noticed an interesting trend. I got fewer and fewer hits from the platform while others (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.,) went in the opposite direction.

With Twitter, Facebook, and all the rest, the Internet and mobile are a battlefield of noise. Even if you are a friend of mine on Facebook, my posting updates rarely reach more than 5% of you. I know, they want me to advertise these posts, but that isn’t necessarily a cheap proposition. I do believe this is challenging balance for these platforms. Who sees posts from who and why?

In terms of reading preference, do you want to be at the mercy of an algorithm? I remember taking a post-graduate exam back in the day. Your answer to the first question determined the difficulty of the next question. Getting that first question right or wrong had a big impact on your leveling and ultimately your score. If you click on the wrong article, does that mean you get ten more in your feed just like it?

I also believe folks still like to get a direct email. Personally, I do. It’s more meaningful.

So, I’ve decided to run an experiment on email for distribution. In the tech industry, I know email was supposed to die along time ago, but I think it’s going to be around for along time. Radio changed the world back in the day, and it’s still around (And not going anywhere). In a world where people change email addresses less often than physical addresses, it probably makes sense to give email distribution a new look.

Here’s my pitch:

• I’ve collected a few email addresses over the past year. If you’re in that system, I’m moving you to a new email system that’s industry hardened and more secure. If you haven’t signed up yet, give it a go. There is a signup form on almost every post.
• I won’t sell your information. Nor, will I spam you ever. On average, I try to post once every couple weeks but that usually comes out to once a month between managing my day job, stuff on the homefront, etc.,
• Which means, I’ll probably send out an email once per month.
• I also have a few projects that are supposed to come out (time willing) later this year. I’ll send these out to email subscribers first. And maybe, I’ll even do a giveaway from time to time. These will go to subscribers first as well.
• Speaking of giveaway, for the first few folks who sign-up I’ll send out a paperback copy of my book Knights of Legend. There is a two step process to complete the sign-up to this site. After that, you should get an email directing you to the page to collect a mailing address for delivery. Due to a few legal rules, the publisher needs to send out the book.

For folks who use Gmail and my email ends up in your “Promotions” folder, please do me a favor and drag it to your “Primary” so it doesn’t get lost in all the match.com notifications, Amazon special offers and other whatnots.

If you get annoyed, you can always unsubscribe. No worries (it’s pretty easy), and I won’t be offended, at least not much. We’ll see what this does for traffic and see if I want to keep it going in the future. Thanks for everything.

Keep reading (even if it’s not my stuff, it’s a good best practice),