Duplicate content penalty for email text!

I don't just sit here and try to find things to stew about all day long; they just seem to find me. This one's been finding me quit often lately.

I go a couple days without checking one of my email accounts. I see some guru-dweeb has sent me an email on, say, Monday with a title something like, "Mike, The Secret Auto-Blogging Plan For $3,000 A Week". Now, I'm not going to open it in the first place because I know what it will contain. Junk, butt-lint, and affiliate links for the newest flavor-of-the-month product.

Now, the very next day I get another email from the guy with a title something like, "Oops Mike, broken link fixed!" If you were to open that email it would be exactly like the first one (which didn't have any broken links in it to begin with).

The guy explains that some subscribers complained that one of the links was broken in his first email so he fixed the link and blasted the damn thing out again. Come on dude! You're trying to convince me that you're this demi-god, super-affiliate guru and you can't even copy and paste a link into your emails! Don't you test them before you send them out?

I want to email the guy back and ask him if he's every seen the show "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?" Either, 1. you're not smarter than a 5th grader, or 2. you are just using a bull-sh*t technique to send the same promotion out to your list two times without looking like a spammer. Cut me a break. So I impose my own duplicate content penalty on these numb-skulls. I unsubscribe and get on a list where the person actually cares enough about me to give me some value from time to time.

And this leads into my next gripe. When I read an email saying that they have a free video showing me how exactly how I can make $5,000 a week or something like that.


Big tip: If you want me to trust you and have confidence in what you recommend to me, then don't lie to me right out of the gate in the title or content of your email. If you're unwilling to give me something of value from time to time, then don't expect me to order through your freakin' affiliate links.