Today’s topic is a break out discussion from my posts on “The Free Labor Economy.” If you haven’t already read part 3 of that discussion please do so now before reading further.
There are three main categories of Internet marketing, perpetual marketing flash marketing, and dull glow.
Permanent marketing, by my definition, is content on sites which will stay up as long as you or the host keep them up. A good example is this blog. It currently costs less than $20/year for the URL and hosting. Assuming I die tomorrow it wouldn’t take much for my estate to keep it up and running for another 20 years or so.
Flash marketing, by my definition, has an extremely limited life span. Good examples of these are ads you pay for on other sites. The ad will be up for a certain number of impressions or days then it will be gone along with your money.
I used to include Twitter in the flash marketing camp, but Google has recently began a Twitter archive which now puts Twitter content in the dull glow marketing category.
Direct email via some marketing service will at best be flash marketing. If it is direct email to people who physically sign themselves up at one of your sites then it is definitely flash marketing. People will receive the email then it will sit around for a few minutes to a few months before it disappears. RSS feeds from a blog or site are also flash marketing as they have the same life span.
Usenet newsgroups are permanent marketing. Yes, there are many debates as to the number of people they really reach when created, but, they are indexed by most major search engines and Usenet host sites tend to keep things for the life of the newsgroup. Some newsgroups get shut down for legal or ethical reasons, but, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one “age off” due to inactivity. This means once you post something and get it through the moderators if the group is moderated, the post will be there and searchable for the life of the Internet.
