Its all about relationships -

What you buy, sell, or trade depends on how you like the gal you're talking to...

Relationship marketing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Relationship marketing is a form of marketing that evolved from direct response marketing in the 1960s and emerged in the 1980s, in which emphasis is placed on building longer term relationships with customers rather than on individual transactions. It involves understanding the customer's needs as they go through their life cycles. It emphasizes providing a range of products or services to existing customers as they need them."

A great deal more data can be found by reading the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Now you can see the philosophical base for all my work in email/article marketing and how it fits together.

Oddly, my interest in computers through graphic design led me to podcasts (as well as a way to assuage the boredom of warehouse work while paying for college). This then led me to Doc Searls and his book.

Since I had done quite a bit of work earlier in this area this simply fell into place. I came full circle back to it when researching how to market my published books on Lulu.

The point is to enable people to improve their quality of life through utilizing internet access.

Just heard of a person who lives outside a town of a hundred people or so - she cross-breeds specific small dogs and sells them to people in Chicago, New York and other large destinations. Does all her sales on the Internet. She is filling a specific niche.

I should try that with the special grass-fed beef and small-bale hay from this farm...

This stuff works. But that is what philosophy is - an admiration for stuff that works. (From the old Huna adage - "Effectivness is the measure of truth.")