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 Online Survival Depends on Sincerity Send this report to me by auto-responder Once I made a mistake that could have cost me months of hard work and set back my online success, but it did not. Why? I believe it is because I have been doing what I do sincerely. People forgive honest mistakes if they value what you do. OK. That is not entirely true. I have made mistakes more than once. OK Actually, I make mistakes all the time. But the last one with you was a whopper. Issue 9 of my Secrets for Success newsletter was like some Steven King novel mixed with Candid Camera...."We thought it would be funny to promise hundreds of subscribers complete privacy and then send an email with every single name in the CC part of the message." (Do not try to find those names in the archived copy of this newsletter at http://www.stealthpromotions.com/free_reports.htm , you won't find them.) Those who received the last issue know what I mean. Suffice to say that my error made my promise that starts each newsletter appear to be a "bald-faced" lie. I cannot describe the sinking feeling I had when I looked at my copy of the last issue to see all the names of my subscribers. So. What happened? Betcha you are a little curious. I was. Did I lose all my hard-earned subscribers? Was I turned in to hundreds of ISPs for some kind of complaints? Nope. At last count, best I can tell, I lost about 2% of my readership. Most of those were angry with me (as I was with myself) for my mistake. But to be honest, I expected many more unsubscribes. That is an observation, not a request you unsubscribe. About 5% of you communicated with me, mostly the same day you received the message. Of this group, a little more than half told me to forget about it, and the rest began to tear into me for potential problems. About 1/2 of the group who complained wrote a second email taking back part of all of what they had said after reading the email apology which was sent out almost immediately after I could see what had happened. Best response? "To err is human. To really screw things up, you need a As of today's date, my readership has grown by about 10% over the last issue after all the comings and goings of this last week. Several new client contacts were created. One comes as direct result of what I have been doing in the past, what I did with the last issue, and how it was handled afterwards. Why? I have been reading your messages to me and spending some time thinking about how I "got away" with this. Perhaps this newsletter is routinely deleted so no one noticed? Probably there is some truth there, but I hope many of you find this very valuable information, and read each issue carefully. Perhaps your email provider cut off the problem email because of the very large header, so you don't know this happened? That does not work as the answer since my apology email was sent to the whole list, and it was not rejected. I explained exactly what happened in that second note. Actually, I think I "got away" with this because I did what you would do in any valuable relationship, online or off. I made a mistake. I confessed. I asked to be forgiven, and I was. I did what I did in error, told you so, and you believed me. Thanks very much. I truly appreciate that. I did not need to wait for Mr. Star to investigate me or the publisher of some skin magazine to pay for a story about me, not that either would. I did not even need to see requests for information from several of you to know what I had to do. My sincere apology was on its way before you contacted me. I would have sent it immediately except I had to be sure to not repeat the mistake in the second message. Granddad used to say, "You can judge your friends by the reaction your get when your pet goes to the bathroom on their carpet." I am pleased that most of you let me make clean up the mess and have invited me back. I am going to keep that dog at home from here on. Thanks. Copyright © 1998 Stealth Promotions Chris Kilian operates Stealth Promotions. This article can be copied and used in your publication or on
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