A reader forwarded me another marketer's email that said, "Are email agencies fucked?" And she (the reader who forwarded me the message) asked: "I wanted to know what you thought of this - is the writing on the wall for email copywriting?" That was two days ago. Yesterday I saw a promo (in my email inbox) with the subject line, "R.I.P. Email Marketing." And last week, I polled my readers on a different question, and got a response from a reader (and member of Daily Email House), who runs a 6-figure info publishing and coaching business. He wrote: "The sales from emails are really down, I sell maybe 10 % of my revenue through email, the rest is from ads and I am sending good emails, if I say so myself and almost daily." Is something in the water that I failed to notice? Or is email marketing dying? Any thoughts or better yet direct experiences?

I've been going through the feedback I got to the last pre-auction poll I ran in this community. Frankly wasn't enough interest to run that auction, which was for a course to teach you how to run auctions (I know, very meta). Still, I followed up with folks who said they would bid $1 on the auction. I wanted to find out why they offered to bid, and if they are genuinely interested in learning more about auctions. I got lotsa answers. One thread I found was that folks, even though they may be interested in auctions, seemed to doubt they themselves could pull off an auction, either with their own audience or with a partner. So I had an idea. What if we had a playground, a sandbox, where folks could run fun, low-stakes auctions, both to get experience and to prove to themselves they can actually do this? There would have to be guardrails in place to make sure the auctions stayed low-stakes and fun. I was thinking the bidding could start at $0.01, and only go up by a penny, or a nickel, or a dime. Maybe there would also be a tight time limit, like 5 minutes? For the bidders, the point here would be to have fun bidding, more than, "Let's buy really serious stuff." For the auctioneers, this would be an opportunity to practice running an auction without stress, and to get experience coming up with a tiny but still sexy offer. As for what those tiny but still sexy offers could, there are lots of possible ideas, and I'm open to all of them. The thing that came to my mind would simply be a single bit of information. For example, in response to my email yesterday (and pretty much in response to every email in which I mention a book I'm reading without naming it), I got a reader writing in: "Is it possible for you to share the name of the book you're reading, please?" Hell no. Not for free. But for a penny... maybe we could talk about it? So let me ask you: Is this "Penny Auction Playground" a dumb idea? Would you come spectate? Would you even participate? Would you bid? Would you run your own penny auction?

Happy New Year! I found myself at midnight on the couch of my apartment watching The Good, The Bad & The Ugly for the first time in 20 years. (Screen capture included.) Maybe foreshadowing of my coming year? How did you celebrate? And where did the New Year find you?

@Ann V comes up with a great suggestion: "What if we had a dedicated weekly thread just for sharing what we’re currently working on? Not the finished product, not the big win, but the messy middle. It could be, 'I’m struggling to write the hook for this email,' or 'I’m trying to figure out this new landing page layout.' This lowers the bar for sharing, makes success feel more achievable, and directly creates those "if they can do it, I can do it" moments." I think this is a great idea, and so I am officially kicking off this thread right now. I'll even share my "messy middle" situation in the first comment below.

Can I get your help? I'm wondering how we could create the equivalent atmosphere of an under-15 tennis camp here inside Daily Email House. The background: A couple days ago, I was watching an interview with a pro tennis player, Francis Tiafoe. Tiafoe is part of a generation of top American tennis players who all came up together. And by that I mean... They lived together in the same dorms, sleeping in bunk beds one above the other... ... they trained together on same courts for hours each day, day after day... ... they competed against each other since they were 12. And today they are all in the top 10 top 20 in the world. It's kind of like if, inside this Daily Email House group, 5-10 House members today end up being among the top 10 or top 20 biggest and richest online influencers in the world in 10 years from now, on the scale of Tim Ferris or Gary Vee. Speaking about what made this possible, Tiafoe said: === They did a good job always putting us in camps [to train together and to compete against each other]. I'm seeing these guys two weeks out of every month, from 13 on. I'm looking around, trying to be the best out of this group, not really thinking about big picture, turning pro, or anything like that. But this group right here? I GOTTA be the guy. === The guy interviewing Tiafoe, a former world #1 named Andy Roddick, called this "healthy jealousy." On the one hand, maybe you don't like the sound of jealousy, whether healthy or not. At the same time, consider what Tiafoe also said. First off, he said that he and all the other guys who came up together are all still friends today, 15+ years after being thrown in these "healthy jealousy" tennis camps to train and compete together. He also put a positive spin on the competition and jealousy part of it: === Everybody just kept going. We always had that mentality, "Well if this guy did it, I can definitely do it." We just kept believing off each other. === That sound pretty nice actually.