Sometime back, I’d say it was early or mid 2008 if you asked me to pin it down — though I must admit to being temporally challenged — many newsletter publishers discovered that it was more profitable to run advertising driven lists than it was to run content driven newsletters.

There were even a couple of e-books published about the fact that running content heavy newsletters were not the best use of a publisher’s time. And some marketers actually ran split tests to decide whether the dropout  rates outweighed the purchase rates after slashing the content. It seems that in many cases the content light, lists ran more profitably than the content heavy newsletters.

Now, I don’t begrudge these marketers their profits one bit. If that is what puts their kids through school, then I am all for it and I wish them well. On the other hand, as a reader, I must confess I get inordinately more pleasure from reading articles than I do from reading ads.

I ignore a lot of emails these days.

Noah Fleming, who runs the Rich Jerks Marketing Alliance, once suggested to his membership that they simply un-subscribe from their lists as a way of reducing the noise that so often gets in the way of productivity. Many of the members reported beneficial results from this exercise.

I never took that drastic a step, but I did move my email to Google Aps and take advantage of the excellent filtering features available there to filter these lists into separate folders. There are a number of folders that, quite honestly, I haven’t opened in months. Some of these have more than a thousand emails, not one of which have I so much as read the subject line.

The idea of just un-subscribing from lists en masse has made a few rounds through the various Internet marketing forums. One group will argue that it is the best thing people can do to decrease distraction and information overload, while another will argue that the lists offer the best free education in writing ads and offers available. Both sides have their merit, though I would tend to say there is more merit in reducing noise.

In truth, the high content newsletter publishers include ads in their newsletters and some, most really, even send out straight ads to their lists as well. So the opportunity to read ads is still there, and since most of the guys publishing these newsletters are aware of and promote many of the same things the list publishers promote, you aren’t really all that likely to miss out on the next big thing — though, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing for some if this weren’t the case.

What I am proposing to do here is start a list of High Content Value Newsletters. In order for a newsletter to make it to the list it should meet certain quality guidelines. It should;

• be published with some frequency, at least monthly;
• offer genuine information content consistently — the content is actionable;
• not be overrun with ads — content should make up 70 percent or more of a typical issue;
• be published by a qualified publisher;
• be written at least partly by the publisher — guest writers are fins, but the publisher’s writing should add continuity and authority to the newsletter.

There is no problem with making offers and publishing ads, but many people are doing nothing but that, and that’s where I am objecting. I want to reward those who put in the effort to build the value in their publication. I want to cast my vote for the best of the best with my continued readership.

Now, I’m not talking about after the sale lists. I’m talking about the lists that you sign up for at a landing page or from a form on another page before you buy anything. often, you need to stay on after the sale lists and pay attention to them for product updates and support, that’s a different thing.

I’m setting up a page to list these newsletters. I’ll list the first couple of them in this post, but I’ll be updating and maintaining a list on the Official High Content Value Newsletter page here.

I’m going start voting. I’ll be going through my archives. If it’s not an after sale support list, and it’s full of nothing but offers, I’ll be un-subscribing from the list. If it’s a high quality newsletter with real, actionable content, I’ll be sharing it with you.

Here are a couple, in no particular order, to get you started:

While Andy Williams no longer publishes the copy in the email, he still emails the alert when he puts up the newsletter, and it’s a great newsletter.

Duncan Carver publishes great information. I don’t think enough of you know about him at all.

EzineArticles has a core set of newsletters that really deliver. if you write articles (or blog posts) you really should consider a subscription to a couple of them. There are also feeds for each category that you can have sent announcing each new article posted to the category.

Clayton Makepeace’s The Total Package is about 50 percent offers and 50 percent news. Clayton writes about half of the articles, and the content is always great.

Chris Garrett publishes an info packed newsletter edition of his New Media blog. It gets delivered straight to your e-mail in-box. This is a valuable subscription, especially if you are a blogger.

That’s all for now. I’ll get a page up and start adding more shortly. In the mean time, be sure to let me know about any newsletters you think i should add to the list in the comment form below. Just remember, if you post more than two links in a comment, it’ll trigger the moderation queue and I’ll have to approve it before it gets published.

What do you think about rewarding the content publisher and un-subscribing the list publishers? Do you know of any high quality newsletter that I should add to my list? Let me know, the comments are open.