Well, we did talk about advertising on Storyteller.net, but you spammed my directory anyway.

Our use policy is linked on every page at http://www.storyteller.net/articles/34:
"We do not allow anyone not directly on our staff to "harvest" or "gather" information, including Email addresses, from our directory."

I understand you think you do not need national exposure. But I think you will find our advertising prices very reasonable. For only $10 you can get exposure in our newsletter for one month- that’s thousands of exposures per month.

Even more than the advertising, what about writing an article on your area of expertise? I mean a real article, not a 300 word advertisement. As long as it contained actual usable information, we would publish it in the site or in the newsletter- you would get read and your phone would ring. You would then not SPAM the site and might establish yourself as the expert for our readers.

I do want you to be educated about what happened. Please understand that your Emails *were* UCE- Unsolicited Commercial Email- to the members of our site, no matter what you call them. Each member you send Email to has no idea if you sent it to 100’so people or if you sent it to just them. I myself received three copies of the Email- I have various Emails that I use on the site to determine when and if Emails are "harvested." All that the storytellers know is that they received Email from someone that they did not request. They don’t know they were handpicked and it makes no difference.

You are not the first to Spam our tellers and sadly you are not the last. It’s the way things go. Are your prices reasonable? Yes. Do you have a good reference? Yes? Do those things make a difference? No.

I guess that the analogy I would make is this- I could not walk into your business, use your equipment, use your obvious skill and knowledge then walk away from your business without paying you. You have used considerable time and talent to develop a valuable service to the community. You’ve spent thousands of dollars to make an important and viable service.

. . .And so have we with Storyteller.net. Our directory is a commodity. We offer it as a community service to develop the art of storytelling. We’ve paid thousands of dollars to develop it and maintain it. I pay 100’s of dollars per month in usage fees, labor and hosting. You can bet I do not generate that kind of income from the site in my role as site owner. Our site is a gift to the storytelling community and has been for the last SEVEN years- that’s forever in Internet terms. However, when someone uses Storyteller.net for commercial gain, we should be compensated for it- even the token amounts we charge for advertising. The very site itself is altruistic in nature, but still the fact remains that "the worker is worthy of his wage."