Martin Q&A about his work and the site

XRAT · 24 August 2006 at 11:22AM

You must have met a few M.P.s by now and realised that despite having floated to the top they aren't necessarily super-human. They need all the assistance they can get, so when are you going to write a budget for the Chancellor to plagiarise?

The 'prudent man' is surely a subscriber to this site!!!

(Perhaps some of your regular financial assistants could add their ideas.)

MrsTinks · 24 August 2006 at 6:46PM

I direct people here on a weekly if not daily basis and have done since joining in March, but the more I send here the more people with financial problems that by far out do my own I find. Don't you ever find it disheartening that MSE don't reach the same amount of people that those dreaded loan adds (boo hiss) on telly do?

123xyz · 24 August 2006 at 10:11PM

Do you cut coupons and use them even if you do not buy the product, on the basis that someone else will buy it and not use a coupon?

Saffie_2 · 24 August 2006 at 10:15PM

Do you get hate mail from the big companies?!?!

And do they refuse your business when they find out who you are?

:beer:

P.s. Love this site!!

ReportInvestor · 24 August 2006 at 10:48PM

MSE_Martin wrote:

I was a student politician, the more I got involved the more I saw that if you wanted to have an impact, it's about taking on Corporates, and trying to put money in peoples' pockets. I believe there's a gap between the power of consumers and of companies.

I agree.

So did you take your early job at Brunswick expressly to learn the power of the corporate "dark side" ?

Or did the power of the dark side you saw at Brunswick shock you into changing tack?

urban_spirit · 26 August 2006 at 12:22AM

MSE_Martin wrote:

I often feel sad. I'm lucky I've always been good with cash. Yet we're a nation educated into debt at university, but never educated about debt. It's a disgrace the only place you can go for official one on one non-profit help is when you're in debt crisis - its no surprise so many people are

Hi Martin

Can I ask, does your long-term plan/vision hope to include a solution to the lack of any one-on-one non-profit debt help and guidance?

E.g. In the future would you like to see MSE trained debt-advice staff accessible on the high street, dealing with pre bad-debt guidance to help the public make informed choices about debt, and hopefully preventing bad debt?

Many thanks

abbecer · 26 August 2006 at 12:30AM

I would like to say to Martin that you have become a lifeline for many of us, in debt or not. I feel like i have made many fiends on this site and their advice is invaluable. It is not always about money it is just about having someone to give sound advice.

Thanks again

Rebecca x

Coupon_Collector_2 · 28 August 2006 at 11:50PM

Hi Martin, great thread.

Could I ask: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

MSE_Martin · 29 August 2006 at 1:37AM

this Thread Has Now Been Updated With The Third Set Of Answers

sra · 29 August 2006 at 7:48AM

MSE_Martin wrote:

Currently there are 665,000 people on the email, a million would be incredible, so that's my next target.

eeek :eek:
That's a Big mailing list -
that reminded be of what they were talking about in Security Now #44

http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-044.htm

Leo: I just read an article in Security Focus saying email's dead. It's not reliable; it's not usable. Spam's killed it.

Steve: Well, I can't use it myself. You know, I've got a mailing list. We're still accepting subscribers because I've got'''and I've talked to you about this, Leo, I want to do one last mailing when I announce a replacement technology myself. But we've got'''I'm just looking at the number here'' 786,000 subscribers.

Leo: You can't send out a mailing that big.

Steve: And that's the point. What I'm going to do is I'm going to sort the list by recency, and so, you know, so send mail to the people until it just bogs down too much. But there's no way, I mean, that's more than three quarters of a million email addresses from people who've signed up at GRC over the years. And I know that the older ones are going to be dead. But the problem is, the moment I start generating email at any appreciable rate, all kinds of red flags and alarms are going to go off all over the 'Net, and I will be shut out of AOL and EarthLink and, I mean, you know, major ISPs who will immediately flag me as a spammer. And so I'm just going to have to trickle this mail out at a very slow pace and take my lumps. I want to do one final mailing to people. So anyway, that's my plan. It'll be an interesting experiment to see how well I'm able to do.

Leo: Steve is banned forever.

Steve: Oh, and I'm not doing it from GRC. I'm going to'' I'm doing it from a completely disjoint IP range, and I have the domain GRCmail.com because I don't want to in any way contaminate my ability to send email receipts to SpinRite's'customers.

Leo: And unfortunately that IP address will then be contaminated for years to come. I don't know what the half-life is of black holes, but it's going to be useless for a long time to come.

I wonder how big a mailing list can get if you're not a Microsoft or a Google :think:

I think when Internet Explorer 7's released, RSS will get much more popular and start taking over from mailing lists.

Martin Q&A about his work and the site

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