My colleague Denny Hatch is one of the most respected of the “old school” direct marketing copywriters and publishers operating today.

He says the reason so many Internet marketers get it wrong is that they fail to apply DM selling techniques online.

“One reason for the dot.com bust was inexperience,” Denny writes. “Quite simply, many of the hotshot twenty-something marketers did not have a solid grounding in the basics of direct marketing. They did not know how to make an offer, how to ask for an order, and make it easy to order.”

Yet I increasingly hear new media gurus saying that old-school direct marketing copy is the WRONG way to go on the Internet — that it’s all about conversation, free content, social networking, and making a connection.

Many new media marketers have posted comments on this blog saying direct marketing copy is irrelevant and will soon disappear.

So what do you think?

Are Denny and I dinosaurs, writing our direct response copy, doomed to extinction? (The money we both make from our copy would seem to indicate not.)

Or is he right, and is knowing how to sell the missing ingredient that stops so many Internet marketers from converting their brilliant content and concepts into cash?

What say you, Dear Reader?