6/18/02 Talking about the big S. Don’t let the young folk read.
Yup, That’s what I’m going to talk about. SPAM. I’ve seen from
my inbox this is a subject that can’t be covered enough. I’m not
going to cover the legal issues, such as getting you Internet
service turned off. I’m not going to discuss the moral, or
ethical or any other philosophical issues. I’m going to tell you
exactly how it’s killing your chances at making money.
I run ads every week for NetSteals News in the ezines I get,
just as you run ads in this. What, you didn’t think I got
ezines? Sure, tons of them and read ‘em too. In order to
advertise NN, I have to give my email address so people can
subscribe. Every time one of my ads run, I get at least one UCE
or unsolicited email from someone trying to sell me something.
They see my email address and decide to send me an offer. Stop
and think about this from a business point of view. If this
person was offering to give me free money, do you think I’d
trust them when they had just spammed me? However, if they took
the time to subscribe to NN and find out what we’re about; and
run free ads, I would of course be reading their ads as I do
yours. However, that takes time. But, having a huge email list
in which you sell nothing is not as effective as having a list
of five people who want to read your offers. I can’t stress that
enough.
People who spam are merely giving themselves the illusion they
are doing business. Sure, they may send a lot of emails every
day but no one is going to buy things from them. Actually,
people are prone to complain about them and cause them to lose
their means of conducting business, i.e. Internet access. I had
a bounced email from one of our members. I was chilled when I
saw what it said. See below.
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at hookworm.frognet.net.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the
following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work
out.
:
64.157.4.82 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 553 VS10-RT Possible forgery or deactivated
due to abuse - see
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-18.html (#5.1.1)
Giving up on 64.157.4.82.
This is when I decided to write this article. I don’t want to
lose another member like this. I don’t want any other members on
my list like this. I’m worried and discouraged that this person
may have been contacting you with scams.
I am going to say it again. Don’t spam people. Taking a
short-cut will only lose you business. You have absolutely
nothing to gain by this. There are no short cuts to good
business practices. What we do today will follow us, good or
bad, tomorrow. Sincerely, Cheryl.
Cheryl A. Crossan is the Publisher of NetSteals News which
focuses on helping people design, host, find marketing partners
and advertising for little or no cost. mailto: pooka@frognet.net
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