• What constitutes a scam?
• Where to learn about Internet scams
• No! NEVER BULK-EMAIL!
• Scam links megalist

No! NEVER BULK-EMAIL!

If you've been on the Internet for more than seven minutes, chances are that you've been solicted to buy email lists that contain millions and millions of addresses. Never do this! Many people *hate* receiving unsolicited email messages and will complain to your ISP hosting service, your current customer base, the Internet at large, and more.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Bulk email is a very damaging way to contact people. Just because it doesn't cost *you* money to send the email, doesn't mean it's ethical to do so; the transmissions costs are passed down the line though the ISP, the relays, etc.

You might find the following news links to be quite informative:

• Newslinx - Up-to-the-minute articles about SPAM
• Spam Wars - Yahoo!'s up-to-the-minute collection of SPAM articles

Instead of just shooting blanks, so to say, by sending to who-knows-who, consider instead actively finding your customer audience. When publicizing my book on Internet Recruiting, I included the following efforts:

• Visiting recruiter's web sites and making sure addresses are for recruiters and not the developers/designers
• Providing my book to the top resources for review in the industry
• Letting folks sign up for future enhancements
• Providing free information so people asked for more

Yes, it takes time to find your customers on the Internet. It is always worth your while to research in great depth your client base. Never, ever ever resort to bulk emailing. If you don't have the time to do the research yourself, and would like to learn more about how to contact your audience in a netiquette-friendly way, please check out the benefits to subscribing to this site.

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