It's like a scene out
of the movie Groundhog Day. Every single day it's the same thing ... you sit
down to check your email and are avalanched by a mountain of spam messages.
Wading through this massive pile is such a pain, and you're fortunate to find 2
or 3 messages in this heap from people you actually care to hear from. Not to
mention the disgusting subject lines you're forced to read just to hit the
delete button.
Wish there was a way to
cut down the flow of this annoying invasion of your personal computer? You're
about to discover three ways to not only reduce the deluge but also how you can
actually PROFIT from this junk mail and increase traffic to your website!
Four Ways
to Reduce Spam
1. Get a web-based
email account and use that address for everything you don't care about.
This is so valuable
because you can now use it instead of your real email address any time
you have to divulge your email address to the masses -- when filling out online
forms, posting to newsgroups, etc. If you're using a web-based email service
this way, you don't ever have to be bothered with spam from this account -- just
don't check that email account. You can just forget about it ... but in a minute
I'll show you how to make it work for you while you sleep to send a message back
to each and every spammer. Now you can use your real address just when
corresponding with the people you're actually interested in hearing from. This
will significantly cut down the amount of spam in your Inbox.
2. Use the services of the
Direct
Marketing Association.
This consumer agency
will enable you to remove your name from email lists. Also from postal mailing
lists, and telemarketing lists ... all for free.
3. Get
Spam Arrest,
a 100% effective solution for blocking automated junk emails. End the
barrage of emails promising everything from lower
mortgage rates to cheap prescriptions to enhanced, enlarged or improved body
parts. Spam Arrest uses a combination of unique technology and a human touch to
defeat the exponentially increasing problem of spam. Click above to see how this
revolutionary technology will STOP ALL automated junk mail from ever
reaching your Inbox!
Click here for your
30-day free trial.
4. Ask your friends to
help you.
Change your email
address and send a tactful message to everyone in your email address book asking
them not to share your new address with anyone without your permission and not
to fill in your address on ANY online forms (such as "send this cool
webpage/joke/gag to your friends -- enter their email address here", etc.). Let
them know how crazy spam is making you and get their cooperation to cut down the
flow of junk mail. Explain how Blind Carbon Copy works and ask them to use it
any time they forward messages to you. 99% of people use an email system which
has the Bcc feature. Here's how it works:
When you use
regular Carbon Copy (Cc) or just hit "Forward", all the email addresses are
displayed for everybody to see. For example: Your friend sends a message to
you and two other people. Person #2,
joeshmoe@toiletbowl.com
forwards this message to 25 of his friends. He can now see YOUR address and
so will each of the 25 people he forwards it to. Now 27 people have your
email address. Person #3, webaddict@outofcontrol.net forwards
this message to 40 of her friends, who in turn will each have your email
address, so now 68 people (total strangers) have your address. And so
on, and so on. Of course it doesn't usually stop there, because all THOSE
people will probably forward it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in their
address books and now you can see why we're all getting so much spam ....
because the addresses end up in the hands of solicitors and other people who
are addicted to forwarding everything they get. Why would people want to do
that to their friends?? The Blind Carbon Copy feature of email programs
prevents the recipients from seeing anyone else's email address. Extending
this simple courtesy will do everyone a favor!
Your friends may
not be aware that they are contributing to your spam problem in this way. So
kindly let them know, they should be glad to help you. Share this article
with them if you'd like. And by the way, don't forget to "practice what you
preach!"
How
Spammers Get Ahold of Your Email Address
There are several ways.
As mentioned, anytime you fill out a form online -- whether it's a newsletter
subscription, survey, request, setting up any kind of account, etc. -- your
address is almost always sold to thousands of bulk email companies who spam you with their
advertisements and who in turn will also sell your address to other companies.
Also, if you own a
website which contains your email address anywhere on it, automatic
"harvester robots" extract it from your site and it is sold to bulk
emailers. There are a few ways to outsmart these harvesters. Click
here to get scripts you can put on your site to prevent this. They are
located in the Programs & Scripts/Perl/Miscellaneous/Spam Prevention
section and are free. Another way, much easier, is to not employ clear text for
email addresses on your website. Instead, convert the characters of your address
into browser readable Unicode because currently we are not aware of any address
extractor bot capable of reverse-decoding in the Unicode standard. Click
here for details and then click on fantomas mailShield™ for instant
translation of your address into Unicode. Just insert this into the HTML of your
webpage. The result is your email address will be sorted out as
“undeliverable” by the extractor program. (By the way, it's recommended that
you place your email address in just one place on your site, perhaps on a
"Contact Us" page, rather than splattering it all over each page.)
Another way to outsmart
the harvesters is if you have a photo editing program like Paint Shop Pro or
Photoshop, just create your email address as a graphic rather than text. The
harvester robots won't be able to extract it. It's simple to put this on a white
background or whatever matches your site's background color. For example:
is a graphic image created this way.
An
Innovative Way to Profit from your Junk Mail
Don't you just wish you
could annoy spammers by sending THEM unwanted messages? Well, you can. And you
can do it simply and for free. All you need is an autoresponder.
This is an address which either deletes incoming mail or forwards it to an
anonymous address. Also known as an "automatic response" message, your
autoresponder automatically e-mails your predefined message back to every person
who emails you. Your hosting company may offer this service, but if not here are
some solutions:
a. Get your own free
autoresponder from GetResponse
-- it's one of the best offers around. You get unlimited space to type your
message, instant delivery, access to the email addresses of senders, etc. NOTE:
If you own a business, this is a must-have because you can set up multiple
accounts and have potential customers request information from you on any
subject you want to promote. It will SKYROCKET your sales!
Want to see an
autoresponder at work? Click here
and send me a blank email.
b. Sign up with one of
the webhosting services described below -- an autoresponder comes with your very own website.
c. Sign up with a web-based
email provider that has a Vacation or Auto Reply feature -- Yahoo Mail,
Lycos, etc. Then you just set the dates for as long as is allowed (some sites
let you do it for 6 months, others for 2 years, etc.) and let the auto reply do
all the work. Be sure to write yourself a note to go back in and refresh the
dates after the time limit is up so it will keep going indefinitely.
If you have your own
website, this idea is even more attractive. When you set up your automatic
response message, write up an ad for your services and include the URL to your
website. The spammers who inundate you with junk mail will receive your ad! A
great way to give them a taste of their own medicine and most importantly to
generate extra traffic for your site. This little gem will work while you sleep
to announce whatever product or service you mention in that auto response
message.
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