Small Businesses Unfairly Blamed for Spam

The reason the spam laws are in place is to protect from viruses, scammers, and non legitimate business. So why go after legitimate businesses

The internet, email, and discussion groups, are the greatest communications tools we have bar tv and radio. They are what is making online business possible, if servers continue to cut off this resource from legit businesses, the businesses won't be able to afford servers and the servers will go out of business.

Example of a legit business online marketing plan
I develop arts employment and business resources. A niche market, not open to the public.
I post on arts, entertainment, and media industry related discussion groups, notice boards, and newsgroups.
I don't post on groups or boards of any other topic.
I direct email companies and employers who work in the arts and media industries.
I don't email to just anybody, I am very careful not to.
I don't advertise in newspapers as the general public is not my market and arts employers don't want non industry skilled people applying for their jobs.
And I get a lot of thank you notes for only marketing to my niche demographic and my business.

Yet I get blamed for spam. Either from competition as a form of industrial sabotage, or people who don't know what spam is and call anything from a stranger spam on a bad hair day, or from spam cops who don't read what is actually being sent.

If one really wanted to stop spam, first you actually need to read what is being sent and who it is sent to. The spam police should also shut down free email services, like Yahoo and Hotmail, as that is where most of the real spam comes from. Or are the spam cops to scared to or being paid not to Hotmail sold for something like $400 000 000 didn't it The owners of Hotmail would pay a pretty penny to protect their investment, so would others, and they have the funding to do it.

Newspaper and magazine advertising is to expensive for most small businesses who need to keep their marketing budgets down to give customers affordable pricing. If small businesses marketing costs go up, so do the prices of their services and products which the customer has to pay for.

Not all commercial emails are spam, a legitimate business trying to let you know about genuine services and products that may help you is not spam, and you wouldn't know about them unless they emailed you. Email marketing keeps servers in business and keeps prices down for the customer. If you don't want to pay through the nose for everything, then be very careful about what you call spam.

My suggestions would be to have email accounts split into 3 main filters. Friends, Advertising, Spam. Genuine businesses should have a free code which identifies their type of business attached to their sending out email address so their email goes to the advertising box. The person receiving emails can then choose a code to receive the kind of advertising that suits them, and enter it into their filter, so they can cruise the Advertising box at their leisure. That way the user gets their own custom designed shopping mall in their email box, the spam mers without a genuine or matching code get sent to the spam box and the web can continue being the great communicator that it is.

Deborah Paulino

gigslist.org
gigdirectory.net

Small Businesses Unfairly Blamed for Spam

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Small Businesses Unfairly Blamed for Spam

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