A long time ago I reviewed the contents of my trash bin because I thought an email message may have gone through that I wanted or should have known about. Low and behold I was lucky enough to find a person asking for a service I offer. He was acutally referred by my associate Dr Kevin Nunley who resides in Utah.

The reason for this oversight was my email filter system I used for sending messages from free email services to my trash bin. At some point in time I started to receive numerous amounts of spam from a certain domain name so I set up an email filter to send any email I receive from that domain to my trash bin. For some reason that day I felt compelled to check my trash thus defeating the purpose of setting up an email filter.

This is definitely a catch 22. Number one you don't want to wade through a bunch of unsolicited email on a daily basis since in my view most legit offers originate from real email address. Well I could not be more wrong. You never know who is legitimate until you've had correspondence with them. Coming from a once new internet user with limited funds, I know how important free email can be. It's unfortunate that a few bad folks have given it a bad name. However, as you can see I put myself in a position to possibly loose business by filtering out free email services. The bottom line was that wading through email I didn't ask for can be a waste of time and resources. Or is it?

Some people believe that if you use a free email address, it is not worth doing business with you because you show a lack of dedication by not paying for your email address. In other words if your business is important to you, purchasing your own domain name should be as important as hiring a competent salesperson.

Well what will you do to remedy this situation? Will you wade through the spam in the hopes that a real legitimate offer for your services is enclosed or should you just filter everything to your mailbox received from free email services? The latter will save you time and resources but possibly cost you new business and the former may waste your time but possibly prove beneficial by capturing new business.

Free email companies are opening everyday and so are spammers. Not everyone who uses free email is a con artist. Some free email services are used mainly by folks who are travelling and want access to their email from wherever they are. Other people use free email to assess the internet before deciding what domain name to choose or what is the best service to use. The ethical uses for subscribing to free email services are endless. The majority of local ISP's and website hosts do not offer this service. Will you quickly browse every bit of email you receive or will you send all messages from free email services to the trash bin?

My new clients' email address originated from the following domain @worldnet.att.net. This was the email address I automatically filtered to my trash bin without reviewing. I was lucky today but what have I missed in the past?

Not to sound like Microsoft-ish but "What are you going to do today?"