Subject: Bulk E-Mail

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 15:54:00 -0400 (EDT)

I want to do a bulk advertising of a product idea and see if it will sell.
 Could you suggest the best possible way to do this without getting into
trouble or making people angry. It seems like there are a lot of services on
the net and I don't want to get ripped off either.  Suggestions would be
appreciated.  Thanks

---

From: Edward M Greshko <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 07:23:21 +0800 (GMT)

> the net and I don't want to get ripped off either.  Suggestions would be

Yes, send *all* your advertising to "/dev/null".

-- 
Edward M. Greshko                  Technical Manager, Electronic Commerce
                                   Control Data Asia/Pacific Region
Voice: +886-2-715-2222 x287        6/F, 131 Nanking East Road, Section 3
FAX  : +886-2-712-9197             Taipei, Taiwan R.O.C

---

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 17:11:41 -0400

> the net and I don't want to get ripped off either.  Suggestions would be
 
    My suggestion?  DON'T DO IT.  With bulk email you will probably
anger far, far, far, far, far, far more people than you will get real
leads, even if you are legitimate.  Pardon me for being sceptical, but
we are so inundated with trash email these days masquerading as
advertising that a lot of people cordially despise *anybody* who sends
out this stuff, legitimate or not (most of it is not).

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: Simon Lyall <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Jun 1997 03:38:49 GMT

>the net and I don't want to get ripped off either.  Suggestions would be

I would suggest that you don't use *any* service that sends out email to
people. Many spammers will claim that they have lists of people who
"want" email but instead just send it to their normal list of every
address they can get. I have heard stories of small business who got
suckered into this and totally lost any good name they had (not to mention
getting abuse, people ringing they 800 number etc etc etc)

I would suggest you set up a small homepage for your product (this should
cost less than $20/month for the space). Do a fairly simple design for
your page (just a single page possibly with background and descriptions 
(and maybe a small picture) and email address or phone number for more
information).

You then want to publicize it. The best way it to add it all the search
engines (see www.submit-it.com) and then possibly advertising on a few web
pages related to your product. You might want to put the URL of your page
in your .sig as well so people who read your posts might be interested.

Whatever you do:

1. DON'T email people ads
2. DON'T posts ads for your product/site to newsgroups unless the groups
   charter specificly allows it (and 99.9% don't)

-- 
Simon Lyall. | Looking for Work | Mail: [email-masked]
"Inside me Im Screaming, Nobody pays any attention."  |  MT.