When email becomes overwhelming

September 29, 2010 by John Dilbeck · 10 Comments
Filed under: Advertising and Marketing, Musings, email marketing 

When email becomes overwhelming, it becomes a time waster and an obstacle to doing anything productive.

Normally, the most productive time in my whole day for writing and accomplishing a marketing goal is the first two or three hours of my day. Most days, I wake up around 4 or 5 am and work for two or three hours while I drink a pot of coffee. Then, it’s time for breakfast and dealing with the daily chores, such as checking the social networks I manage and moderate, responding to comments on my blogs, playing on Facebook for awhile, making sure none of my major sites have been hacked (by looking at their home pages), and dealing with email.

I’ve tried for over a decade to make it easy to find me and contact me via email. I’ve put my email address all over the web, in more places than I’ll ever remember, and now it’s coming back to bite me in the butt.

I started with email on the old ARPA network, before the Internet, before the Web, before Google, before most of the things we take for granted now. I remember when I knew (personally) only three people with email addresses besides myself. It wasn’t unusual back in those almost-prehistoric days to send an email and then call them on the phone to see if they got it.

I remember being happy when I got an email from a friend. It was a joy that was almost like receiving a birthday or Christmas card in the mail.

Those days are long gone, however.

As useful as email is, now it has become an anchor around my neck. A weight I pull uphill every morning. A cool drink of water just out of my reach. A chore to be endured rather than enjoyed.

This morning, I waded through 2286 emails (that is not an exaggeration — it’s the actual count) and deleted all but 66 of them.

I have all sorts of spam blocking rules in place, I’m using two spam blocking services, and I still manually go through all the subject lines on my email account in my browser to delete all the ones that are of no interest, are spam, or otherwise just clutter my inbox.

It took over two and a half hours just to scan all the subject lines and pull the gold nuggets out of the mud hole. (I was going to say something else a lot more gross, but I went back and edited it before publishing.)

Then I deleted and purged all those I didn’t want.

From that point, it took less than 30 seconds to download all the little gold nuggets into Eudora, my business email client of choice. Later today, I’ll work through those emails. Some I’ll read and discard. Others I’ll read and save. Others I’ll skim and save for later.

I’ve already responded to the three that needed a response and replied to a friend with a personal email.

Without all the damned spam and garbage, I could have done this task in less than five minutes and enjoyed it.

So, the time has come to get this millstone off of my neck.

Before the end of the year, I’ll be closing my public email account and I’ve already switched to two new email services. One will be a strictly private address for good friends and family, only. If I tell you that email address, it’s because I like corresponding with you and I trust you not to give it to anyone else. Not many will ever know that address. I’ll check it a couple of times a day and respond as quickly as possible.

I’ve set up a new business email address and I’m not sure how I’m going to use it yet. One thing I know, I’m never going to make it public, in an effort to avoid the spam harvesters out there and the lowlifes who use them.

I will go through my contact list and I’ll be sending some of you one or both of my new email addresses. Before the end of the year, I’ll change my old address and put an autoresponder on it saying that the account is closed and referring someone to my Contact Us page on AYearFromNow.com.

I’m hoping that this will slow down the torrent of unwanted email to a trickle, but I don’t believe it will stop all the spam.

When I first set up my public email address, it was a real status symbol to have not only your name as a domain, but your name as the email account on that domain. Now, everyone who has thought ahead has their name as a domain, even if they do nothing with it other than to keep it out of the hands of those who would pretend to be someone they aren’t.

I’ll be unsubscribing from all lists and RSS feeds and resubscribing with my new address. I’ll go through the 1,314 online accounts I have and either close them or change my contact address. (Now, you know why it probably won’t get done until near the end of the year.)

I narrowed my focus earlier this year, and I’m going to narrow it again over the next few months.

I may never get all of this back under control, but I intend to do my best.

What about you?

How do you manage your email?

Do you have multiple accounts for different purposes? Do you use one good client and filter incoming email into multiple inboxes based on subject and/or priority?

Do you fight the spam you receive or endure and ignore it?

I’m looking for real advice here.

I’ll continue using Eudora for my business email and I’m using Apple’s Mail program for my private friends and family account. So, don’t suggest that I switch desktop clients. It ain’t agonna happen.

I’ll be using gmail.com as part of my business email solution and another service I won’t mention for my private email.

So, what works for you? Do you have something that works, or are you as overwhelmed as I am right now?

What’s your story?

Act on your dream!

JD

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Why do I accept or delete comments?

October 2, 2009 by John Dilbeck · 11 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Musings 

Even though I have had little to say on this blog for the last month or so, I’ve been here reading the comments that have been submitted, and I’m sad to say that the great majority of them have been deleted. Some have been submitted to Askimet as spam.

I don’t like doing that.

I deliberately set up this blog to follow comment links and I think that’s fair if you’re going to take the time to contribute to our discussions.

However, the word “contribute” is the key word in that sentence.

A one sentence response telling me I’m doing a good job just isn’t contributing to the conversation, and I delete those. I’ve deleted several dozen of these non-helpful comments over the last month.

Trying to spam this blog with off-topic comments, especially when they link to sites I’d never link to, is a good way to get sent to the spam page where your comments will be deleted and reported to Askimet.

If you want me to approve your comment and welcome you, then there are several things you should do.

Tell me who you are.

Either use your name as the link back to your blog or sign the comment with your name. Preferably first and last name.

A marginal comment with a name in the link and the comment will generally be approved.

However, if you use keywords or the name of your site in your link, that’s one strike against you.

If you don’t use your name in the link and don’t sign your comment, that’s a second strike against you.

If your comment is marginal and you have two strikes against you, I’ll delete it. This isn’t baseball, so I don’t have to wait for three strikes.

On the other hand, even if you have two strikes against you and your comment is relevant, useful, and adds to the conversation, I will usually approve it.

I like talking to real people, not keywords and not site names.

I’m going to be even more strict about this in the future.

As much as I enjoy discussing these topics, I hate not knowing to whom I am talking.

There are other reasons I would delete a comment, but I don’t feel a need to go into all of them here.

Once I get back on track to where I feel like I can add information related to affiliate marketing, I’ll resume posting here.

I’ll be looking forward to your comments and discussions, as long as you are a real person who treats me like a real person, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

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