Email conversation
Please also see the email from Helen Winkten, which deals with a similar subject.
| From | Isabel Madow |
|---|---|
| To | Me |
| Subject | howtocreate.co.uk |
| Date | 7 October 2003 19:30 |
I am contacting you about cross linking. I am interested in howtocreate.co.uk because it looks like it's relevant to a site that I am the link manager for. The site is about internet filters, monitoring, and web blocking software. I keep the web address confidential and will send it to you only if you give me permission to do so. Just let me know if it's OK, and I'll send you the web address for your review. If you approve of the site, then we'll exchange links. Looking forward to your reply. Sincerely, Isabel Madow http://xxx.xxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx Experts in Quality Link Building P.S. If for any reason you don't want me to contact you again, just email me and let me know that.
Please note, I did not actually reply to this email for reasons I outline below. For information on how to protect your email address from spammers, please see my section on JavaScript and security.
Isabel,
I hope you read this here, because I have no intention of replying to you by email. The fact is that you have clearly just typed in a few keywords into Google (like 'internet filters monitoring web blocking' for example) and sent this email (SPAM by any other name) to every web site that came up. Your 'if you don't want me to contact you again, just email me' is less than convincing and reminds me of the 'remove me' link on most SPAM emails. You should take my lack of response as an indicator that I don't want to be contacted.
To me you sound almost like an automated system (except you got my email address somehow, so I assume you are human - or a very clever spider-bot). The type of business you are involved in has no interest to me. If you think the site is relevant to me, you should have sent me the URL the first time, not asked for permission, as it just makes it sound like you want me to confirm my email address is valid so you can send me even more SPAM.
However, this site is about web development, not internet filters or web blocking. So I advise you to do your job better, and find a site that really is relevant to your "customer's" site. If I find a site that I like, I will link to them out of respect for the information they offer, not because they repay me by linking to me. If someone thinks my site is interesting or relevant, they should link to me because they want to, not just because I link to them.
The way you are using the internet is abusing what the internet was originally created for - to communicate information. You are using it to communicate only the information that is deemed worthy because someone struck up a deal with you, not the information that would be most relevant or interesting.
I make no deals. I link to what I think my readers will find relevant. I allow anyone to link to me if they want to.