Website Spammers

Once you’ve moved up in the world of blogging and have done your marketing properly you start getting all sorts of attention and sometimes you get emails and comments from spammers.

One of the things I love about Blogger is their great filter software that sorts them out. I get an email asking for approval before any suspicious comments are posted. My readers never see them but I get several every week.


What is spam?

Were not talking about the salty canned meat variety. This spam comes in the form of emails or comments usually soliciting a service you don’t want.

I say usually because one man’s spam is another man’s bread and butter. Spam can also be sales people you don't necessarily want to do business with but others welcome.


Examples of spam

Recently I’ve gotten emails telling me my website was difficult to find but with their service I can increase my audience. I must not be too hard to find if they found me.

Others are prostitutes and don’t even bother to find out I’m a woman. The reason I suspect them to be ladies of the night is because their emails say they are looking for a nice man to get to know better. I realize some countries might not know that “Pamela” is a woman’s name but my picture is on my websites. Maybe they are hoping I have a lonely, desperate male assistant.

Most of us have read the emails from Ethiopia telling us we’ve won or inherited a large sum of money and if we give them our bank information they will gladly send it to us. Unfortunately people fall for this one on a regular basis.

I get emails asking me to be their pen pal. While many of these people are probably harmless, in this day and age one can’t be too careful so if I receive a short note in my webmail with little information about the sender, you aren’t going to get a response.

There are many other scams out there but these are the ones I’ve gotten lately.


Should you put your email on your website?

For a long time I didn’t post mine for just this reason and figured if anyone wanted to talk to me they could just post a comment on one of my blogs or articles but I have read in many marketing books as well as online articles that it is a good business practice to give your customers a way of reaching you.

I have gotten a few writing jobs this way so it is a good idea, you just have to be careful who you accept work from since many correspondences are spam. Not all writing offers are legitimate so be sure and check them out before taking the assignment.

Here's a slice of spam you might enjoy.