Internet Service Providers have a MUCH lower threshold. While it is legal to send unsolicited email under CAN-SPAM, it violates the Terms of Service of pretty much every ISP and email subscription broadcast service in the country. Also most ISPs have limits on how many emails you can send per hour or day.

Door #2 says, knowingly violate the rules but do it in such a way that you never come up on their radar screen.

I strongly recommend Solution #2, and it isn't hard to accomplish. There are basically two ways to do this.

If you are sending to a list of people who really do know you and the list isn't too large, go ahead send it out through your ISP. Or you can use a subscription service for larger lists. Either way, chances are the percentage of people who complain or ask off is likely to be so low as to not trigger labelling you as spam.

There is an alternative, which works just fine even with huge lists from dubious sources. You send the emails out from a domain other than your regular one; and you send out using an "SMTP service".

One reason was because states were starting to pass laws - and they didn't necessarily agree with each other. You can imagine what it would have been like with 50 states having different rules, since email is by its nature, national or international!

Three years ago, you could pay a company $1000 or so to send out 1 million emails to a targeted list.

Those days are gone, killed by spam and the CAN-SPAM act.

If someone is offering to sell you an email list at ANY price, it is almost certainly a scam. There are essentially no legitimate lists for sale. There are certain circumstances where you can get a legitimate list for free (see below).

For those who don't know the history of Google, there were other search engines and ways of navigating the web such as directories that were important in 1996 when two Stanford graduate students - now billionaires of course - came up with the idea that became Google.

But that is not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about "PR" as in "Public Relations" as in what does the world think of you?

If you are successful, people are going to start talking about you on the Internet, and if people start talking about you, some people are going to say BAD things about you. Maybe even lies.

Oh the horror! What is one to do!!

Here are a couple:

http:://seehere.blogspot.com

http://geekpress.com

You're welcome.

http://www.miss-vintage.com/marilyn/makeup.htm

I've written before about the first element of successful marketing: volume. There is no such thing as successful marketing that doesn't involve a volume of "impressions" - a technical term for the number of eyeball pairs you are (potentially) reaching with your marketing.

But let's say you ARE getting a volume of reach with your marketing, and little to no response? Here's a short checklist of the BIG REASONS why:

What made it happen was brilliant marketing. Marketing Guys have been writing articles and talking about the Obama campaign for months - and will undoubtedly do so for years to come.

This article by Al Ries, one of the true gurus of modern-day marketing, is the best I've seen yet on the subject. Here are lessons for all of us to learn:

What Marketers Can Learn From Obama's Campaign

In a slow economy, business owners and executives fall cleanly into two categories:

That is certainly true of the Internet in general and blogs in particular.

The whole idea with a blog is to generate repeat visitors. But you have to get them there the first time somehow.

So here are a few tips on how to traffic to your blog.

Amazon has a website www.windowshop.com. Its a sort of virtual bookstore shop window. But with the capabilities of the web utilized to the max.

If you zoom in on an album cover, you hear an excerpt. If you zoom in on a book cover, you see and hear an excerpt from the text.

Like a shop window, they change it once a week. And of course, you can just click and add it to your Amazon shopping cart.

Brilliant!

That is with Blogger, another one of Google's fine and free services.

If you create a blog on their hosting platform, Blogspot, it doesn't cost a thing, and they make it really easy to get started.

Later, you can host a blog elsewhere or add it to your website, even use different blogging software, and do it in such a way you don't lose your existing posts, nor lose any links to your blog.

It's a great way to get your feet wet in the world of blogging.

Am I going to have fun doing this?

There's a very simple reason for that. If it isn't fun, you aren't going to do that. We seen this clearly over the years. It is just one of those things. It doesn't matter how good an idea it is, it just isn't going to happen otherwise.