If you are small business and have had the urge to indulge in mass mail you need to read on carefully. One of the most powerful urges on the Internet is for a small business to want to tell everyone about the wonderful product or service they can offer a client. With your hopes high you build or buy a web site, post the search engines and other advertising builders and hope that millions of people a month are going to rush to your web site and buy your product or service. After several months you discover that your counter is crawling at the rate of 3 or 4 a day and you haven't sold a thing. If you are the mover and shaker kind of business person you will begin to cast about to find ideas that will drive more clients to your site. You know that sales is a numbers game and if you could JUST get the numbers your product or service would sell.

In an act of desperation you read every e-mail that looks remotely good about building your business. Sooner or later you will read enough about mass mail, how it goes to the masses, how your ad can be in 60 Million e-mail boxes in less than 30 days. You look at your wonderful product or service and your crawling counter and say hey why not?

With a low investment cost of around $150.00 you can get everything you need to begin mass mailing. It will take you about a hour to set it up and then you write the greatest sales letter of all time. With everything in place and set you hit send and your letters go sailing out into cyberspace mail boxes. You kick back in your chair and have delusions of renting an 18 wheeler to pick up your check stuffed mail at the post office. But perhaps an hour into the e-mailing your ISP (Internet Service Provider) connection goes dead.

You try to reconnect but nothing you try will work, so you dial up your ISP and ask what's the problem is. Your ISP will say that you have been caught spamming and your service is discontinued permanently. Nothing you can say to them will make them hook you back up. They are judge, jury and executioner. You are without Internet service. Perhaps a day or two later someone you sent e-mail to will feel they have be hurt beyond all measure by your e-mail and turn your sales letter into their ISP or SEVERAL ISP's and your web or domain site will be dissolved too. Worse yet, you will find that you sales letters were mostly dumped at the e-mail gates and just a few got your letter.

So there you sit without any Internet sales tools at all. You are stunned. You are out $150.00 and your web site counter and e-mail box hasn't even twitched. This is a very common happening in the Internet world and it happens about 100 times a day. I know what you are thinking, you are thinking that, well I get about 200 mass e-mails in my e-mail box every week! How are they doing it? Well they do it until they get caught and then they move to another server and begin again. This can go on and on until one of the "big boys" drags them into court with a million dollar law suit.

So just what are the laws surrounding mass e-mail? If you go up to your ISP server and read their TOS (Terms Of Service) or better yet go and read several TOS on several server you will find that they are ALL pretty much carbon copies. About 99.9% of the ISP's out there will state that it is against their Terms Of Service laws for you to send unsolicited e-mail to any person. Translate that. You can send out ONE advertising ad to ONE person and if that person turns you in for spamming your service or site or both are history. The rule of thumb seems to be Thou shalt not send business e-mail to a stranger. With 250 MILLION business web sites currently on the net 85% of them small business you have to ask is this for real? Yes it is and here is why.

THE DOMINO EFFECT

Let's pretend for a moment that you own a T1 computer that can access the Internet. Now let's say that you want to help other people get on the internet too. Some of your clients will want to use your T1 to gain access to their favorite "big boy" netserver. In order to provide this kind of service to your clients you must pay up to $3,000.00 a month for what is called a "dedicated server line." This line allows you to be connected to and one of several "big boy" servers and lets you have an open line to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 day a year. Also on your T1 machine you have domain site renter's and domain site renter's have web site renter's. Sounds like a web already huh? Now the "Big Boy" servers have a TOS contract with the little TI owner that says if they catch "spam" coming from their link they will shut them off from access, likewise the law is passed down from there to the domain renter and the web site renter. So the dilemma is that if the last person on the line begins this activity then there are warnings and or disconnections all up the line. Think about how many internet customers with would take at $20.00 a month to cover the $3,000.00 a month dedicated server fee and then ask your self just how important your $20.00 a month is if you start sending mass mail and endanger the T1's dedicated line.

IS THERE A WAY AROUND

Currently there are other ways of advertising web sites but NOT with mass mail. If you are big business that has a $50,000.00 a day advertising budget then this problem will not pose a threat for you as you can get the "center stage" spot on any "big boy" server without a sweat or on TV or any other ad campaign you choose. But if you are small business you haven't got a chance, unless you have a well rounded advertising campaign that is VERY creative and very PERSISTENT. For a small business to be successful on the Internet takes time, money and patience.

We all know that advertising pays the bills that allows us to get services and products at vastly reduced rates. Television shows are brought to you free because advertisers pay the air time, radio comes the same way, and that glossy magazine on your desk might cost as much as $15.00 an issue to produce yet you only pay about $24.00 a YEAR, advertising picks up the rest of the bill. Even "junk" mail is allowing our post office to run in the black. So perhaps advertising is not the black sheep you thought it was.

Presently, there are no FEDERAL laws against mass e-mail unless you are sending illegal or pornographic materials. However there are over 200 bills currently in congress to regulate the Internet and you can imagine that the lobbies are strong on both sides. There are TOS though that are holding mass e-mail at bay and if their TOS are passed as laws then one of your rights will be gone forever. If that happens, and the law has it's usual cascade effect in the courts, what will happen to the rest of advertising? You have to wonder what THAT will do to our current way of life, in the chain of law event cases as the law picks up and uses this law (Your, honor I quote from the land mark case of Internet Big Boy vs. Small business Advertiser...) to win other cases. How will it effect us? Will you have to pay $800.00 an hour to view TV? Will you have to pay $100.00 an hour to listen to your radio? Will your favorite magazine cost you $400.00 a year? Sounds like a very changed world doesn't it? All for lack of a few people who do not want to bother using a delete button.