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    How to make money from home.

Of course, even the best written email is pointless if spam filters decide your email is spam and relegate your message to the Junk folder, or worse, blacklists you from sending any further emails, even ones that aren’t for marketing purposes.

The good news is that most ordinary emails will go through no problem, no matter what you do. Spam filters analyze content based on the words used and the frequency of their use. If you have words such as “free”, “sex”, “limited-time offer” and such in your email a bunch of times, odds are good that it will be labeled spam and handled accordingly. So avoid words that would show up in a late night infomercial or a chat room and you should be good.

Format with care. If you do use html formatting so your email looks polished and professional don’t go crazy with colors, fonts and images. This smacks of spam. Keep your design simple and straightforward. Be consistent in everything you send. This will help the recipient readily see that the email is from you and not a spammer.

Follow the law. Federal law requires that you provide recipients with the ability to unsubscribe. You also need to have your contact information in the email (phone and address) and your email has to come from a bona fide email address. For the latest spam laws, visit http://www.ftc.gov/spam

See how you did. Before you send your email, be sure to test your mailing using accounts on Gmail or Hotmail. They have spam filters installed on them so you will be able to see whether your email will pass muster. Many free email companies use SpamAssassin to analyze and control spam. SpamAssassin will actually generate a report on your email to show you its scoring as potential spam. The lower the number, the more likely it is that your email will make it to the recipient, no matter how high they have their spam settings set.

SpamAssassin results look like this:

—- Start SpamAssassin results
9.5 points, 5 required;
*  1.1 — From: does not include a real name in From: field
*  0.6 — Received via SMTPD32 server (SMTPD32-n.n)
*  0.6 — Invalid Date: header (not RFC 2822)
*  0.1 — From: contains numbers mixed in with letters
*  1.7 — BODY: Information on how to work at home (2)
*  2.4 — BODY: Drastically Reduced
*  1.0 — BODY: Once in a lifetime offer
*  1.2 — ‘Content-Type’ found without required MIME headers
*  0.8 — Message-Id is not valid, according to RFC 2822

—- End of SpamAssassin results

As you can see, points are assigned to different words and values. In this case, the recipient has their spam filter set at 5. This result scored 9.5. For example, the words “drastically reduced” triggered a 2.4 spam score, “Once in a lifetime offer” added 1.0 point. Other results come from an invalid email address in the From field and an invalid date. Since this email scored a 9.5 when the individual’s setting was 5, the email would be considered spam and rejected.