There have been a few comments recently about how I am ignoring people or whatever that email me. I get over 40 emails alone through the ajax form a day and well I do ignore a lot of them. If you want me to respond to your email here are some tips.
Be direct and keep it simple
While its nice to hear that you love my blog and all that I would much rather you just get to the question you have. You dont have to address me properly and whatever just be like “what do you think of x?”. That works.
Keep it short
Most of the time when I check my email its a short break from what I am working on. If your email is longer then 2 sentences odds are my add will have kicked in and I will end up tossing it out.
Partnerships and Working Together
The #1 email that I delete goes something like this-
Hi Shoemoney,
I love your website and congratulations on your amazing success as a marketer. I have some ideas that I think we can work together on. What time would be good for me to call you”
Here is the thing… I do not have time to work on my own things that I know are profitable so the odds of me working with you to take a chance on profitability are slim to none. HOWEVER please feel free to try.
Trying to get me to blog about your site
When I get emails that are like “Hello, your readers would really benifit from reading mycoolsite.com” or crap like that I assume its self promotial automated spam and it gets deleted.
Just send me a link that says “hey check out mycoolsite.com” that is plenty. If I like it I will bookmark it on del.ico.us (I can never type that) and tag it for a future post that is relavent.
I will probably add more to this in the future.
peace,
ShoeMoney
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2415 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
ever think of hiring an assistant?
Well i say thats totally fair, shoemoney you must receive alot of spam per day! =/
God forbid you dont give every email attention lol… at least you outline a way to try and get your attention… where do we send tshirt requests too
hehe, that post explains alot. Sorry for the life story.
I love your website and congratulations on your amazing success as a marketer. I have a super cool idea that will shake th world, blog about my site and I’ll call you :p
you may be good as hell for what you’re doing but this post hurted me. isn’t it a bit arrogant to say to others how should they write to you? I personally respond to tons of emails (50+) and PMs everyday, and I never even thought to write a policy on how to contact me!!! if I was on DP I was going to give you a red rep on this.
So you’re pist that he doesn’t have time to reply to each email and suggested a way that would grab his attention? Some people answer hundreds of emails a day, sure… but when that time directly reflects your earnings you need to allocate your time respectively.
you are very lucky I wish I had time for that.
currently I am a editor for threadwatch.org
I author for seroundtable.com
I moderate for digitalpoint.com
I moderate for wickedfire.com
I run 6 corporations
I am a father and husband
if you can do more god bless you
Don’t worry, most of the morons who write emails to Shoe won’t read this post anyway.
Maybe you missed this:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2006/09/24/searchfeed-please-take-me-off-all-lists-already/
I’ve seen his Inbox. THATS what it looks like on a daily basis.
Good write-up, Shoemoney. I wrote a little blog entry about it. I expanded a bit more on things, more into the use of proper English, but you touched on some very good items.
ya and emailing me about talking to Shoe about your site won’t help either
Wicked Fire? Never heard of that one… *goes off to check it out*
Yeah, but if he posted this on DP, then you followed up with that whining… well, I think we know who would have gotten more red reps out of that deal. Right?
You might not like how he wrote it, but he just did a favor for anyone that has emailed him, or is thinking about emailing him.
Good post, Jeremy. You might want to add a short & sweet version of it on your contact page–or at least a READ-THIS-FIRST link to this post.
I keep my emails short and sweet, but I still don’t get replies. Usually something like this…
Shoe,
Making money is too hard. Please send me $1,000,000.
Thanks,
Mike
No idea what I’m doing wrong.
Have you ever gone into partnership (or helped someone ) who has emailed you (when i say help i dont mean a 2 minute review etc..) but actually worked with them from start to finish?
ya I am going to link it to that post
You obviously don’t make much money or value your time very highly.
Never have.
Except when I showed you how to make $10k/day via Google Base.
Jeremy, take this as a constructive critics. I am saying that there are more ways in which you can manage your emails; for instance put an autoresponder in which you kindly ask to be patient before having a reply, and that due to the high volume of emails a response is not granted, but you are grateful anyway for the comment/suggestion/feedback given.
I sure don’t do as much as you, nor I don’t do all the things you are doing, but if I had such load of work and “importance” in the webmasters scene, simply I wouldn’t make a post on how to contact me to earn my attention. Really I always went there with a positive attitude to learn something from you that you know more than me for sure, but that post disappointed me. Just take it as a critics from someone not “important” and skilled like you. If it was a nonsense critics I wouldn’t have put my name and email account on those comments.
Alessandro
omg not red rep.. anything but that… what cruel man you must be to give out red rep.
would you ever?
(: Goes to write a 400 page “IDEA” LOL
Amen to that, seriously.
If you want to grow and move forward you have to set up some rules of engagement.
If you willy nilly everything you get willy nilly results. Gawd, I hate that phrase, why did I just use it?
Follow this format and you’ll get a nice response from Shoe (speaking from first-hand experience)
Basic email and contact policy.. Awful