poll What is your stand on outbound?

[Arpit131]

If you opt for a different opinion, mention it in comments

 

[Name Trader]

Who are you gonna trust when you want to know if you are breaking the law?
Wikipedia or FTC.gov?

I don't know about you man, but the choice is clear to me.

I also don;t understand what you mean by solid footing. Wikipedia isn't a solid place to read up on what a law currently states.

I understand what you are saying. But the problem is the restricted jurisdiction of the FTC, which was why I chose (at random) a global opinion.

 

[EbookLover]

That's fine. I understand. I just don't have much faith in these "global opinions".

I use the FTC because I am in the USA and I know many of the outbounding threads here are of people outbounding to US companies. So it seems highly relevant. I also do not have much interest in looking up foreign laws, to be honest. I only link to the FTC site because it is written in pretty much plain english with little to no legalese, which I am allergic to. And it's pretty clear....

1. The FTC does not consider UCE as spam
2. UCE is legal
3. Unless it does not follow the guidelines, then it is spam.

The bottom line is, if you have something to sell a business, and you want to send them a sales email, go for it, just follow the rules.

Whether or not it is a fruitful endeavor is another issue, of course, but there s quite a bit of info on the web about it and most of it is positive.

Are some prospects going to think of your emails as spam? Yeah, sure. Most people have no idea what the law is concerning UCE. But their opinions or personal beliefs are not what make you a spammer or a criminal. The law does.

 

[Name Trader]

Sure. The law gets complicated between countries. But does that mean you can spam people in the US if you live outside the US? It might or might not be legal. But enforcement might be difficult. Does that make it a free for all? Well, not exactly. If you get blacklisted by the spambot listing organizations, your email is toast. But it's easy to grab another email address and continue SPAMing

 

[EbookLover]

True. But there is no shortage of non-use spammers spamming to the US and everywhere else. So I guess to a large degree it really is a free-for-all. lol

 

[topdom]

If it works it is not spam. If not you are spamming yourself.
..
If you are sending the same message to 100 people without knowing whether most of them are good matches it is spam.
..
If people spend more than 10 seconds to read your message, probably not spam.
..
If what you do is annoying to most it is spam.

 

[dande]

If it is relevant, it is not a spam. If it is not, it is a spam. Each time you prepare to send an outbound email, ask yourself "How relevant is this email I am about to send, how relevant is it to the intending recipient?"

 

[.X.]

Spam IMO, I have never done outbound, I don't like to recieve outbound mail soliciting products or services, people know what they want, they will seek it out when they are ready to buy it.

 

[topdom]

I owned keyword.info which was making 4 fig per day. I was offered keywordinfo.com , and I didn't reply but I was not annoyed either. it was not spam. It was outbound. The reason I was not interested was that I didn't like .com. To me .com and .info were equal. but I liked .info more, and .com was just a fat extension, not a special one. When I do outbound people don't respond, and they may have their own excuses. So to be successful, we may need to guess what that excuse might be and invent arguments against such excuses. Estibot price might be such a wakeup argument, but so far it didn't work.

 

[karmaco]

There is no gray area as per the definition UNSOLICITED email selling something is spam. They did not ask you to send or sell to them no matter how relevant you think it is.

With the gray area logic people— all the developers that spam us when we reg a name are being relevant right? Not to me. I didn’t ask for design or website help. Selling a name is no different.

 

[EbookLover]

The law (in the USA) says differently. But if you don't take the time to read the thread, you will never know this

 

[karmaco]

The law is irrelevant when Google and everyone has spam catching and spam markers. This is about what a person receiving your unsolicited email thinks is spam and what isn’t.You want to be marked as spam go right ahead and address the hotshot by name it makes no difference.

Those developers address me by name too.

 

[EbookLover]

 

[topdom]

If outbounding is always spam, then this means one thing: Spam is not always a bad thing.

Emails are easy to manage. If the same thing is done over the phone, then this would be spam.

There should be some criteria somewhere. Is there harmful content, is there cheating, are messages relevant to recipients interests, are such messages sent too often and to many people.

By adding useful information and humor you can make your messages less spammy.

If outbounding is spam, then everything in life is spam. We are going to bowling, are you coming: spam....Ok maybe I make money if I sell the domain, but the buyer makes more money than I do if he uses the domain correctly, because the domain is a premium, or at least I think that way. Sales can be win-win situations. And in case of outbound, prices can easily be 10 fold cheaper.

One thing to keep in mind: Most endusers are not willing to pay enduser prices.

 

[DT13]

If the domain name really fits the company and they are happy if you offer it then it's not spam, if you email every company with shit names it's spam.

 

[secretagentdad]

As webmaster, omg outbound is so utterly beyond annoying.
Especially when using sketchy mass bought yahoo / gmail accounts that are clearly a fake name.

 

[Jv1999]

If done properly, its Spam.

If done improperly (in bulk) then its spam+scam.

They end up buying something they don't need, to pay for your renewals & whoever is doing the spamming.

Tbh, I agree. Most ppl who buy domains via receiving outbound most probably regret the purchase.

Sometimes I feel guilty knowing this.