by Donna Schwartz Mills

If there is an easy way and a hard way to do something, I always pick the latter. If it can be done fast or slow, I end up with slow. And if a path is tricky and fraught with traps, I land in every one.

I make mistakes -- lots of them, but I take pride in the fact that I never make the same one twice. In fact, the next time around, I usually know exactly how to accomplish the task quickly, neatly -- and to near-perfection. To me, "trial and error" isn't just a learning concept -- it's a way of life.

Recognizing this quirk of my personality has served me well in the course of launching my online business. I've made some truly bone-headed errors... but each one taught me valuable lessons. Here are some of them:

#1: Forgive Me Father, For I Have Spammed

When I first began planning my online business, I had a narrow understanding of what was permissible in email marketing. I knew enough not to send bulk email to addresses purchased from a questionable source. However, (and I am somewhat ashamed to admit this) I did attempt to solicit sales to individual strangers via email -- which is spam.

Luckily, my clumsy sales letters were very polite, so while this tactic wasn't successful (spam never is), I didn't receive any angry responses, either. Basically, I was ignored... which is how I treat most of the spam that now clutters my InBox daily (poetic justice, I'm afraid).

I LEARNED MY LESSON: While the definition of spam is somewhat in the eye of the beholder, there seems to be some consensus that it is *any* unsolicited email to someone with whom you have no existing prior business relationship.

I now work on building relationships and trust before I send a sales message -- and often receive inquiries from others *asking* to advertise on my website. (Now, if I could just learn how to write better sales letters!)

#2: The Importance of Being Private

I committed more email gaffes in subsequent weeks. There was the time I tried to send the same message to five subscribers at once without masking their addresses.

Now, when I was working in the corporate world, I needed to communicate regularly to a group of 1,500 individuals. I learned then to mask their email addresses so the recipients would not have to scroll through all those names before they got to the message.

But with a list of just five people, I didn't think twice about putting their names in the To: field, as I do when emailing my friends and family.

The reply I got from one of the five -- berating me for making her address public -- brought tears to my eyes. (One good thing about conducting business in cyberspace is that no one can see how thin-skinned I can be.)

I LEARNED MY LESSON: I had made the mistake of thinking of my subscribers as my friends. I had forgotten that even though I strive to use a warm, friendly tone in my messages, ours is a business relationship and requires a certain degree of formality -- which includes protecting my readers' email addresses, even if it is from each other.

#3: To Tell the Truth and Get On With It

The worst email fiasco I perpetrated was the most interesting. I had placed an ad at a site that charges a fee for each new subscriber. Shortly after joining this program, the site's server crashed and the webmaster sent a message to all their advertisers apologizing for the problem.

It's too bad that webmaster didn't read about my previous foul-up, because he put all the names in the "To" field... and the message was forwarded to me, so all those addys were in the body of the message and I thought all were my new subscribers!

So, I spent the next 90 minutes merrily entering their names into our subscriber database. It wasn't until I finished that I re-read the message and realized my error: I had just spammed more than two hundred webmasters with a welcome message to an ezine they had never heard of, let alone asked to receive.

I think I spent a few minutes just being mortified. Then, I took action. I emailed the site's webmaster to let him know what I had done and that the names were being removed. By keeping him in the loop, I figured he could head off any angry victims who complained to him.

Then I got to work sending each of those people an apology explaining exactly how they ended up on our list and letting them know that they would not receive any more mailings from us. I followed up by removing each name manually to make sure it was done. The entire process took me another three hours.

I LEARNED MY LESSON: It doesn't hurt to actually read your email before taking action. When something goes wrong, prompt communication and follow-through can do wonders. I received several nice, supportive emails from those webmasters I had spammed. A few of them even asked to remain on the list -- so I actually gained some subscribers from this episode.

These are not the only mistakes I've made in the course of running my online business. I am certain to make more. I can't wait to find out what I'll learn.

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