Marye - I guess I'm like you in that 99% of my mail gets deleted unread, because it's obviously not connected with me, my web business or my web interests; which does mean that occasionally I miss something which might have been useful to me. But you know, when researching topics of interest, surfing through web sites, there are a few gems which are worth contacting with a genuine invitation to joint venture. Using a contact form on a web site and sending a email using that, I don't want to waste time sending something which might be construed as spam when it is a real offer to do ethical business.

I don't build mailing lists of any old address; I don't send out multitudes of offers to the same address; if I have taken the time to write to someone with an invitation, I say on it that it will only be one contact unless they reply they want to deal with me.

I have a contact form on most of my web sites and if someone uses it to contact me, I try to reply. I'm not saying that I catch them all, because sometimes I have a mass delete of mails and I guess some good mail goes with the bad stuff. But that's why I have a contact form; to let people who are interested in my web site/business/ethics get in touch and introduce themselves.

Cheers
Maggie