*Be as helpful as you can. Offer your expertise, advice and support whenever possible. Learn to understand what your readers/customers want and need. This will help form a strong bond.

*Let your passion and spirit come through. This is very important also. By letting your love for your work shine through, you will be "contagious"! Your readers will get caught up in it and they will become passionate as well.

*Include some original content. Always write some of your own content so there is a part of your ezine that is in no other ezine. If you write your own articles, (yes, you should) this will help give your ezine its own identity. Subscribers will look forward to reading each issue because of original material. If you are not ready to write articles, even writing a short editorial or introduction to each issue will make a big difference in originality.

*Build Yourself to Build Your Business - In essence, you need to build yourself and your reputation in order to build your business. Show your readers that you are someone who knows what they are doing and that you can help them succeed as well. You want to prove that you are dependable, trustworthy, capable and definitely unique!

Publishing an ezine might be simple, but creating a unique, powerful, and personality-packed connection with your subscribers is a bit harder and much more effective!

************* Terri Seymour and her husband Terry of www.seymourproducts.com offer a no cost, home business opportunity. Apply online. Resources and more for your home business available at www.myownezine.com Free ecourse business-building-ecourse@getresponse.com

What a pleasant, nostalgic experience. The poor grammar, their admission of stealing $70,000,000 from Nigerian government (death sentence ?), offering me 30% to committ a federal crime by laundering money. All I had to do was provide them with information necessary to raid my bank account and steal my identity. Sure it was spam, but it was entertaining. The Yahoo! account made me suspicious that this might be a "fake" Nigerian scheme. I hope not, as I thought it was uplifting to know that Nigerians were using Internet to improve their economy.

I've even received some educational spam. Got a long chain letter scheme in Spanish (or Spammish as it is referred to in Stupidman household). It became a project for my son, Greased Lightning, and me to translate. As he'll be taking Spanish II next year this was a worthwhile family project. He even enjoyed it.

I don't like receiving porn spam. It might be okay if I was single but I'm not. I worry that I'll be accused by The Boss, Mrs. Stupidman, or kids of being a porn addict. (It's bad enough being a spam addict.) All I can do is delete it. On rare occasions when they offer an "unsubscribe" you have to do it at a website. That sounds like a good way to get on even more porn lists.

If you are viewing an empty mail box and missing out on rich, cultural experiences like Nigerian letter and Spammish email, it may not be because you are unpopular. It's probably due to your spam filters. Turn them off, have some fun and read spam.