Email is most effective and cost efficient manner in which to communicate with potential customers on and off Internet.

And according to a recent report, released by Department of Commerce entitled, "A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of Internet" , 84% of ALL Americans make use of email to communicate.

This report contains an invaluable WEALTH of information regarding numbers of American households connected to Internet, details how, where and why people surf Internet, provides demographic details on income, employment status, age groups, gender, levels of education, urban or rural locations, race and a great deal more.

For those of us doing and wishing to do business online it is filled with nothing but encouraging good news.

You may access details for receiving a FREE copy of report, via auto-responder, at: mailto:govreport@emailexchange.org

Here are a few strategies to sharpen your skills and your ability to succeed with your online business:

1. Learn Before or Burn.

BEFORE you attempt to send out anything, make certain you know HOW to properly use your email program.

Whether you use a web-based email service like Microsoft's Hotmail, http://www.hotmail.com or your own mail program like Window's Outlook Express, Eudora, Pegasus, Netscape, etc., and test, test, test it out by sending yourself a message.

In my eight years of being online, I am personally aware of several popular newsletters that lost virtually all of their hard earned subscribers when they accidentally sent out their newsletter with entire subscription list exposed after switching to a new email program.

2. NEVER Ever SPAM!

NEVER ever use a mailing list that you receive by email as doing so will constitute SPAM. You again risk losing valuable momentum if all your previous efforts are erased when you lose your email account.

3. BUILD Your Own Opt-In Mailing List.

It takes time, but it is well worth effort to build a 100% safe email list. If you have a web site, add a "Subscribe" feature that will bring you a steady flow of new email addresses to which you can safely email.

Creating and managing your own list is difficult but possible.

I come to this subject as a matter of multiple events on my machine where one day I would open my mail to discover that all has been lost. The pit that wells in your stomach upon realization of this occurrence can be overwhelming. To recover in event of future losses, each of us should learn basics of maintaining and backing up our email.

One of important things to do in preventative maintenance, is to clean your folders and to empty your trash. Most people do not realize that when number of messages in a specific folder exceeds a certain threshold that they begin running on borrowed time.

Exactly where that threshold is varies from email client to email client, so what may be true for mine may be different for yours. Personally, I use Netscape 4.x Email Client for security reasons more than anything. The Netscape 4.x Email Client is less susceptible to JavaScript attacks than any other email client I have used.

What I do know is that I have repeatedly pushed my client to its limits to see where threshold might be. The Netscape 4.x Email Client will generally break at around 4,500 email messages in one folder, though it will become shaky at around 2,000 messages.

For users of other clients such as Outlook Express, Eudora and others, I cannot tell you top end of how well software will perform.

If there are more than 2,000 messages you wish to hang on to, you should begin filing your messages in separate folders below Inbox. This will help you to find your messages quicker and it will provide more stability to your email client.

There are three folders that you must pay regular attention to. They are Inbox, Sent Mail Folder and Trash Folder.

Most people fail to remember that their client is pre-configured to save a copy of all outgoing email. As a result, this folder can grow to unbelievable sizes before anyone thinks to clean it out.

It is important to mention Trash Folder in more detail since most people do not realize how it works.

Most email clients follow a general principle in their operation. Each email box is generally represented by two files. The first is a text rendering of all messages in box. The second is an indexing file that lists title of email and other identifying characteristics relative to each individual message.

When you look at contents of your email box, you are actually seeing contents of indexing file. When you pull up text of an actual message, software is finding message in message file according to software assigned Email ID as listed in indexing file.