Mark S. is definitely on the right track. If you want to get a professional looking email address, I’d recommend buying your name domain name, like chelseabsmith.com or chelseabethsmith.com

If its common it might be difficult to get, however, be creative and you can usually find something.

• chelsea.smith@gmail.com
• chelsea.b.smith@gmail.com
• chelsea_b_smith@gmail.com
• chelsea.beth.smith@gmail.com
• cb.smith@gmail.com

Those are just some ideas. Worst case scenario, you could add something else to your name. If you are a doctor, you could add MD. A nurse could add RN, etc.

Hope that helps.

Can you take me through this – cannot find the details from your directions on google
Many thanks

I also think that if you have a name that can be spelled more than one way, or other name variations too like Robert / Rob/ Bob, that you should setup accounts with the alterations, so not to miss an opportunity.

Double check your email address’ on your new business cards, email signatures, and where ever else. A second pair of eyes never hurts either.

Keep established business communications simple, don’t clog them up with logos. pictures, and letter heads. Not only does it make viewing an email on a mobile device somewhat upredicatable, but it takes longer to load.

As for missing legitimate e-mails, yes, that does happen occasionally, usually because Yahoo’s Bayesian analysis tosses them into the spam bucket. For that reason, I have Yahoo configured not to delete them immediately. I manually sort the spam bucket by subject and look through it quickly to see if anything there isn’t spam. If so, I tell Yahoo it’s “Not Spam”, which puts it into my Inbox.

I do find it a sad state of affairs that 98% of e-mail is useless traffic. So many routers burning so much power to ship it, then so many servers and PC’s burning so much power to destroy it. It’s as if everyone decided that there was nothing we could do if scrap metal dealers wanted to mine our freeways with explosives, and so we all started driving slow armored vehicles with terrible gas mileage.

@Daniel – That looks like a good way to do it. I’ve started going to mark.shead@domain.com because if someone knows my name, I don’t have to spell anything else to them over the phone.

But when entering an e-mail address at a web site (such as this one), I use something different: their_domain@my_domain. I find that this helps me track and filter spam if the site gets hacked or its database gets misused. The downside is that I have to set up my e-mail service to accept all messages sent to (anything)@my_domain, not just first_name@my_domain. That means it doesn’t filter out spam sent to (random characters)@my_domain, or kickback messages from distant e-mail servers rejecting spam with (random_characters)@my_domain as a spoofed sender address. However, it’s likely that even first_name@my_domain is or will be spoofed at some time, so I think I’m still better off.

I use post@danielvnielsen.dk (one could use mail, contact og something else). My domain is my full name.

My work e-mail is simply my initials dvn@workdomain.com

Let’s say you forward a harmless joke email to a friend who then forwards it on to someone else who then replys back to that person with say a link to something unsavory. That email can be sent over and over to hundreds of people and somewhere in buried in that now unsavory email is your first and last name.

Not to mention the privacy concerns. With the pace that emails can get replicated who knows who is going to wind up with your first name / last name and email address.

I know these may be extreme, but in this day and age I’ve elected to keep as much information about myself as private as I possibly can.

1) Only quote the parts necessary to understanding what I’ve written (cutting signatures, regards, greetings etc.)

2) I top-post, meaning I place the quoted bits above my corresponding reply. This makes for a more logical email, and you don’t have to have overflowing threads.