I make a lot of money from the spam I get, do you?

Well, we are well established in 2013 now.  Being a year ending in “13” many of us probably expect it to be an unlucky year after all many people consider 13 to be an unlucky number.

So far, though, for me, the year is shaping up as a good one.

My online earnings have been good so far, my various websites are running well, and I have been quite productive in moving toward reaching my goals for the year.  I can’t complain at all about 2013 so far.

How are your online endeavors going?  Are you earning money online?  Or, if you are just getting started in a quest to start earning online, have you made good progress so far in 2013?

How are you doing in earning money from your e-mail spam folder?

What?  Making money from spam?

Do you check your spam folder?

You know, I make good money from the spam that I receive!  Don’t you?  If you don’t, I am betting you need to check your spam folder more often!

OK, OK, I am only pulling your leg, to an extent.  The truth is that I don’t make any money from actual spam.  I do, however, make significant money from e-mails that are sometimes mislabeled as spam and sent to my spam folder.  I use G-Mail for my e-mail provider.  Even for my own domains, I have it set up where G-Mail handles e-mail for my domains.  Now, G-Mail has a reputation that they are very good at handling spam.  They get it right when it comes to determining if an e-mail is a spam or ham (never heard of “ham” in the e-mail, usually that is the term that is used for “real” e-mail that is not spam).  Bet, even a company that does a good job still makes the occasional mistake.

I get a lot of e-mail.  Tons of ham, and also tons of spam.  Even if Google is correct 99% of the time in determining what is spam, that means that I will get a few mistakes every single day.  That means that a real piece of ham e-mail will be sent to spam a few times per day.  It also means that a few spams will be sent to my inbox from time to time.  There is just no way around it.

The key is, though… I check my spam folder 4 or 5 times per day to see if there is anything in there that is not spam.  Once I check the folder and have made sure there is no harm in there, I delete everything out of my spam folder.  That way, there is less to wade through next time I check for ham mixed in with the spam.

I have not studied this and tracked the numbers, but I would say that I probably make $500 on the average month from ham e-mails that I find in the Spam folder.  In other words, if I just ignored my spam folder, I would be walking away from significant money.  Hey, $500 is not going to mean life or death for me, but it is still nothing to sneeze at.  If I can make an extra $500 per month just by keeping track of what is being sent to my spam folder, well, that is time well spent, in my opinion.

In addition to finding money-making e-mails in my spam folder, I find other non-spam e-mails that are important too, stuff that won’t exactly earn money but are important nonetheless.

So, I’ll ask you again… are you checking your spam folder?  If not… you really should.