Over the past almost 20 years, I've used a multitude of different email addresses to sign up for affiliate programs and affiliate networks.
In 1997, I used the address linked to my first Internet service provider, which became unusable when I left Prince George, B.C. a couple of years later and signed up with a new provider in Calgary, Alberta.
I then picked up an online email account with Bigfoot because I was traveling a lot and could access it anywhere at anytime. However, their service went by the wayside pretty darned quickly. Fortunately, I hadn't signed up for many affiliate programs or networks, so changing the email address on those accounts wasn't too tedious.
Not long afterward I started using CPanel, and got the bright idea to use a different email address for each affiliate program, i.e. clickbank@rosalinds.com, cj@rosalinds.com and so forth.
That setup worked especially well while I was using Eudora, a computer-based email client. I created separate mailboxes for each program, which would ‘light up' when a new email had arrived.
Sadly, Eudora went the way of the dodo, and I signed up for my Gmail account which I've now had for over a decade.
It took awhile to change all those affiliate-program@mydomain.com email addresses to my Gmail account email address.
Then, during one of my server moves, I decided to ‘clean up' the ‘extraneous stuff' on the server and deleted most of those affiliate-program@mydomain.com forwarding email addresses.
BIG mistake.
[Read more…]