Writing.Com 101

Email

When you sign up for your free Writing.Com membership, you automatically get a Writing.Com email address created and linked to your membership account. Your email address is "[e-mail]" and works just like any other email account; you can send and receive messages (both from Writing.Com members and other email addresses), attach files, and organize your email account with folders and an address book.

Your email can be accessed by clicking on the Email link ( ) from the left navigation under the Writing.Com logo. This will take you directly to your inbox, where your new and old email is located by default. You have six tabs in your email area to help you organize and manage your email: "Inbox" Tab, "Compose Email" Tab, "Addresses" Tab, "Folders" Tab, "Search" Tab and "Options" Tab.

Check Your Email!
It's incredibly important to check your Writing.Com email on a regular basis, as your email account is the system WdC uses to communicate all the site activity. When you receive a review for one of your Items, you receive it via email. If you subscribe to one of the weekly official newsletters, you get a copy in your email every week. If another members sends you a cNote, Gift Points, a Merit Badge, or an Awardicon, you receive notification through your email. And when there's important information about your WdC account, you receive that notification through email.

Writing.Com makes it very easy for you to see that you have new email. When a new email comes in, you will notice that email image will have a red circle showing the number of new emails. As soon you click over to your inbox, the red circle will disappear as the system knows that you have checked in to see what email you received.

While there are no requirements to how often you must check your email, keeping up to date on what's in your inbox is an important part of staying active and up-to-date on what's happening around Writing.Com. It's also important to respond to other members who reach out to you through emails, reviews, awards, and the like. Writing.Com's greatest feature has always been the readers and writers that make up its membership; thanking people for their time in reviewing your items, and being generally responsive to questions, comments, and contact from those other members helps ensure Writing.Com remains the positive, interactive writing website it was designed to be.

Respond to Reviews and Emails
Whenever you receive a review, Writing.Com makes it incredibly easy to respond by using the "Respond to Review" box located below the text of the review. After you enter your response to the reviewer using this text area, press the "Send It" button and your text will be automatically sent to the recipient and show up in his or her inbox. You don't even have to enter in an email address; the system already knows to whom to send the reply!

Similarly, the other notifications you receive (like a Merit Badge, for example) will come from someone's email account, which means you can simply reply to the email to thank them for the Merit Badge. It only takes a few seconds, and it's always nice to include a short, personal message of thanks when someone spends the time or Gift Points to give you something. Simply scroll down below the email or notification that you've received and use the text area provided for your response. This makes it quick and easy to communicate with other members on Writing.Com!

Spam Is Not Tolerated
Writing.Com enforces a strict NO SPAM policy. Spam is defined as, "unsolicited email, often of a commercial nature, sent indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups; junk email." In other words, Writing.Com will not tolerate using your site email account for spamming purposes, either soliciting multiple other accounts simultaneously, or repeatedly soliciting the same people over and over. It's one thing to promote your work and ask a few chosen people to read and review something you've written; it's another thing entirely to send dozens and dozens of emails, asking people to do something for you or give you something.

If you are looking for reviews, sending bulk emails is definitely not the method of promotion on Writing.Com. We recommend visiting specific review forums, posting on "Writing.Com General Discussion" , visiting "The Shameless "Plug" Page"  and "Please Review" , and using our BidClick system (see: "BidClick System: Sponsored Items, Links & Genres" ).

If you do feel that an email is the method of communication that you would like to choose, a good way to avoid being accused of sending spam is to take the time to personalize your email and give an explanation of your request. Don't just write, "please read my Item" or "send me Gift Points" and send it to a hundred Writing.Com members. Give your email a personal touch, either by sending it individually to members with whom you have already made contact, or by writing a courteous, respectful email explaining what you're asking for, why you're asking for it, and how the recipient can help. Remember to make sure you send emails from your Writing.Com email account with a purpose; spam is not tolerated at all.

Spam Is Not Tolerated
Writing.Com automatically filters all incoming email for spam using industry leading spam filtering technology. Any email determined to be spam will be automatically moved into your SPAM folder (see: ""Folders" Tab" ). If you find email that is not spam located in your spam folder, you can move it back into your inbox using your button (see: "Inbox" Tab). To create additional spam filtering rules, please see ""Options" Tab" . Also, even the best spam filters will sometimes miss emails that are indeed spam. Just delete them and move on. Please do not notify us that you have received spam.1

Recommended Reading

1. "Inbox" Tab
2. "Compose Email" Tab
3. "Addresses" Tab
4. "Folders" Tab
5. "Search" Tab
6. "Options" Tab

Footnotes
1  Written by Jeff