Don’t worry, I’m coming out with more articles that will cover handling email (’cause the pain is real!). This article is just discussing how I felt overwhelmed with having too many email accounts.

Too many emails accounts

Ugh! Twice in one day I found myself guessing at passwords. This resulted in all of the the traditional paths of problem-solving: digging through a password book, password reset, screwing my eyes shut and hoping it would miraculously come to me.

I did eventually figure it out, but I was very disappointed – in myself. I have a pretty lock-tight system for such things. I pride myself on it. Sadly, it was a rookie error. For some unknown reason, I tied an insignificant Gmail account – a “throw-away” email account at that – to something I had paid money for. Yep, there sat my missing invoice from last October.

Using this minor email account wasn’t for the purpose of devious activities, it was for my Askimet anti-spam license for a website. What was I thinking?

Use a minimal of email accounts

So FIRST RULE of creating an email address: tie email accounts you check regularly to anything you spend money on.

SECOND RULE: Don’t get carried away with continuously creating email accounts. K.I.S.S – keep it simple sweetie!

At one time I had at least 5 websites going, and it seemed like the right thing to do was to create unique emails for each website. Heck, I even created an email that was a merge of two of the websites. This is called “making more work for yourself than necessary.” I excelled at that. There is nothing wrong with creating a master email and using it across websites.

I excelled at making more work for myself than necessary.

–ReneesRabbitHole

Here’s an even more brilliant idea – how about reducing your websites? It reduces the business end of things, streamlines jobs, and just stops you from going crazy (a really, really good thing!). If you can pull off managing an online presence from one website, you have more time to do the more fun side of your business.

I am at that point in my life where I am reducing anything unnecessary. I have that extra dose of experience working in my favor and I can realize what I can finally delete, drop, discontinue.

So, all of you clever entrepreneurs (which there are a lot of you because that’s the nature of multipotentialites)! This is how I roll:

• I use my personal email to sign up for anything that I will pay for, because I check on it on a regular basis and nothing slips through the cracks there. This would also be the email for important things like my e-newsletter. I don’t have to have to publicly display my personal email anywhere, they often let you post a different email the public will see, such as a business email.
• I create a business email that I respond to people from so no one crosses my privacy line. It’s just for correspondence with the public. it’s part of my domain name so I look super professional. 🙂 Again, consider using a master email across multiple domains if you can get away with it.
• I have an LLC email to sign up for the accounts that bring money in, like affiliate income, Amazon book accounts, etc.
• I created a throw-away Gmail account for an auto-responder when delivering digital products. It’s something like sc************@***il.com (yes, I made that up). You can see it gets the job done and the recipient will easily identify that they purchased something from me. You could always set up another email on your domain, and some would argue that a Gmail account is not professional. For me, it was just easier, and I find that it’s time for me to start taking the easier path in life.
• You will have to decide if you want to go one step further in creating an email for social media, which can be a flood of communication itself. You may benefit from keeping that separate.

You can see that it doesn’t take long until things get complicated again. You don’t want to spend your life checking and responding to email. Some things like my autoresponder email can be set to forward to one account I check regularly.

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, especially on a budget, you have to manage your email yourself. Set yourself up for success by minimizing the run around so you can focus on more important things – enjoying life!