Hotmail has made a name for itself by making web based email free and easily accessed from anywhere in the world. However, you can offer a service like Hotmail right on your own site. Adding user@yourdomain.com free email to your site makes a tremendous amount of sense on a number of levels. Even if you don't intend to offer email as a service, you should have one or two email accounts @yourdomain.com for purposes of communicating with your visitors, as it adds an overall air of legitimacy to the site. However, the greatest benefits of having email on your site come from offering email as a free service for your customers:

• When a customer signs up for an email account, that individual is likely to return to your site regularly to check for new mail.
• While checking their mail, they may click on one or more of the advertising banners that you display on their screen.
• Whenever they send an email, the person receiving the email will become aware of your site through both the return address and the signature line at the bottom of the email that can be customized to advertise your site.
• Thus, email can be a great way to generate additional hits, profits, and free advertising.

Most web professional hosting packages will include one or more free POP3 email accounts. These accounts can be great if you only intend to use the email for limited purposes, such as communicating with your clientele. However, if you're planning on offering email as a full blown service, you should switch over to web based email accounts, even if your web host is willing to provide you with unlimited POP3 accounts. The advantage of having web based email accounts is that your customers have to come to your site to use them. Customers also tend to prefer web based email accounts because they are easier to access from remote locations than are POP3 accounts.

Let one of the companies that specializes in putting together email pages operate the email for you. You will have all the hosting space provided for you and not have to worry about any of the upkeep. These companies generally provide this service for free, but demand a portion or all of the advertising space in return.

We used to strongly recommend using Everyone.net email . Check out their "Email for websites" opton. They have a "sponsored" email product where your email users see ads, but if they upgrade to Mail Plus, you get $10! If you have only free users, Everyone.net will half of the 468x60 banner and promotional tagline space that your free ad-supported email users see. Plus you get a web-based Control Center to manage your email service.

Quite honestly, you will not make money having free email on your site. So if you want to add it just as a service, you can try it. Currently you can pay for the services at Everyone.net and that will remove the ads.

• Everyone.net