What is really considered spam email? Is it as simple as if you send an email to someone that didn't sign up for a list? For instance as a business website owner if I'm searching the internet and I find a another website that I think would be interested in a business venture together am I not allowed to email that business owner? Lets say you own a website selling wedding favors, and lets say someone emails you saying "Hey I'm a wedding planner and I would like to send my clients who want wedding favors to you for a small affiliate fee, are you interested?" Is that considered spam? And if that isn't considered spam, is it considered spam if you send that email out to 50 wedding favor companies that you thought you would like to work with? I don't fully understand the spam thing, I don't want to break the law, but I don't know how many emails I can send out to companies from my email address.
This is where I'm confused. If you read the CAN SPAM ACT you will see that you are actually allowed to send unsolicited email, as long as it falls into a certain category, such as it can't be for commercial reasons like selling a product or service. So if I have a 100% free site, that is purely informational and I'm contacting someone to trade links, that doesn't seem to be spam to me at all because I'm not contacting them to sell something etc. and I'm contacting a relevant site. But if you go to most hosting companies under their "email spam" rules and regulations the first thing they talk about is "you can't send unsolicited bulk emails at all", which isn't want the CAN SPAM ACT says.
1) CAN SPAM ACT is valid only in USA. Different countries, different laws. 2) Since CAN SPAM Act says, "you're free to spam as long there is an opt-out option", blocklists owners request more than that CAN SPAM Act. If you send unsolicited bulk emails and you're reported, you may find your domain name & IP in blacklists. Result? Since spam filters use blocklists' databases, most of your emails are routed to spam folders.