If your email is YOU@GMAIL.COM,  YOU+blog@GMAIL.COM is a valid email address and can be used by you.

I have been doing this since a long time but surprisingly anyone I have shown this technique has been totally unaware of it, so I thought I will share it with you as well.

Visiting several websites, buying ebooks and physical products, air tickets, etc all these end up opting you in for newsletters, product upgrade and other similar notifications. You can use Gmail to your benefit and enjoy the luxury of automated organizing of your emails along with tracking.

Here is what you need to know:
- We will be using filters on Gmail Settings
- We will be using labels on Gmail Settings
- We will also be using a standard Gmail email address to do the tracking.

Step 1. Understand that you can use any sub-id or term along with your regular Gmail address as long as it is separated from your username using a + (plus sign). Say for example, your email is jondoe@gmail.com, you can add a sub-id to this address like - jondoe+raakesh_blog@gmail.com. Any emails sent to this address will be sent your your regular email address.

So when you sign up for ANY website or list, you will create a dynamic identifiable sub-id to use with your email address. Let’s say you just registered yourself with Affiliate Summit, you will be getting emails from them often to give you updates, details and more.  So while registration, use your email address as YOURUSERNAME+affiliate_summit@gmail.com. (Replace YOURUSERNAME, with your actual Gmail username). You can be more innovative and write “affsum” instead of typing the entire word “affiliate_summit” as long as you can keep it unique.

Step 2. Go to your Gmail account, then go to Settings and click on Labels. Click on Create new label and type in Affiliate Summit and hit “Create”. This will create a new label called Affiliate Summit.

Step 3. Click on Filters in the Settings page and click on “Create a New Filter” at the bottom of the filter list. In the TO text box, enter the email address with the sub-id that you used above (yourUSERNAME+affiliate_summit@gmail.com) and hit “Next Step”. On the next page check the box next to “Apply the Label” and hit “Create Filter Now” and you might also want to check the box that says “Apply this filter to the X conversations below” (where x is the number of mails that match this criteria).

You are done, a new label will now be added to your email and you can get to these emails from the label list on the left menu of Gmail.

This helps you organise your mail better and makes things easier for you in the long run.

I am sure you are innovative enough to find this technique so useful and make it work at different levels as per your needs, if you come up with something that you might want to share with the rest of us, just post it as a comment below.