This might seem like an obviously easy thing to do, but I so often see mistakes in this area so it’s probably important to at least mention so I can at least say “I told you so!”
Selecting a good email address is important as your email address will be one of the main ways people communicate with you. The ending domain part of your email (@XYZ.com) part you’ll have less control over as you’ll either decide to run your own email at your site giving you a NAME@your-domain-name.com email address or you’ll select on of the free email provides like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or others giving you a NAME@gmail.com or NAME@hotmail.com or NAME@yahoo.com email address.
If you decide to go with one of these free services, which you select will be up to you, but Gmail is clearly the best and will provide you with more options and much better security than the others–I don’t think this is even an opinion, but a clear fact. Things might change in the coming months or years as many years ago there was no Gmail, and Hotmail reigned supreme. After that it was Yahoo, and just a few years ago Gmail surpassed all. Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but if you aren’t sure which one to select, just go with Gmail. If you use the others already and are more comfortable, consider changing but you might feel better remaining where you are.
Years ago, it was important to have a @your-domain-name.com which matched your domain, thus being hosted on your server. That was a way to distinguish if someone was serious and reputable, but things have been changing and now many reputable companies choose to go with free email provides. The benefit of reputation you gain from having your own domain email will be minimal today, but still might be enough to sway you this direction–I do sometimes encounter companies insisting that I provide them with a non-free email address to prove my legitimacy. If you do decide to go with a @your-domain-name.com I again recommend that you go with Google (AKA Gmail) instead of running email on your own server. Google offers a paid business account for email which will cost about $5 a month and will allow you to have your @your-domain-name.com as if it’s run on your server, but they’ll do all the hosting for your email. This will greatly increase security and reduce the load on your server. I could spend an entire post about the advantages of this, but just trust me with this for now that $5 a month is well worth it for the peace of mind you’ll get.
Ok, now let’s talk about the first part of the email address. This is where people the big mistake. I just got off the phone with a company I’m working with as they weren’t getting my emails so I was checking if I had the correct email address. The issue was that their email address is too difficult and I’ve seen countless problems with this EXACT same issue. Avoid using _ underscores or – dashes or any other special characters–stick to letters only and possibly numbers if you must. Please read that last sentence again as that one sentence sums up this entire post.
With the free services, any good name will have been taken long ago, but try to find something available which is short and easy to say and easy to remember. If possible, get your actual domain name as your name–thus why our email address for this site is Studio1xxx@gmail.com That’s easy to remember, and easy to tell people. I’m not usually big on having numbers in the name as it might be confusing to people if it’s “1″ or “one”, but since our domain name uses “1″ it makes sense this time.
If your website is about “you” then try to get your character name if not your domain name. In the past I used MickeysApartment@gmail.com as the email address for a special series I did for several years in which you got to follow my adventures showing the girls I’d have over at my apartment for photo-shoots. The shoots were done for a variety of sites, but MickeysApartment brought them all together showing background material–between the scenes stuff, etc. The name itself wasn’t about any particular site, but it worked to bring things together and I even showed webcam footage live via Yahoo IM at the MickeysApartment@yahoo.com address.
Be aware that the capitalization of your name usually won’t matter. Thus studio1xxx@gmail.com or Studio1xxx@gmail.com or Studio1XXX@gmail.com etc… won’t matter.
Let me back up a bit as if you are hosting your own email on your server, then you’ll probably have access to ANYTHING@domain.com with the ANYTHING part being anything you want as all mail to the @domain.com will go to you. I do host email at one site, but to reduce spam I’ve locked it down so that only email sent directly to staff@domain.com gets through. I’ll eventually most this to a Google business account and still use staff@domain.com, but I could just as easy use mike@domain.com or anything else and since it’s a business account using my domain, that would be available where as mike@gmail.com was certainly taken long long ago.