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I want people to pay per letter they email me ...

"Hey it looks like you want to send Amelius an email. Please visit this page, where you can pay and make sure your email actually arrives"



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So, I could require people to pay me for the privilege of sending me an email? Awesome.

Is the payment to get the email delivered or to get guaranteed response?

I'd prefer the latter for two reasons: 1) as a receiver I don't want to miss out on a potentially interesting email just because the sender couldn't pay (for technical or financial reasons), and 2) as a sender I'd like some sort of guarantee if I'm going to pay for something.

It's probably the more difficult approach of the two so I suggest testing both approaches and see what works best.

Congrats on getting this far already. Like you say it's not a new idea, but who cares about ideas. It's about execution anyway. Looking forward to the launch!


Pay for your email or you are the product.

I can send those emails myself.

However, PayOnlyIf does make it much more interesting. It aligns incentives.


You don't mind that EVERYONE who isn't on your contact list is going to be asked to pay you?

> The software will automatically ask those outside of your contact list to pay your inbox fee to send you emails.


Excellent Idea. But why email? Just use a webform that charges 1 USD via paypal to contact you. Trust me, I wont!

As someone said on the earlier thread: "I'd be happy to pay for it, I just don't want to give my email".

It should be possible for the viewer to select a different dollar rate , everyone's time has a different value, so it makes sense to read only the emails who are willing to pay you for your time to acknowledge their offer.

*Outside of the personal relationship


Thank you for your interest and sorry for confusing you. I expected a visitor to put their email in a form and then I send back payment link (backend processing is not automated yet so I handle each request manually).

Another "You asked for my email to start the process so I closed the browser window" user here. And yes, I read your comments on the page:

"... we promise never to spam you or sell your email address to anyone."

Who is this "we"? I don't know you. I've never heard of you. Your promise is meaningless to me. It does not serve to make me feel better or get over the heebie-jeebies about giving up my email in any way whatsoever.

------------------

So I went to Mailinator, got a DEA, and put it in - bam. Now I can at least check it out. Of course, 99.999% of users will not do this but anyway.

I'd think it's "four clicks" is the right number. At some point these users need to feel committed and want this enough to pay. You can't do that on the first page - you just can't. You need page views to build the commitment/excitement that makes someone want to pay:

1) User lands

2) User picks out card

3) User customizes card

4) User pays for card

You could move the email to the "User pays for card" step ("Would you like a receipt?"). You just have to decide on that yourself and go with whatever you select.


If they charged money instead of asking for an email, would you have done this?

If I want you to email me, I will give you my address. If I haven't done that, there's no legitimate reason to pay a third party for it. 100% of your partners are spammers.

Agreed. Or at least an option to pay, without email registration. It's not that I can't block spam - it's more: I'm not interested in some newsletter - and I don't understand why you want me to sign up. I assume there's some kind of upsell planned - but surely getting paid ten to twenty dollars (or more) for the epub is a viable option? If the alternative is a newsletter that goes straight to /dev/null?

I think the question you want to ask is, would you pay to contact people via email?

The answer is most likely no.


The way you present things at the footer does makes it sound like you're simply asking for an email subscription. It might help to be more open, ie. "this book is a work in progress", and to display the price before asking for contact details.

For you to give them your email address

All good ideas. I hadn't considered the email - I am using Systematic Revenue for emails and this could be a great way to take advantage of the system.

But how does it work? Am I obliged to open an email from a person that paid?

If not - why would advertisers pay for that? If yes, that feels like a job and not like my personal email account - I wouldn’t want that.


I would prefer it not in a per email basis but I've signed up regardless. High probability of eventually marking these emails as spam but I might learn something before that!
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