Email Should Pay Us
- Chief Noise Maker
- Dec 23, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 19, 2021
About a year ago, INC. interviewed Mark Cuban. In the interview, Mark mentioned that he would only attend a meeting if someone is writing him a check. At the time, I loved this statement. Like Mark, I hate meetings, and the only meetings I go to are meetings where I'm paid to attend them.
Maybe it is madness, but I feel like I had a stroke of genius this weekend. Why stop with meetings? I also really hate wasting time on email. Most everyone is bombarded with email. It constitutes a necessary evil at this point. I can't tell you how many times I signed up for an initial benefit and after this benefit was over I had to receive emails from the same person for the rest of my life because my email address is trapped in someone's database for eternity. I'm certain there are people who have died many years ago that are still receiving emails.
While the cost of sending an email is practically zero, my time is worth more than zero. In fact, Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, and others have already determined what our time is worth. They sell our time or attention to advertisers. As such, I think I'm entitled to my cut of the money that is being paid for my attention. I know all that content on their platform is free. So why should they make such high margins. I want in!!!
With this being said, I set about building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The first thing to resolve is the fact that I don't want to charge everyone the same price. For instance, I really don't want to charge my friends and family anything. As such, I believe the easiest solution was to have two email addresses. A friends and family email that is free, and an everyone else email that pays me for my attention. No need to stress about multiple email addresses. It is as American as French people having multiple phones.
Secondly, I needed a basic mechanism for letting people know that I would only be reading their emails if they provided payment for my time. Can you say "Thank you Auto Reply"? Now I'm not a natural at writing, and I'm certain someone will vastly improve on my message. If you have any input, please provide it in the comments.
Finally, I need an easy way of accepting payments. In steps CASH APP and VENMO!!! Damn it feels good to live in this era. With these basics in place, I was able to quickly put together an Auto Reply message as seen below:
Dear Sender,
As you may know, time is money. We all have limited time left in this life, and I value that time. As such, I believe that it is only right that I should be paid for my time. I have come to the decision that this is especially true for emails. Please follow the instructions below if you wish for me to read your message.
For Friends and Family, you should have my friends and family email address. If not, please send me a text message and I will provide this email address to you shortly.
For all others, please provide a payment of USD$9.99 through the apps listed below. It is important that you include your email address and subject line in the memo for the payment, so I can be sure to read and respond to the correct message. Please note, this dollar amount is calculated based on personal attention rates and average length of time to read and respond to emails. As I collect more data, the price will be adjusted to specifically match your email request. I have no doubt this will lower the price for some and raise the price for many.
Payments can be made to the following:
CASH APP: $firstnamelastname
VENMO: @firstname-lastname
Thank you so much, and I look forward to reading your message soon.
Cheers!
While this may be a bit verbose, I feel the need to explain the diversion from current customs, but I think such a system of paying people for their attention is not unwarranted. In such a world, Google could easily adjust their Machine Learning (ML) to identify spam or scams and immediately request a payment. Such a use of Googles ML might relieve all of the useless emails or at least make email recipients some extra money. In many ways, this is not too far fetched from the idea Andrew Yang presented for funding Universal Basic Income (UBI) by having a technology tax.
But for now, I will start with my MVP and any others who wish to join me on this quirky experiment in the economics of human attention.
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