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April 27, 2008

All email should cost a penny per thousand

Photo: spam

It's been two years since AOL and Yahoo partnered with Goodmail Systems to offer businesses a way to send "certified" emails that would cost ¼ cent per message that would bypass spam filters. Since that time I have not received one "certified" email but instead I did get over 75,000 spam emails that didn't make it with YAHOO's email filter.

I like the idea but hate the price. The idea is that if spammers had to pay a small fee for millions of emails they would never be able to afford it, and would also need to be investigated and abide by certain rules.

The price, I estimate, should be a penny per thousand. Here's why: at ¼ cent per email, it's too pricey for a small business that needs to legitimately send a few thousand pieces a day to its customers to ensure avoiding spam filters. A thousand pieces a day would cost a small businessman almost a thousand dollars per year. It's even too pricey for big players Amazon or Ebay. However, at one cent per thousand, it would cost the big guys only a few thousand a year to send a million emails a day.

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