I think it’s great that you’re trying this and I hope it succeeds.
But I won’t be using it. For me, the biggest problem is lowering the sense of obligation I feel to answer other people’s emails. Without a sense of obligation, there’s no problem—I just delete it and move on. But part of me feels like I’m incurring a social cost by doing this, so it’s harder than it sounds.
I feel like using a service like this would make the problem worse, not better. It would make me feel a strong sense of obligation to answer someone’s email if they had paid $5 to send it. What sort of monster deletes an email they know the other person had to pay money to send?
In the same way, I would feel nervous sending someone else a paid email, because I would feel like I was imposing a stronger sense of obligation on them to respond to my request, rather than it being a harmless ask they can either answer or not. This would be true regardless of how important my email was. Meanwhile, people who don’t care about other people’s feelings won’t really be held back, since $5 is not a lot of money for most people in this community.
I think the increased obligation would dominate any tendency for me to get less emails, and make this a net negative in my case. I still hope other people try it and report back.
Quick check (I think Jacob should update the OP since I think a couple people have made this interpretation) – the service Jacob uses only charges people if you respond to their email. Curious if that changes your take on the situation?
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Yes, this answers my objection (although it might cause other problems like make me less likely to answer “sorry, I can’t do that” compared to just ghosting someone)
Not saying there’s an existing service that does this, but this sounds like a pretty important use case for such a service to have. I think it’d be good for such services to have a button that’s like “hey, read this but don’t think it makes sense. Bye.” (I could imagine having that button charge a smaller amount or something)
(That said, I’m not sure this whole equilibrium actually makes sense. I don’t personally feel the need to use it)
This doesn’t seem to solve the problem, which is compensating someone for the attention to evaluate if your email is worth responding to. If I’m sending a substantive response, I’m probably glad I got the e-mail.
I assume this is done to keep people from soliciting lots of email solely for the money, but it doesn’t solve that problem, since you can always send a pro-forma response.
I think it’s great that you’re trying this and I hope it succeeds.
But I won’t be using it. For me, the biggest problem is lowering the sense of obligation I feel to answer other people’s emails. Without a sense of obligation, there’s no problem—I just delete it and move on. But part of me feels like I’m incurring a social cost by doing this, so it’s harder than it sounds.
I feel like using a service like this would make the problem worse, not better. It would make me feel a strong sense of obligation to answer someone’s email if they had paid $5 to send it. What sort of monster deletes an email they know the other person had to pay money to send?
In the same way, I would feel nervous sending someone else a paid email, because I would feel like I was imposing a stronger sense of obligation on them to respond to my request, rather than it being a harmless ask they can either answer or not. This would be true regardless of how important my email was. Meanwhile, people who don’t care about other people’s feelings won’t really be held back, since $5 is not a lot of money for most people in this community.
I think the increased obligation would dominate any tendency for me to get less emails, and make this a net negative in my case. I still hope other people try it and report back.
Quick check (I think Jacob should update the OP since I think a couple people have made this interpretation) – the service Jacob uses only charges people if you respond to their email. Curious if that changes your take on the situation?
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. Yes, this answers my objection (although it might cause other problems like make me less likely to answer “sorry, I can’t do that” compared to just ghosting someone)
I also don’t know if “this answers my objection” means “oh, then I’d use it” or “other problems still seem to big” (though I’d bet on the latter).
Not saying there’s an existing service that does this, but this sounds like a pretty important use case for such a service to have. I think it’d be good for such services to have a button that’s like “hey, read this but don’t think it makes sense. Bye.” (I could imagine having that button charge a smaller amount or something)
(That said, I’m not sure this whole equilibrium actually makes sense. I don’t personally feel the need to use it)
This doesn’t seem to solve the problem, which is compensating someone for the attention to evaluate if your email is worth responding to. If I’m sending a substantive response, I’m probably glad I got the e-mail.
I assume this is done to keep people from soliciting lots of email solely for the money, but it doesn’t solve that problem, since you can always send a pro-forma response.
Updated the OP to clarify this. Will hold off on replying until I know whether this changes Scott’s mind or not!