In response to a thread on LinkedIn about the company that rebranded as Shield, Andrew Rosener commented that his company brokered the domain name on behalf of the buyer:
“The Shield.com domain name was acquired for the buyer by the top domain broker team on the planet, Media Options LTD!”
On the About section of Andrew’s LinkedIn profile, I noticed he invites people to contact him a via Earn.com. If you aren’t familiar with Earn, it’s a platform that allows members to earn money by reading and replying to emails sent by others via the network. Put simply, if you don’t know Andrew Rosener personally and want to contact him via Earn, you can send him a message for $5. If Andrew reads and responds, he keeps the $5, and if he doesn’t respond, I believe the sender gets the money back or an credit.
In short, Earn adds a bit of a financial barrier for people who want to send someone they don’t know an unsolicited email, and it gives a small incentive to someone for replying to unsolicited but targeted emails.
After seeing Andrew’s profile, I did a search of Earn to see if I know other people who are using Earn to be compensated for replying to emails via the platform. Here are some domain industry professionals (who I know personally) who appear to be using Earn:
- Jen Sale (Evergreen.com)
- Adam Strong
- Josh Schoen
- Dave Thomas (NetNames)
- Mark Levine
- Josh Metnick
- James Iles
- Patrick Carleton
- Aron Meystedt
- Ammar Kubba
- Jag Singh
The contact rates for each of these individuals seems to vary from between $1 – $20. There is also a donation option for members who wish to donate the payment to charity.
LOL. Another way to “earn” for contact is If you receive an appraisal scam email, which hasn’t happened for a while, tell them you’ll be happy to consider purchasing the appraisal but they’ll first have to pay a $50 – $100 or up “negotiation fee.”
Why would anyone contact them via Earn.com? Just send an email, it’s free!
For some of those people, it’s easier to spend $5 than trying to find a working email address. In addition, the deliverability is probably more guaranteed than a random email.
They’ll probably just ignore all of them emails from now on, just to earn that $5. I’m all for capitalism, but this is going overboard. You’re not providing much value. You’re just adding another middleman to pull money from. This is where the US economy is and thus the dollar is getting weaker.
Here’s my opinion: The rich are rich enough already. Their “giving back” should be them donating their time to the little guys in the industry who need more help. This is just another case of taking from the lower to middle class to give to the top percenters. I’m pretty sure their buddies and top percenters probably have their private emails to reach them.