uglygit

just had a look at the chilthurst domain, at £2.95 per email !, that's £35.40 per year, wow that's a lot considering your email is free with your isp, no wonder no-one signed up. some ideas :-

1) offer the email address free for the first year...with small print blurb (terms and conds) on the flyer/website that 'we are offering this exclusive offer to Chilthurst residents as a free service however if demand increases along with bandwidth we may have charge a small fee (approx £2.95 per year) to accomodate the extra demand'

now people will sign up if it's free (I would), let them use it for a year , give out email addresses, get comfortable with it, etc and then hit them with a email about the demand and the £2.95 per year.

£2.95 x 92761 (population source google)= £273644.95

2) integrate voucher/freebies deals exclusive to chisleton folk (see http://www.hotukdeals.com/vouchers-static.html)

3) how about a shoutbox for people in your street (or user specified),when someones online.

smileysmile67

Hi - I have been trying to find someone to provide me with the service that you pretty much describe. I own a web domain pertaining to a sporting venue which I believe is a potentially desirable e-mail address to a niche, but significant market. Basically I need a package which I can sell to buyers along the lines of "make *******.com" you e-mail address for only x p.a" and where the host will supply the framework/legals etc. If you can assist I think there can be money in it for us both. I appreciate selling addresses isn't easy but I KNOW this market and how to reach them. Potential subcriptions could be over 20000 but very realistically at least 2-3,000 per annum. (10-15 gbp per annum?)

retired_member6

Bang up the prices an I'll have a look, I used to use everyone.net

And yes another do something simailr, wish they'd park their domains properly though.

miked

I think the key here is demand rather than price. Get an eMail address that people want, a site they want to be associated with, and they'll pay. For example, fans of a particular band might pay to have an eMail address linked to that band (especially if it's related to a street team or similar).

Finding something that people want so much, of course, is the difficult thing...

Mike.

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crabfoot

There are a lot of caveats to be considered here.

The gmail/hotmail addresses are no longer acceptable to register with eBay, because they have been heavily abused by scammers. If the service is offered free, you need some sort of checking mechanism to screen out Mr Bogus, or you will find the scammers are in clover again. Many check the validity of the postcode, or the telephone number.
Having said that, I once helped a friend of mine in the Ukraine to register a free UK email address. He needed an address with a valid UK postcode, I gave him one. Unfortunately, the house it applies to was removed by Hitler (Demolition) GMBH over 60 years ago, but the email still works!

People get free email from their ISPs - then find out that it ties them to the service. You could use this as a marketing point, "a separate email address allows you to change your ISP easily, with seamless continuity" or something similar. But you would really have to spell it out, or target people who have had a bad ISP experience, before you can win them over.

I have been using a couple of free services for some time now, to divorce myself gradually from my ISP and gain independence. I'm not using the free email I get with my domains, because it gets tedious having to check all those mailboxes on a regular basis.

I have eight "regular" email addresses, some of which are targeted to receive business (I only look at the number of mails and check the messages if the number has changed), some of which are full of spam (I open those once a fortnight and delete a few hundred mails), and two of which I check daily.

I cannot see why I would want to "buy" an email service, unless it was part of an email-based business venture, where I wanted a name - and then, I would be more likely to buy a domain and go with the registrar's service.

Whatever I want, I can get for free, although it might require a "black hat". I know "free" providers that will give really fancy email services, and I know that the services I rely on are not going to fall over tomorrow.

I think you need a discount deal or two, linking into some premium services, in addition to email, to make this idea take off. A free offer would just help those eBay scammers, and get you a bad reputation. Perhaps you could roll in a deal that included access to Pogo Games, for example.

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aZooZa

I tried this in 2002 and spend about £20k on it to include all the email back end. It was fine until the spammers got to it, even though I was charging $60 per year up-front. I first had the idea in 1998 when I registered aliases.net but didn't pursue it until 2002, and then did it under another domain name. I could only sustain it for a few months until it was crippled.

The biggest player emerged to be another.com, a year later. Here's the story of the battle that they fought:

The great spam witch hunt

My advice, based on a lot of bitter experience, is to stay well clear of it.