MoneyForMail.com finally finds a way for college students to get paid for receiving junk e-mail.
The site urges students to, take control of your personal information and put the advertisers’ dollars where they should go – in your pocket!
Students register at the Web site, making up a profile of themselves, with information such as sex, age, annual salary and hobbies. Advertisers tell the site what kind of consumer they would like their advertisements to reach. MoneyForMail.com mails the advertisements to the appropriate students.
Students earn between 20 cents and $2.50 for each advertiser’s page that they view while remaining completely anonymous to the advertiser, said Gerri Detweiler, president of MoneyforMail.com.
The Web page emphasizes that confidential information about the consumer will never be released to the advertisers, unlike most companies.
On average (the student earns) 40 cents per ad, Detweiler said. And when their account reaches $10, they are mailed a check.
The site offers bonuses for referring members.
Larry Chiang, Detweiler’s partner, initially devised a Web page, http://campusbackbone.com, which was geared specifically for college students. MoneyForMail.com is an expansion of the initial idea so not only college students would benefit.
Officially launched in January, the site has 170,000 members. Detweiler said the company expects to have two million users within the next few months.
Currently, MoneyForMail.com requires students to give their social security number. However, within the next few weeks they will be eliminating the social security number requirement, Detweiler said.
Students only get paid if they click on the hyperlink at the bottom of the e-mail, Detweiler said.
We know that consumers are actually reading the ads, she said.
The site boasts a 16-percent response rate.
It’s obvious that people are motivated and not just quickly opening and closing the advertiser’s site, Detweiler said. And even if someone just looks at an ad, that’s more than other (advertisers’) techniques.
