
Ask HN: Do you want to price your inbox? - artefact
You can hide your email behind a contact form, where you set the price for people to contact you. You give people this link, and they never have your email. If you&#x27;re okay to talk more, you can write them back, if they left their mail ( or their link ).<p>Does this sound like a futuristic utopia to you?<p>It&#x27;s actually here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;a-rtefact.com<p>And no, it will never look slick. Sorry. Go to any other site if you want slick design. Hopefully this works and is secure, and is useful. That is the aim.
======
gradschool
Couldn't this functionality be implemented at the level of the MTA, for
example by a milter that autoresponds with payment instructions to any sender
who attempts to contact the recipient without having paid? Then users wouldn't
have to look at your web page at all and you wouldn't have to apologize to HN
readers for its appearance.

An MTA level solution also avoids the obvious potential problem of creating an
aftermarket for high value email addresses. Enterprising brokers could acquire
them initially by paying the money to solicit a reply, and then they could
recover their investment by selling the email address at a discount to whoever
else wants to contact the recipient.

------
dang
Posts without URLs get penalized, so you'd be better off posting this with a
link, then adding your text as a first comment in the new thread. Good luck!

------
Phithagoras
I can see uses for this if you want to cut down a lot on how many people
contact you. But it seems like it could accidentally become a barrier to those
who are unsure of themselves or have easier options than dealing with you.

