Pay Per E-Mail

One of the reasons that spam and e-mail scams are profitable is because of the low overhead cost. The number of responses needed for a return on investment is less than 1%. (Somewhere I seem to remember it's around 0.01%.) Wired has up an article about a company named Goodmail that for a quarter of a cent per message will verify the message allowing it to bypass ISPs filters. (This requires the ISP to be using the Goodmail technology). For a broadcast of 5,000,000 e-mails, it will cost the sender $12,500. Using the 0.01% response rate, that means that out of 5,000,000 e-mails, there will be 500 responses for a cost of $25 per responder. Will this stop spam or scams? I doubt it. I'm guessing most spammers and all scammers will make at least $25 off of a responders. Supposedly, if a company hasn't been in business over a year or they have a number of spam complaints, Goodmail will not take their money, but I suspect that spammers and scammers will find ways around it.