5 ms·

Using an API to build a $1,500/month side business in 4 months

83 points by kullar 10y ago

kevinwang 10y ago
wondering if you disclosed that you were the creator of the service when you made the growthhacks list
- JoblessWonder 10y ago
  Doesn't look like it. He seems to make no mention of his relationship to Anymailfinder or Makesmail in any of his posts. [3] It also looks like he is working closely with "Clavain Skade" or that is a sock puppet since they seem to publish everything for them to repost. [1] (My favorite) https://growthhackers.com/slides/30-brilliant-growth-hack-cards-great-new-stuff#comment-37533 https://growthhackers.com/slides/30-brilliant-growth-hack-ca... [2] https://medium.com/@clavain https://medium.com/@clavain [3] https://growthhackers.com/members/kullar/posts https://growthhackers.com/members/kullar/posts
  - chinathrow 10y ago
    What can you really expect from someone providing this service and also favours excessive growth hacking by saying "Oh lock, Airbnb did it too!!" shakes head
mark242 10y ago
Please don't continue to run this. What you are doing is effectively recreating the VRFY command that nearly every major mail hosting service has removed for privacy and abuse reasons. You are opening yourself up to a huge liability, since spammers will quickly use stolen credit cards to crosscheck their lists against your API. This will cause you to have processing issues from Stripe. This will cause you to have a huge backlash from hosting providers as you desperately try to make sure that your cached address is still valid. (Let's fire off 1000 calls to some random Postfix server, WCGW?) This will cause you to produce false results for domains that run catch-all addresses but don't advertise mailboxes. This will cause you to unwittingly become an effective tool in a spammer's repertoire. Look, sticking a cache in front of the RCPT TO command is all well and good, but that functionality should be up to the owner of the mail server that you're bombarding, and not up to some third party. You are putting the onus of "hey, just contact us if you don't want us to hit your mail server" on every single mail server admin. This is not okay. SMTP servers aren't nearly as robust, and cannot handle a quickly-spiraling-out-of-control web service hitting them.
- mrmch 10y ago
  Just echo'd this in my own comment; as mark says you will get false positives and high spam reports.
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  And yet, somehow, NeverBounce is a viable business.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  "To avoid gaining a bad IP reputation, we make requests from a large number of servers, any of which will be turned off it our system detects its IP is temporarily graylisted by some larger email server. In the unlikely event that all our servers are graylisted at the same time, the API might be down. Within a few minutes, our automated system will create new servers elsewhere." I just threw up a bit in my mouth. I guess the weekend project is to spin up an automated abuse reporting service for requests made from Anymail's virtual machine farm. I'm sure AWS would be pleased to hear they're running command and control for a botnet. Do not abuse the commons for profit.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- stevenwiles 10y ago
  The person doing this doesn't care about the ethics of this. He's got his passive income - he's going to take it and run.
  - kchoudhu 10y ago
    The idea behind passive income is that it keeps coming. Since this is going to get shut down for abuse, it's not exactly passive.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
mrmch 10y ago
I would be very cautious using Anymailfinder.com to generate email lists -- based on this copy on anymailfinder.com: Anymail finder uses many approaches to find emails—it searches billions of web pages and performs direct server validation. The original SMTP spec allows for email address validation, and there are tricks like opening an SMTP connection to a mail server and dropping it half way if the address is verified -- but these are the same "tricks" that spammers use, so many mail servers disable or report false positives. There's a reason why most lead services have a high price: they have actually verified an email address. Next, sending cold emails to business is OK (sometimes annoying but legally ok), but the copy on makesmail.com has a broken link (1) and doesn't clearly describe how to cold email and be legally compliant. From the horses mouth: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... Regardless, congratulations on building up to $1,500 MRR, that is a milestone most side projects never reach!
- downandout 10y ago
  You can pretty easily find out if the server will return false positives by first testing a completely random email like 737377ndjd@domain.com . Not sure if he's doing that or not.
- mpeg 10y ago
  The thing is no one respects the CAN-SPAM act in high touch b2b sales, and no one cares about it. Most people that are getting email addresses in this way are using it as a cheaper and more effective alternative to LinkedIn inmail, cold emails and cold calls are a great way to sell and if you do it right the recipient of the comms doesn't even care that you harvested their details. Doing it right means the message is very targeted, and most of the time you have people or companies in common with the person you're reaching out to.
danpalmer 10y ago
Tried my name at my Google Apps domain... no results as it's apparently "catchall domain", but a few alternative addresses were provided, several of which I know do not exist.
vessenes 10y ago
I both understand the demand for this and dislike it. But, assuming ethical questions stand aside, I do have some pricing reactions: This should be a monthly service, full stop. You mention users use it once, and then not for a while. That is the best possible scenario for a recurring revenue business. You should stop offering one-off purchases immediately if you want to see revenue grow. I can think off the top of my head of a few 'ongoing' value adds you could do; in particular, you could remember emails you couldn't find, and if you do find them notify the user. There are probably more things you could imagine if you were closer to the business. This would also let you charge spammers a lot, or preferably just keep them out and stay more moral by just capping the monthly requests at something reasonable for a human, not a spammer.
- mark242 10y ago
  "This would also let you charge spammers a lot" should be rewritten to "This would also let you charge unwitting victims of credit card theft a lot, and get a ton of chargebacks".
  - Spivak 10y ago
    That seems to be true of any business that accepts credit cards.
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  As a user of external services to build my own SaaS, I am actually forced to prefer the per-use billing model. So much so that I have signed up for only 1 service that bills monthly (and because they are priced way below the competition's monthly charge), and 4 that have a usage-based billing model. What the usage-based pricing model does, it helps you capture startup customers early on when they are pre-revenue, then you get to keep them as they grow.
biot 10y ago
Don't use this if you do business in Canada. Under CASL you could face fines of up to $10M per violation: http://www.zorbloglaw.com/2014/07/is-that-email-worth-10-million/ http://www.zorbloglaw.com/2014/07/is-that-email-worth-10-mil... Compu-Finder got a $1.1M fine: http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=944159 http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=944159
downandout 10y ago
I'm not sure why there is so much negativity in these comments. LeadGenius is nothing more than a well-financed spam enabler that charges more, and yet they are celebrated in the Valley and have been handed $18 million in funding. The only difference is that they aren't as up-front about how the data they sell is derived.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  LeadGenius looks gross too. Has it been praised on HN?
  - downandout 10y ago
    They are a YC company.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - prodigal_erik 10y ago
      And not even the first spammer YC has backed.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      > > LeadGenius looks gross too. Has it been praised on HN? > They are a YC company. While HN is offered by YC, being a YC company does not mean getting favorable reception by the community on HN. So LeadGenius being a YC company and Anymailfinder getting poor reception on HN doesn't demonstrate any kind of inconsistency.
      - downandout 10y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6490949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6490949 They got 138 points on their launch and lots of positive comments. Then they received $18 million. I'd say that's pretty positive reception in the Valley.
Alupis 10y ago
If you need to verify an email address, it's very likely you did not obtain it via an opt-in... a la Spammers... or people purchasing bulk mailing lists. Both are illegal. It's difficult to imagine how anyone using this service is not violating the CAN-SPAM Act[1]. Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law. In short, any unsolicited email sent with the intention to promote commercial interests is a violation of CAN-SPAM, and can carry heft fines. Effectively, this service is a facilitating violation of the law. Penalties can be up to $16,000 USD per unsolicited email sent. Just ask Papa John's how much unsolicited messages can cost you[2]. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... [2] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/4146-papa-john-s-agrees-to-16-5m-text-spam-class-action-settlement/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...
- the_watcher 10y ago
  Papa John's didn't violate CAN-SPAM. And there has never been a case (that I've seen, and I follow this stuff pretty closely because I really dislike receiving newsletters, personally) prosecuting anyone for sending a cold sales email.
  - Alupis 10y ago
    > Papa John's didn't violate CAN-SPAM Ya, they sent text messages, so they skirted that issue, but the CAN-SPAM Act fines are very real - and the point I was making is that Papa Johns essentially had to pay out through the nose for sending unsolicited messages. > And there has never been a case (that I've seen, and I follow this stuff pretty closely because I really dislike receiving newsletters, personally) prosecuting anyone for sending a cold sales email. People get fined all the time. Just because the likelihood of not being fined is pretty good, doesn't mean they aren't violating CAN-SPAM. Most people just mark the email as spam and move on - people have to report it to the FCC for them to get fined.
rabidrat 10y ago
> The money part of the plan worked though we’re now both full time on Anymailfinder It's no longer a side-business, and $1500/mo is not enough to sustain two partners.
- slig 10y ago
  The side-business making $1500/mo is the other venture that he started himself using the Anymailfinder API. Then, he partnered up with the guy from Anymailfinder.
nailer 10y ago
> It takes a name and domain and checks against the server to see if the email for that person exists. That sounds like SMTP VRFY, which doesn't work since it's disabled by every competent devops person.
chinathrow 10y ago
Don't use this in Europe. Cold emailing is forbidden in lots of countries. If you cold email me with your business/sales/whatever you make money with it pitch, I report you to your hosting provider and if necessary, to the local authorities.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  How do they define cold email? If someone you know gives me your email address, and I don't tell you how I got it, is that illegal? Can you only email people who have actively given you an email address? This seems very unlikely, and extremely hard to enforce.
  - chinathrow 10y ago
    You even need consent and proof of it. Cold email can't have that consent... http://www.selligent.com/blog/inspiration/think-differently-when-emailing-germany-switzerland-and-austria http://www.selligent.com/blog/inspiration/think-differently-...
    - the_watcher 10y ago
      This is for email marketing, not cold emails. Email marketing refers to using automated systems to send emails to a list. A cold email is a human sending an email individually. They might use a template or software to aid in creation, but each email is sent to an individual separately. You might think that this sounds identical, but it isn't.
      - chinathrow 10y ago
        Not true. That is an excuse of any spammers out there. Edit: Check my posts - I am talking about Europe not the US. Cold emails are against UWG in Germany.
      - the_watcher 10y ago
        It is true, no matter how many times you claim that it isn't. Can you name one single salesperson who has ever been prosecuted for this? Active consent is required for email marketing in the US too. It's not required for me to send a cold email to someone whose email address I acquired (or could guess).
unwind 10y ago
I think this sounds shady. The most interesting part of the article to me was the use of "email" by itself to mean "email address". This is always so confusing to me, since "email" already is a noun meaning something else. A button saying "Get email" to me would indicate that I would be sent email if I clicked, not that I would be shown the email address of the person the button was associated with, for example.
- the_watcher 10y ago
  It's pretty clear in context what it means. Also, email has become a noun that also means exactly what it's intended to here (hence it being commonplace for someone to ask for another person's email and omit "address"). There are numerous words that are nouns with multiple meanings.
paulcole 10y ago
So spam?
- Spivak 10y ago
  Marketing! I really wish the marketing cycle was reversed, where I post what I'm looking for and businesses respond with offers, because when I'm looking to buy something I would love to be shown options and offered discounts.
joshka 10y ago
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ187/html/PLAW-108publ187.htm https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ187/html/PLAW-108p... (1) Address harvesting and dictionary attacks (A) In general It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission, to a protected computer, of a commercial electronic mail message that is unlawful under subsection (a), or to assist in the origination of such message through the provision or selection of addresses to which the message will be transmitted, if such person had actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that— (i) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means from an Internet website or proprietary online service operated by another person, and such website or online service included, at the time the address was obtained, a notice stating that the operator of such website or online service will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by such website or online service to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages; or (ii) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means that generates possible electronic mail addresses by combining names, letters, or numbers into numerous permutations.
dboreham 10y ago
Time to buy some liability insurance?
jwatte 10y ago
So, you are basically strip mining the common good to generate more spam, and all you get is $1500? How can you sleep at night?
Analemma_ 10y ago
Just because you wrote about it on Medium, and used words like "biz dev", doesn't mean you're not a spammer. Seriously, if you're not swayed by the ethical considerations and all the other commenters here pointing out how scummy and immoral your business is, at least consider the liability questions. You're in pretty flagrant violation of the CAN SPAM Act and could be looking at very large fines. Turn it off.

83 points by kullar 10y ago

kevinwang 10y ago

wondering if you disclosed that you were the creator of the service when you made the growthhacks list

JoblessWonder 10y ago
Doesn't look like it. He seems to make no mention of his relationship to Anymailfinder or Makesmail in any of his posts. [3] It also looks like he is working closely with "Clavain Skade" or that is a sock puppet since they seem to publish everything for them to repost. [1] (My favorite) https://growthhackers.com/slides/30-brilliant-growth-hack-cards-great-new-stuff#comment-37533 https://growthhackers.com/slides/30-brilliant-growth-hack-ca... [2] https://medium.com/@clavain https://medium.com/@clavain [3] https://growthhackers.com/members/kullar/posts https://growthhackers.com/members/kullar/posts
- chinathrow 10y ago
  What can you really expect from someone providing this service and also favours excessive growth hacking by saying "Oh lock, Airbnb did it too!!" shakes head

mark242 10y ago

Please don't continue to run this. What you are doing is effectively recreating the VRFY command that nearly every major mail hosting service has removed for privacy and abuse reasons. You are opening yourself up to a huge liability, since spammers will quickly use stolen credit cards to crosscheck their lists against your API. This will cause you to have processing issues from Stripe. This will cause you to have a huge backlash from hosting providers as you desperately try to make sure that your cached address is still valid. (Let's fire off 1000 calls to some random Postfix server, WCGW?) This will cause you to produce false results for domains that run catch-all addresses but don't advertise mailboxes. This will cause you to unwittingly become an effective tool in a spammer's repertoire. Look, sticking a cache in front of the RCPT TO command is all well and good, but that functionality should be up to the owner of the mail server that you're bombarding, and not up to some third party. You are putting the onus of "hey, just contact us if you don't want us to hit your mail server" on every single mail server admin. This is not okay. SMTP servers aren't nearly as robust, and cannot handle a quickly-spiraling-out-of-control web service hitting them.

mrmch 10y ago
Just echo'd this in my own comment; as mark says you will get false positives and high spam reports.
CodeWriter23 10y ago
And yet, somehow, NeverBounce is a viable business.
toomuchtodo 10y ago
"To avoid gaining a bad IP reputation, we make requests from a large number of servers, any of which will be turned off it our system detects its IP is temporarily graylisted by some larger email server. In the unlikely event that all our servers are graylisted at the same time, the API might be down. Within a few minutes, our automated system will create new servers elsewhere." I just threw up a bit in my mouth. I guess the weekend project is to spin up an automated abuse reporting service for requests made from Anymail's virtual machine farm. I'm sure AWS would be pleased to hear they're running command and control for a botnet. Do not abuse the commons for profit.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
stevenwiles 10y ago
The person doing this doesn't care about the ethics of this. He's got his passive income - he's going to take it and run.
- kchoudhu 10y ago
  The idea behind passive income is that it keeps coming. Since this is going to get shut down for abuse, it's not exactly passive.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

mrmch 10y ago

I would be very cautious using Anymailfinder.com to generate email lists -- based on this copy on anymailfinder.com: Anymail finder uses many approaches to find emails—it searches billions of web pages and performs direct server validation. The original SMTP spec allows for email address validation, and there are tricks like opening an SMTP connection to a mail server and dropping it half way if the address is verified -- but these are the same "tricks" that spammers use, so many mail servers disable or report false positives. There's a reason why most lead services have a high price: they have actually verified an email address. Next, sending cold emails to business is OK (sometimes annoying but legally ok), but the copy on makesmail.com has a broken link (1) and doesn't clearly describe how to cold email and be legally compliant. From the horses mouth: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... Regardless, congratulations on building up to $1,500 MRR, that is a milestone most side projects never reach!

downandout 10y ago
You can pretty easily find out if the server will return false positives by first testing a completely random email like 737377ndjd@domain.com . Not sure if he's doing that or not.
mpeg 10y ago
The thing is no one respects the CAN-SPAM act in high touch b2b sales, and no one cares about it. Most people that are getting email addresses in this way are using it as a cheaper and more effective alternative to LinkedIn inmail, cold emails and cold calls are a great way to sell and if you do it right the recipient of the comms doesn't even care that you harvested their details. Doing it right means the message is very targeted, and most of the time you have people or companies in common with the person you're reaching out to.

danpalmer 10y ago

Tried my name at my Google Apps domain... no results as it's apparently "catchall domain", but a few alternative addresses were provided, several of which I know do not exist.

vessenes 10y ago

I both understand the demand for this and dislike it. But, assuming ethical questions stand aside, I do have some pricing reactions: This should be a monthly service, full stop. You mention users use it once, and then not for a while. That is the best possible scenario for a recurring revenue business. You should stop offering one-off purchases immediately if you want to see revenue grow. I can think off the top of my head of a few 'ongoing' value adds you could do; in particular, you could remember emails you couldn't find, and if you do find them notify the user. There are probably more things you could imagine if you were closer to the business. This would also let you charge spammers a lot, or preferably just keep them out and stay more moral by just capping the monthly requests at something reasonable for a human, not a spammer.

mark242 10y ago
"This would also let you charge spammers a lot" should be rewritten to "This would also let you charge unwitting victims of credit card theft a lot, and get a ton of chargebacks".
- Spivak 10y ago
  That seems to be true of any business that accepts credit cards.
CodeWriter23 10y ago
As a user of external services to build my own SaaS, I am actually forced to prefer the per-use billing model. So much so that I have signed up for only 1 service that bills monthly (and because they are priced way below the competition's monthly charge), and 4 that have a usage-based billing model. What the usage-based pricing model does, it helps you capture startup customers early on when they are pre-revenue, then you get to keep them as they grow.

biot 10y ago

Don't use this if you do business in Canada. Under CASL you could face fines of up to $10M per violation: http://www.zorbloglaw.com/2014/07/is-that-email-worth-10-million/ http://www.zorbloglaw.com/2014/07/is-that-email-worth-10-mil... Compu-Finder got a $1.1M fine: http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=944159 http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=944159

downandout 10y ago

I'm not sure why there is so much negativity in these comments. LeadGenius is nothing more than a well-financed spam enabler that charges more, and yet they are celebrated in the Valley and have been handed $18 million in funding. The only difference is that they aren't as up-front about how the data they sell is derived.

ceejayoz 10y ago
LeadGenius looks gross too. Has it been praised on HN?
- downandout 10y ago
  They are a YC company.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - prodigal_erik 10y ago
    And not even the first spammer YC has backed.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > > LeadGenius looks gross too. Has it been praised on HN? > They are a YC company. While HN is offered by YC, being a YC company does not mean getting favorable reception by the community on HN. So LeadGenius being a YC company and Anymailfinder getting poor reception on HN doesn't demonstrate any kind of inconsistency.
    - downandout 10y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6490949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6490949 They got 138 points on their launch and lots of positive comments. Then they received $18 million. I'd say that's pretty positive reception in the Valley.

Alupis 10y ago

If you need to verify an email address, it's very likely you did not obtain it via an opt-in... a la Spammers... or people purchasing bulk mailing lists. Both are illegal. It's difficult to imagine how anyone using this service is not violating the CAN-SPAM Act[1]. Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law. In short, any unsolicited email sent with the intention to promote commercial interests is a violation of CAN-SPAM, and can carry heft fines. Effectively, this service is a facilitating violation of the law. Penalties can be up to $16,000 USD per unsolicited email sent. Just ask Papa John's how much unsolicited messages can cost you[2]. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... [2] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/4146-papa-john-s-agrees-to-16-5m-text-spam-class-action-settlement/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news...

the_watcher 10y ago
Papa John's didn't violate CAN-SPAM. And there has never been a case (that I've seen, and I follow this stuff pretty closely because I really dislike receiving newsletters, personally) prosecuting anyone for sending a cold sales email.
- Alupis 10y ago
  > Papa John's didn't violate CAN-SPAM Ya, they sent text messages, so they skirted that issue, but the CAN-SPAM Act fines are very real - and the point I was making is that Papa Johns essentially had to pay out through the nose for sending unsolicited messages. > And there has never been a case (that I've seen, and I follow this stuff pretty closely because I really dislike receiving newsletters, personally) prosecuting anyone for sending a cold sales email. People get fined all the time. Just because the likelihood of not being fined is pretty good, doesn't mean they aren't violating CAN-SPAM. Most people just mark the email as spam and move on - people have to report it to the FCC for them to get fined.

rabidrat 10y ago

> The money part of the plan worked though we’re now both full time on Anymailfinder It's no longer a side-business, and $1500/mo is not enough to sustain two partners.

slig 10y ago
The side-business making $1500/mo is the other venture that he started himself using the Anymailfinder API. Then, he partnered up with the guy from Anymailfinder.

nailer 10y ago

> It takes a name and domain and checks against the server to see if the email for that person exists. That sounds like SMTP VRFY, which doesn't work since it's disabled by every competent devops person.

chinathrow 10y ago

Don't use this in Europe. Cold emailing is forbidden in lots of countries. If you cold email me with your business/sales/whatever you make money with it pitch, I report you to your hosting provider and if necessary, to the local authorities.

the_watcher 10y ago
How do they define cold email? If someone you know gives me your email address, and I don't tell you how I got it, is that illegal? Can you only email people who have actively given you an email address? This seems very unlikely, and extremely hard to enforce.
- chinathrow 10y ago
  You even need consent and proof of it. Cold email can't have that consent... http://www.selligent.com/blog/inspiration/think-differently-when-emailing-germany-switzerland-and-austria http://www.selligent.com/blog/inspiration/think-differently-...
  - the_watcher 10y ago
    This is for email marketing, not cold emails. Email marketing refers to using automated systems to send emails to a list. A cold email is a human sending an email individually. They might use a template or software to aid in creation, but each email is sent to an individual separately. You might think that this sounds identical, but it isn't.
    - chinathrow 10y ago
      Not true. That is an excuse of any spammers out there. Edit: Check my posts - I am talking about Europe not the US. Cold emails are against UWG in Germany.
    - the_watcher 10y ago
      It is true, no matter how many times you claim that it isn't. Can you name one single salesperson who has ever been prosecuted for this? Active consent is required for email marketing in the US too. It's not required for me to send a cold email to someone whose email address I acquired (or could guess).

unwind 10y ago

I think this sounds shady. The most interesting part of the article to me was the use of "email" by itself to mean "email address". This is always so confusing to me, since "email" already is a noun meaning something else. A button saying "Get email" to me would indicate that I would be sent email if I clicked, not that I would be shown the email address of the person the button was associated with, for example.

the_watcher 10y ago
It's pretty clear in context what it means. Also, email has become a noun that also means exactly what it's intended to here (hence it being commonplace for someone to ask for another person's email and omit "address"). There are numerous words that are nouns with multiple meanings.

paulcole 10y ago

So spam?

Spivak 10y ago
Marketing! I really wish the marketing cycle was reversed, where I post what I'm looking for and businesses respond with offers, because when I'm looking to buy something I would love to be shown options and offered discounts.

joshka 10y ago

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ187/html/PLAW-108publ187.htm https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-108publ187/html/PLAW-108p... (1) Address harvesting and dictionary attacks (A) In general It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission, to a protected computer, of a commercial electronic mail message that is unlawful under subsection (a), or to assist in the origination of such message through the provision or selection of addresses to which the message will be transmitted, if such person had actual knowledge, or knowledge fairly implied on the basis of objective circumstances, that— (i) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means from an Internet website or proprietary online service operated by another person, and such website or online service included, at the time the address was obtained, a notice stating that the operator of such website or online service will not give, sell, or otherwise transfer addresses maintained by such website or online service to any other party for the purposes of initiating, or enabling others to initiate, electronic mail messages; or (ii) the electronic mail address of the recipient was obtained using an automated means that generates possible electronic mail addresses by combining names, letters, or numbers into numerous permutations.

dboreham 10y ago

Time to buy some liability insurance?

jwatte 10y ago

So, you are basically strip mining the common good to generate more spam, and all you get is $1500? How can you sleep at night?

Analemma_ 10y ago

Just because you wrote about it on Medium, and used words like "biz dev", doesn't mean you're not a spammer. Seriously, if you're not swayed by the ethical considerations and all the other commenters here pointing out how scummy and immoral your business is, at least consider the liability questions. You're in pretty flagrant violation of the CAN SPAM Act and could be looking at very large fines. Turn it off.