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Chris Messina

Earn.com - Earn money for replying to emails and completing tasks.

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Raycast
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Use Earn.com to earn digital currency by replying to emails and completing tasks. It works on your phone, in any country, with no need for a bank account.

Since the last time we were on ProductHunt as 21.co, we've launched Gmail integration, mass messaging, search, public tasks, and even monetizable email lists. Come check us out at Earn.com!

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Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
Hi everyone! We’ve launched many new features since the last time we were on ProductHunt, including: - Gmail integration - Paid mass emails - Budgets - Shareable public tasks - Paid surveys - Search - Monetizable conference directories and email lists In total, what this means is that you can set up an profile, join a set of lists, and start getting paid tasks from Earn.com senders. You can also set up a Gmail integration to get more paid tasks by bouncing messages from outside your contact book and asking them to pay you. And if you’re really into it, you can even turn your email list or conference directory into a monetizable asset, such that both you and your list members/attendees get paid. Given that all these features let you earn digital currency online, we recently rebranded from 21.co to Earn.com to better convey what we’re doing. With Earn.com, users earn money online, and senders pay users to reply to emails and complete tasks. It’s like a better version of LinkedIn InMail. The next big step for us is to launch our new token, which is coming in a few weeks. If you sign up at that link today, you can get verified and get on the token waitlist. Between now and the token launch, you’ll earn bitcoin for completing tasks and replying to emails. Once the token launch happens, you’ll get free tokens simply for being an early adopter, and a bunch more tokens for inviting other verified users. We’ve set it up such that early adopters receive the most tokens, because the token reward halves every time the user base doubles. The overall idea is to create one of the first “better-than-free” business models, in which the users of a social network capture some of that network’s value by earning tokens. Anyway, that’s a summary of (a) what we’ve shipped recently, (b) the Earn.com rebrand, and (c) our upcoming token. Let me know if you have any questions. And if you’re a designer, security engineer, or data scientist, we are hiring!
Matt Gardner
@balajis So if I've been using Earn since the 21.co days... more coins? :D
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@thatmattgardner Yep, so long as you have a verified profile you are grandfathered and don't need to do anything else :)
Saijo George
@balajis do you guys offer a widget that I can place on a webpage?
Bassam
@balajis I changed my fee to answer a question I referred to earn.com and now I have been stuck pending verification for more than a week now. Support is not even answering. Please advise!
Pavel Shershnev
@balajis answer my messages on facebook and twitter and in your internal chat! Let me withdraw my earnings!!! No reply for a week, here's a screenshot https://yadi.sk/i/zioE_w093SwrjK
Chris Messina
Raycast
Hunter
Primarily a rebranding of 21.co, but maybe also proving that ".com" domains still matter? I think it's wrong to declare that Earn.com is the "first token-based social network" since Steemit already exists and Refind has its Relevance Coin, (get some here!) but it's cool to see this general trend.
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@chrismessina 1) Yep, we thought that Earn.com helps make the ideas more accessible to a mainstream audience -- everyone knows what "earn" means, it immediately suggests what the product does, the ".com" means people don't mistype it, and they don't need to know that there are 21 million BTC to understand the name :) 2) That's also a reasonable point re: Steemit -- though normally people don't refer to Reddit as a social network to the same extent they do for LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter, as the focus is mostly on interactions with news articles vs with other folks. The profile page is less of an emphasis for Steemit. At least, that's how we were thinking about it. If you think of Reddit as a social network, then Steemit is one as well. If you think of a social network as more like Linkedin/FB/Twitter (with more emphasis on real names/profile pages/profile photos/messaging/etc), then I think that space is still wide open. But we might think about another way to get the concept across.
Chris Messina
Raycast
Hunter
@balajis yeah, interesting points! Steemit is paying users for popular content (similar to Medium's model with claps); in your case, users pay for access/attention given some externally determined value. The difference is whether you focus on the social progenitor or the social objects. They're clearly related, but don't have to be. You can remove identity and pay anonymous authors for valued contributions or you can put a toll up to access popular identities. Both are networks — but, to channel Jobs, are more a matter of emphasis. There are several other cryptocurrencies attempting to enable users to monetize their data (Datum, BitClave, DataWallet, BAT, Blockstack), but I struggle to see how that works unless there's a market created for that data that values the individual's contributions over a collective's. Ultimately I guess my question is whether you're competing with Mechanical Turk, and users decide to set a threshold on how much they're willing to accept to perform certain low value tasks, or if you're more like a cryptocurrency-based influencer network (Fohr Card, et al)?
Jeremiah Smith
@chrismessina we're working on a structured data exchange for public domain data (i.e. *not* personal data, so different from Datum, DataWallet etc. the requirements/solution are very different). Do you have a particular interest in this space?
Chris Messina
Raycast
Hunter
@_jeremiahs I do. I've long been interested in digital identity (I helped popularize OAuth and was on the board of the OpenID Foundation). I've been long on the value of digital identity and the value of "data capital" for a long time
Jeremiah Smith
@chrismessina Just read the piece 👍 . I think what's tricky when considering data as a currency/asset is that unlike traditional currency/assets it can be duplicated for free, which makes valuing and exchanging it challenging. It seems what we're working on might be of interest to you, can send you a blurb?
Todd Goldberg
amblewalking
I'm a fan of the new branding and simplified focus. I think that using cryptocurrencies as payments for microtasks (i.e. Mturk) is interesting. The inbox seems like a good initial usecase. @balajis, what other "tasks" do you see Earn eventually supporting?
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@toddg777 Users are sending quite a lot of tasks today already across several verticals, like ICOs, market research, recruiting, and sales. For example: 1) Launch your ICO by messaging folks through earn.com/digital-currency 2) Research the blockchain space or get feedback on your whitepaper by messaging earn.com/blockchain 3) Hire remote JS developers by contacting earn.com/javascript 4) Find people who want to buy your product by contacting earn.com/ceos and earn.com/founders
Todd Goldberg
amblewalking
@balajis That's cool. It seems like earn's lists are a smarter way to connect parties with mutual interests vs. say doing cold outreach or buying a list. However, these don't seem like "tasks" to me in the typical sense. To @chrismessina 's point, do you eventually see the network evolving to more like Mturk where tasks are clearly defined, performed, and compensated?
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@chrismessina @toddg777 Right, our thinking is that it *starts* as a way to replace cold email or list buying. But once you can pay someone to reply to an email, you can pay someone to complete a task as well - like filling out a survey or uploading a photo. This is actually really useful for sales. Use Earn.com to send out a quick/cheap single-question qualifying survey to 1000 engineers to identify prospective buyers (eg “Do you use containers in production? Yes/No”). Then retarget everyone who says “Yes” with a more expensive followup email to set up a meeting. So that combines both a task ("fill out a survey") and an email ("send an email to everyone who answers like this to the survey") in a two-stage pipeline. And because the sales rep is paying every recipient, they typically see a 70%+ response rate in 24 hours (which is very high relative to the usual 1.7% cold email response rate). The sales rep may still get a no, but it’s a quick no from a highly qualified list. It's a very fast way to do lead gen.
David Oliver Doswell
@balajis this is the best part. Distributed tasks allow earn.com to focus on user experience. The network will have plenty of definitions of what constitutes a “task.” That just leaves dynamic pricing: task creators constituting price-per-task.
Arun
😲 I wonder how much they paid to get this domain. Earn sounds a lot better now. Time to replace all links. 🔓
Jason Pittam
@arunsathiya On their blog, they mention that all previous 21.co URLs will redirect to the new URL. You can read more here: https://news.earn.com/21-co-is-n... cc: @balajis
Arun
@balajis @mikaelpittam Yeah, noticed that. Thanks!
Matthew Hui
Spok
When are you guys launching your token?
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@matthui In the next few weeks! Go check out a preview at https://earn.com/token
Rahul Sethuram
I have been using Earn for a while, since the 21.co days. I never cashed out, but BTC went up a lot. Is the exchange rate only determined at the time of cash out?
Raveesh Bhalla
Obsrv
@rhlsthrm AFAIK, no. You keep getting the BTC as at the time of the message. Your value goes up as BTC goes up.
mightyalex
Design Buddy
@rhlsthrm Let the maker explain, but I think you are wrong i.e. bitcoin rates are determined at cash out. You receive and hold the earnings in USD. For example, if I cash out today my earning through the past months of $91.55 I get ฿0.0129 that is 7,096 per bitcoin.
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@rhlsthrm We pay you in BTC. And that’s what you cash out. So it will go up or down in USD value if USD fluctuates. It’s like having an overseas contractor who we pay in their local currency of Euros or Yen.
Rahul Sethuram
@balajis understood, but I am wondering when the exchange rate is determined. Is it determined only when I cash out, or is each payment done at the time of answering the questions?
Jeff Osborn
21 was a great idea, but from a branding perspective, it was pretty cerebral. 👏 for rebranding in the right direction. This looks great and will make a lot more sense to a lot more people.
Josh Arnold
Huge fan of Earn.com/21.co. I’ve had some great opportunities pitched to me via the messages I’ve received (and made some money out of replying to messages too, which never hurts!) Can’t wait to see where the platform grows in the future after building a core competency in the messaging model for now.
Oguz Bilgic
How does it compare to Justin's Whale app?
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@oguzbilgic Lot of respect for Justin. My understanding is that with Whale 2.0 they moved in a very different direction by removing coins, and I think they are doing Polly now, an anonymous survey app (which I think is like the tbh product recently acquired by Facebook). But I don't think they are doing paid messages anymore, so Earn.com is very different.
Frank Denbow
INK'A
Cool concept. FWIW, I didnt really "get it" from the description here or the website until the "It’s better than LinkedIn.." section. Giving it a try now
Balaji S. Srinivasan
Coinbase
Maker
@frank_denbow Thanks for the feedback! We may put that messaging higher. Let me know if you have any other thoughts/questions/etc after you give it a try.
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