In an effort to capitalize on the buzz that Google started with its 1 GB email service, Aventure, a Northern Ireland based hosting company, has launched its own version of a web-based email service. This service does Gmail one better, however.
Instead of offering the now standard 1 GB worth of email storage, Aventure has doubled this amount for its members, who receive a 2 GB storage limitation. Although, it’s hard to consider that amount any type of limit. The service, called AventureMail, is free to all members.
Another difference between Gmail and Aventure’s service is that Aventure does not feature third party advertisements appearing in mailings. Gmail has received a serious amount of notoriety because of Google’s decision to feature contextual AdWords ads within incoming and outgoing emails.
However, Aventure’s mailings will not be completely ad free. AventureMail will, according to blogger Doug Mehus, “feature advertisements for its own products, namely Aventure Host, its paid Web hosting company; Picture Host, a free weblog and auction picture hosting service; and the open-source XMB Forum software which Aventure Media produces and distributes.”
Currently, AventureMail has put a stop on approving new members. Attempts to sign up for an account are met with this message:
If you are registering a new account: We are currently not accepting any further registrations for several days during our initial launch. Please check back later. We have currently accepted 20,000 signups, and will accept a further 10,000 within 14 days.
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Admittedly, once news spread of their offering, the response was undoubtedly large. However, capping your members at 20,000 with the intention of only allowing 10,000 more for a total of 30,000 new members is not a move that will guarantee a large financial return.
Ad click rates from emails average at or below 1%. That means that you are counting on 300 new members to acquire revenue from. On the scale that some of these other companies use, that’s not a very large target at all.
With these numbers, some questions around Aventure’s email service remain, how is Aventure going to finance this venture? Are they counting on their new members for revenue? Is this service one that a large revenue return is expected? If not, how is Aventure going to pay the expenses that accompany this amount of storage and the logistics involved? Are they hoping the hype surrounding Gmail rubs off on them?
With the way things stand with Adventure right now, these seem to be all valid questions. Or could this be the case of a company trying to mimic what Google has started, but with limitations that a smaller company may experience?
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
