How much are your email inboxes worth?

PRLog (Press Release) - Oct. 2, 2012 - Emails are the official electronic communication tools of the Internet age. Yet its importance seems to be overshadowed by the more trendy social media in Facebook, Twitter and others.  Hence, it is necessary to determine your email inboxes’ worth, which points out the need for safe email backup.

Emails are the most unassuming but valuable electronic commodity you possess - based how it is overlooked but takes up most of your valuable time at work and at home.

A quick look at the usage  statistics, everyone on the Internet has one or more email address – with 3.4 billion email addresses. This is still way more than the total Facebook (900+ million) and Twitter user (500+ million) base combined. Every minute, people post an impressive amount of 695,000 Facebook status updates and 180,000 Twitter tweets, but send an unbelievable 168 million email messages.

Despite how prevalent email may be, however, up till now, there hasn’t been a good indicator of how much they are worth to the user. So the most straightforward way to calculate the yearly value of email accounts is to apply the formula:

Total time amount of time spent composing emails X Mean US average wage in 2011 ($45, 230)

According a recent study, the average Gmail user spent 1,095 days on Gmail and puts his/her inbox value at $3588.85.

The most popular online email providers are Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. In 2011, according to the Citi Investment Research and Analysis, US users are spending 11% of their time on Google sites, 9% on Yahoo sites and 6% on Microsoft. Hence in a simple back of the envelope calculation:

An average Yahoo Mail user spent 895 days on Gmail and puts his/her inbox value at $2,935.33

An average Hotmail user spent 597 days on Gmail and puts his/her inbox value at $1,957.55.

With a dollar worth put on each of your email accounts, it should put into perspective the value of your inboxes. An average Internet user has three email address, supposedly if you lose one of each email provider, it will be a loss of $8,481.73. While, this sizable amount may be an estimated value, the data (Personal or work pictures, conversations and files) held is immeasurable.

Email is a mailing service for private and commercial purposes: it can be used for intimate one-to-one (before MSN chats) or a mass mailer to a huge database (before Facebook Wall posts); it is storage and sharing avenue for files (before Dropbox); it is a timeline (before Facebook’s Timeline) of what you did online; it is the official forum for work-related discussions; it is easily admissible in court (Tweets from Twitter will have to be subpoenaed).

In view of the importance and value of emails, inboxes are vulnerable from hacking, host failures and user errors. These occurrences take place frequently and if unchecked, you could lose thousands of dollars and irretrievable data / memories. Hence there is a definite need to back up email - here is why: http://www.dropmyemail.com/why_backup

Not just one email account, but all of them. There are plenty of services in the market that protect just one email provider but you would need protection for all your email accounts. Ensure that you use a comprehensive email backup in the cloud that safeguards Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and more at http://www.dropmyemail.com

Even with the advent of web2.0, the importance of the multiple functions of email go on and on. There is nothing yet that can and will replace email. Don’t keep this online asset (worth thousands of dollars yearly) exposed – back up today.