Guest Post: What is my Gmail account really worth?
Originally posted on the 
by Jay Garmon, here is a way to assess the value of your Google Apps account … or at least just the email.
What, exactly, is your Gmail account worth to you?
That’s a complicated question but, at first blush, we’d guess about …roughly…$3,588.85.
That’s the value of the time invested in the average Gmail account, given how many emails
the average Gmail user has written (5,768), how long it takes to write the average email (one minute, 43 seconds), and the most recent U.S. Depart of Labor statistics on average annual salary ($45,230). In other words, if the average Gmail user were paid to recreate all the Gmail messages he or she’s ever written, it would cost $3,588.85.
How much is your Gmail account worth to you (and how do you stack up to the average Gmail user)? We built a Gmail Value Calculator to help you find out.
Just log in with your Gmail account, input your salary data, and the Gmail Value Calculator will determine:
- How much your Gmail account is worth to you, in dollars
- How many messages you send and receive per day
- How much Gmail storage you use per day
- Your average Gmail message size
- Your Gmail Personality Index, which compares your Gmail usage to the average and determines whether you’re more extroverted or verbose than the typical Gmail user
Head over to Gmail-Value.Backupify.com, click the Autofill with Google button (it’s much easier than manually filling out your data), specify your salary, and in seconds you’ll learn what your Gmail account is worth to you.
It’s important to note that this number — how much of your time have you’ve spent writing emails multiplied by how much your time is worth — determines the minimum value of your Gmail account. In truth, your Gmail account is probably worth a lot more.
The $3,588.85 average figure doesn’t include the value of all the email you’ve received, the value of the time spent reading email, the value of any attachments included in your emails, or the simple fact that some emails are simply irreplaceable — especially if you lose them at the worst possible moment. (We’ve got a whole whitepaper devoted to parsing out the math on this issue.)
The average Gmail account is worth at least $3,588.85, but very likely a great deal more. Still, even that minimum figure is pretty impressive — as our Gmail Value Infographic explains. The text-friendly highlights are:
- Your Gmail is worth $3,588.85, and increases by about $1,196 per year
- You “spend” as much in Gmail every year as you do on your car
- Your Gmail is worth five times as much as your laptop
- Your Gmail represents over four weeks of wages
- You store one old-school floppy disk (1.44 MB) of Gmail data every day
The complete Gmail Value Infographic is below. Click the image to view it all full size.
