"So far the response to the site has been tremendous. The service was launched in late March and, already, several thousand users have signed up and are responsible for donating thousands of square feet of rainforest each day.  The number one question we get is, ‘How much does this cost?’ I love telling people it’s free.”  Jason Trout co-creator, Planet-Save.com

Visitors may be wondering how they are able to donate land without actually giving money. The process is really quite simple. When users read or compose an e-mail, a banner ad is shown at the top of the page. Sponsors have purchased that ad space from Planet-Save.com. Planet-Save.com then donates advertising revenue, equivalent to five square feet of land per message, to the World Land Trust, through EcologyFund.com. The World Land Trust then uses this money to purchase the land.

Not only are users able to save five square feet of rainforest with every message, they are also given a valuable service for free. Planet-Save.com offers users 6.0 MB of storage space (compared to Hotmail’s 2.0 MB), spam blocking technology, search features, and even allows users to access multiple POP e-mail accounts.

“It’s a very valuable service,” says Trout. “The number one question we get is, ‘How much does this cost?’ I love telling people it’s free.” 

Jason got the idea for Planet-Save.com from click-to-donate sites such as EcologyFund.com. Even though he had a great idea, he lacked an appropriate domain name for the service.  That is when Jan VanBeest from PlanetSave.com contacted Jason about the possibility of Planet-Save.com and MetaAid.com (another web site operated by Jason) working together.

“I told Jan about this idea that I had, and how I thought we could really help preserve a lot of rainforest this way. Then he told me that he also owned the domain name Planet-Save.com, and I knew that it was perfect.” Planet-Save.com was launched a few weeks later.  Jan has been extremely effective in recruiting sponsors for the site, while Jason strives to increase awareness.  Their abilities compliment each other well.

So far the response to the site has been tremendous. The service was launched in late March and, already, several thousand users have signed up and are responsible for donating thousands of square feet of rainforest each day. 

Trout says that their goal over the next year is to grow the service to 100,000 users. “If we do that, we’ll be preserving approximately 2.5 million square feet of rainforest a day.”

Trout hopes to be able to concentrate full time on Planet-Save.com when he graduates in May. Anyone interested in signing up for a free e-mail account may do so at http://www.planet-save.com.

Jason Trout is available for further comment, and may be reached at (319) 936-6775 or via e-mail at Jason@Planet-Save.com. 

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