>the ones who don't want it enough will go away, and the ones that do will want it enough that it's worth your while..

Counterpoint: if you think you need to pay for my attention, that's a negative signal for what you're asking me. If I'm giving 10 vendors a shot at my business, I'm not going to pay money for the right to give you that opportunity?

On the other side, the only person paying $5 to ask me something is probably someone getting a lot of no's elsewhere. That, or what I offer is so valuable that people are willing to pay for it. But that's not most people.

Sure, that's fair. I'm just saying that I probably would read a dumb solicitation email from someone who gave me, like, $10,000, but in practice that will be almost nobody, so either way I'd win!