Only continue if you are doing something different or better than your competitors. Obviously if you are just mimicking what they gave already created, that's no good but if you can improve on it, then their presence in the market may be helpful in terms of warming the market for you before launch.
Personally I would really focus the ability to know when your email has been read, there are many analytics software providers that give you far more detailed statistics than your package will.
While I know there are email trackers and from a commercial point of view you would be using an email marketing provider.
But from a consumer's point of view tracking when a really important email has been sent could be a great idea. I would use it if I was sending an email to someone I hadn't contacted before but respected a lot and placed a high value on being in contact with them.
As a result if I was running the site, I would focus the branding and marketing on the consumer level, simple to use email tracking versus commercially focussed stuff.
Also tip: maybe don't use so much tech mumble on the homepage, tell the user about the results of your technology on the homepage and the details of the technology on a sub-page, otherwise you are just confused if you are coming from a search engine or social media site.
So something like: "copy and paste this one line into your emails and know whether the recipient has read your message".
From what I know about Stripe they are purely making it easier for developers to accept payments and as far as I know they aren't looking at developing technology aiding the sending on money.
* Unless they have some underground project that their website doesn't mention.
I have a section on my desk for all my scraps of paper, I prefer paper, because it is physically in front of you reminding you of your ideas and to take action on them.
Plus writing seems to be less mechanical and more creative, which helps me get the juices flowing when I come up with a new idea.
I know from experience that most people don't know the key combos to open in their chosen windows.
I always use Ctrl + T, but when I'm demonstrating something or somebody is watching me browse they almost always ask what I have done when I use the combo.
It's dangerous to assume that your readers are as technically proficient as yourself. But I can see in certain citations why it might be applicable, e.g. on Hacker News the majority of their readers are going to know the keyword shotcuts because that's their target market.
I do think that the blog choosing for you can be a pain, but the combos still work on the majority of links and for those who don't know them you can keep them on your site by using the target= in the link HTML, probably the best of both worlds.
I'm not declaring it is a technology they are capable of developing, just wondering, still a bit surprised that with all their top engineers they couldn't (if they wanted to) come up with a solution to this?
Well we know Google can classify what spam sites are.
And assuming they could (despite your arguments against) determine the method of monetization on a site, then simply compare the models they see on spam sites versus another metric which would track the user's reaction to certain types of monetization models.
1) Make sure you have a Google Webmaster Tools account and see if your site has any warnings and/or other problems identified by Google.
2) Think about reducing the number of links on the homepage, and increasing the amount of content. Maybe a greeting for new users letting them know what your about. Overall your homepage is covered in links and as a user at first glance nothing stands out and I'm likely to hit the backspace button.
3) Create a better site structure (clear tiers of content), its very hard to navigate your site.
7) A new design with larger font, different colour scheme and better plugins (commenting, ratings, etc) is in order.
8) Get rid of the Hot Auctions tab, link to eBay from the product page and not a secondary link farm looking tab.
9) Despite all these minor problems (and there's more) the quality of content on site is pretty poor, I guess if I was coming for the history of some cards maybe your site would be helpful but the content is written in a detached, impersonal tone that doesn't garner links or Google rankings.
Focus on writing high quality articles based on your/author's personal experience and expertise.
Check out www.copyblogger.com for more information on how to write well for the net.
Second that, Bluehost is great and support are very helpful. For content based sites like mine it works just fine, haven't had experience running anything major or any major traffic spikes but from my experiences they would be able to handle it.
I have received many compliments about my writing now but I can tell you that two years ago my writing sucked.
Since then I have written hundreds of articles, a 270 page book and hundreds of thousands of words.
There truly is no substitute for practice, but its the right kind of practice that works.
I would highly recommend reading www.copyblogger.com, which covers all the major tips and techniques around writing online (Make sure to dig deep into the archives).
What you will find is that every few articles you read you will pick up a tip and if you make a concise effort to implement the tip into your next article then it becomes almost second nature and your writing improves immeasurably.
For now make sure your double if not triple checking all your posts looking for ways to make them more readable and fluid and get reading about writing techniques and skills.
The best way to get the best publicity is to have an incredible product that people need to hear about.
But failing that or having a less revolutionary product, I would highly recommend blogging, whatever your start-up you must have interesting insights and tips about your industry that you could share.
If your not committed to regular, high quality blogging and for many founders that doesn't fit into their skill-sets then think about creating one time big research reports that would shake the industry or provide some highly valuable new information.
Blogging and reports are perfect for a start-up because there is virtually no cash cost, so if your bootstrapping or just playing it smart then these are my top two.
In the end I chose Python, it's easy to use, simple to understand and with IDLE you can get instant results.
Plus there are tons of resources if your girls get really interested.
Python gets my vote but dependant on how young they start then something using GUIs might be more interactive, ColinWright mentioned a few good ones.