On 5/19/02 7:10 PM, "J C Lawrence" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> SPAM is not and need not be profitable to the > things being advertised. It only needs to be profitable to the > companies selling the email lists, the send-your-spam-for-you services > etc. Actually, the spam market has bifurcated into two or three different groups. One is the pr0n world, which actually parallels many of the bigger issues of the spam universe in its way, but I'll leave it alone for now. Another group is the one JC talks about -- the people who make their money selling spam kits to stupid/na�ve people who get nuked as soon as they start using them, because they're stupid and na�ve. You can tell much of this stuff in your spam folder -- the more typos it has, the more it's some trailer-trash that got hooked into what they thought was a legitimate business or get rich scheme. They're unlikely to make money at it. The guy who sold them the package, however, did. And all he cares about is getting the money hidden before the credit card company wants it back... But there is a group out there who are professional spammers who make their money generating referrals. Most of the "commercial" spam (and a lot of the Pr0n spam) comes from them. They're high-volume bulk delivery agents that you contract to send your stuff, and you kick back a fee for every referral they generate. These are the guys sending you the refinancing spam, the viagra spam, etc, etc. And you may not like to hear it, but some of these guys make a pretty good living at it -- they send a few million pieces of spam, and get $35-50 a referral. All it takes is a few people saying "you know, the bank just turned me down, taxes are due, what can it hurt?" to pay for the spam for both that broker AND the spammer he hired. (and then there's the nigerian money laundry guys. Heck, all they need are a few stupid, greedy people. And we all know THAT is in short supply in the world...) And that's the bottom line. Spamming DOES work. It works well enough that there are people who can make a living off the referrals it generates. And that's why it continues. It doens't matter if it's 2% of sendings turn into referrals or .02% -- it's a fixed cost industry for the spammer, so as long as "enough" people respond, he makes money. > SPAM, its not just a pain any more, its a confidence scheme. It's junk mail, just like the stuff that shows up in your physical mailbox every day. And why does that stuff show up? Because a percentage of people read it and go to the store to buy stuff from it, while at the same time, another group is complaining about it and a tiny group of activists is trying to ban it. The only difference is, in the physical mail side, that bulk mail pays for a huge percentage of the cost of running the postal service (first class mail is a horrible money loser), while online, email is "free"... (and since it's perceived as such, it's even harder to get people to "do something" about ti than with paper "junk mail". Oops. I think I just broke my quote key from overuse... -- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.chuqui.com/ Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.
