Why Spamming is a Profitable Enterprise
Did you ever wonder how spammers can stay in business? Although the cost of sending email is cheap, does anybody, in this day and age, ever click through on spam? Scientists at the University of California successfully infiltrated the Storm Virus, and were able to provide some unique insights into the conversion rate of spam. It turns out that almost nobody clicks on spam, as you’d suspect. And it turns out that “almost nobody,” which translates to 1 in 12 million, is more than enough for spammers to turn a tidy profit. If only legitimate email marketers could bank on the same ratio!
According to Sue Walsh over at AllSpammedUp:
The researchers discovered that Storm sent out 350 million emails in 26 days, resulting in 28 potential customers. Not surprisingly almost all of them ordered “male enhancement” drugs. The average sale was roughly $100 which would have given the researchers a tidy $2,700 or so. Based on this they calculated the average daily profit from the Storm’s spam campaigns to be between $7,000 and $9,000, which equals roughly $3 million a year.
Because we will never be able to have 100% fool-proof education and prevention of opening spam, because there will always be one tiny tiny sliver of an audience that is enticed by poorly spelled and cheaply offered male enhancement products or by offers of Nigerian princes to provivde a gullible person with untold riches, spammers will always havea place in our inboxes. With a 1 in 12 million conversion rate success metric, it simply makes financial sense for them to continue bombarding us with spam. And we have to continue to find ways from stopping their messages from getting through to our clients.
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