Former Spammer Reveals Secrets in New Book

StonyandCher writes "A retired spammer is looking to make money from a tell-all book rather than fleecing people dependent on pharmaceuticals and people with gambling problems. In this Computerworld article 'Ed', a retired spammer, predicts the spam problem will only get worse, aided by consumers with dependencies and faster broadband speeds. From the article: 'He sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam. Response rates to spam tend to be a fraction of 1 percent. But Ed said he once got a 30 percent response rate for a campaign. The product? A niche type of adult entertainment: photos of fully clothed women popping balloons ... "Yes, I know I'm going to hell," said Ed."

Comments

One Percent With No Communication Cost!

[garcia]

From the article: 'He sent spam to recovering gambling addicts enticing them to gambling Web sites. He used e-mail addresses of people known to have bought antianxiety medication or antidepressants and targeted them with pharmaceutical spam. Response rates to spam tend to be a fraction of 1 percent.

I work with targeted communications and our success rates with similar lists are just as "successful". We were looking to contact Juniors and Seniors in HS to let them know of our offerings and had a list that supposedly contained names and addresses (no e-mail/phone) of people that would be in this demographic. Out of 9800 people we had a 0.93% response rate. Being that the cost of that list was as low as it was we will do it again...

I can only imagine what an advantage it is having such a low communication cost (it costs us .41/each) and having a 1% return rate... If only I could retire on the money I make ;)

Re:Good news

[lena_10326]

This also reinforces my assumption that for the most part spamming is just a way to make some easy money without much real work. Most people are not going to get rich off it, but if one is a country where a few thousand a year is good money, then hey, it beats doing honest work. It might even product the 20K a year one needs to live in the US. But like any organized crime, a few get insanely rich, and the rest get knocked off for pocket change.

I know an owner of a legitimate "spam" business. The owner grosses over $20 million a year with an approximate 50% margin of profit. The amount of money made depends on several factors that are difficult to maintain over time, which is why you don't see everyone making 10's of millions dollars off spam.

• a clean email list - cleaning an email list requires sending an email and not receiving a bounce. There is risk in testing the email because if you test too many bad ones you can get blocked, but once it's tested it's worth considerably more than an unclean email.
• list of active users - users who opened or clicked. An order of magnitude more valuable than a clean email.
• relationships - avoiding email blocks and getting unblocked
• distributed servers - avoid email blocks by sending from and rotating multiple IPs. The more you have, the more stable the delivery is.
• delivery - your email has to make it to the inbox. An order of magnitude more valuable than Bulk box delivery. Bulk delivery is still better than no delivery, which can be the case if you're blocked.

If you have all those factors in your favor, you can sustain the profits, which is what the major "legitimate" commercial emailers do. The true spammers are usually a bit more shitty, using trojans and disposable accounts, but achieve the same effect, usually at the cost of the ISP, however they're risking jail time if they're caught.

Re:Wow!

[smooth wombat]

Some looners actually have sex with the balloons by sticking their equipment in the nozzle (obviously, you have to be male to pull this off).

Ok, oddball question time. Using the above quote, yes, only a man can stick his equipment inside the balloon. However, what about the reverse? Sticking the balloon inside a woman and GENTLY inflating and deflating it again and again.

I know, I know, I'm a sick puppy. Aren't we all in some manner?

Re:Actually...

[LurkerXXX]

My guess? Right before he wrote that, he created a website with women popping balloons and is now making tons of revenue off the huge volume of views the ads on the site are getting now that it's being /.'d.

Get off my lawn.

[Valdrax]

Ignoring for the moment the scary database that produces these lists, if you got 10 pieces of spam offering you legitimite, cheap things you may want to buy, I don't think people would be upset at all. In fact, it might make a good e-commerce site.

I would. I'd mind terribly. Putting aside the creepy privacy issues (which would be enough to set me off), I just simply don't like push advertising at all. I don't want my life to interrupted by people interjecting their pleas for me to give them my money for crap I don't need.

I don't like TV ads. I don't like radio ads. I don't like billboards. I don't like fliers on phone poles. I HATE people who stick menus in my apartment door, I HATE telemarketers, and I'd hate spammers too even if they were selling me things I want. I have a habit of stopping doing business with any business that gets too pushy with its advertising (like the people who stick menus in your door), and a spam for something I want is the best way to keep me from ever buying it (at least from that vendor).

The only kind of advertising that I like is the kind where you list a product in some public forum, and I find it when I decide I'm in the market for it. (e.g. Froogle.) Anything that tries to come and find me to tell me how wonderful my life would be if I just bought it is annoying. (And God forbid an ad actually be effective and influence me to do something unwise with my money.) Unless your ad entertains me, go away.

(And yes, I realize that I am on the far end of crotchety about advertising, but that's just my opinion.)

Re:Wow!

[gstoddart]

Without doing any research whatsoever, I'm going to guess that the reason for the balloon fetish is similar to the reason for the so-called "crush fetish" whereby guys enjoy watching women step on bugs.

I've always thought trying to figure out the root cause for a fetish is kinda pointless unless someone has a really strong obsession which interferes with their normal life and they need clinical care.

Sure, some people probably do have some fetishes which start out with some kind of Freudian-explainable experience. But, you don't need to rely on a man who used a lot of cocaine and figured everything revolved around how you were potty trained, and how badly you wanted to sleep with/kill your mother to determine why someone might do something for their own pleasure.

Nowadays, fetishes are so easy to find information on (like, say, a Slashdot article ;-) that you can pretty much do a little research, see if any fetishes might work for you, and then try them on for size. I question if most people involved in any form of fetish play nowadays actually have a truly abnormal physchological fixation with something, or have just rationally decided that, say, latex is cool or whatever.

Lets face it, go to an adult store and they've got all of the fixin's for fetish play just sitting there. You could just one day decide to try one of them out. Spot a video and decide to watch it. Or, possibly, a partner will suggest it one day just for fun.

Fetishes don't need to be just irrational/compulsive obsessions any more. They can be conscious decisions that you stumble upon and decide will just be damned fun. As Freud himself said ... sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. (Although, I guess maybe if you choose it, it may not technically be a 'fetish' in the clinical sense. I just view it as a new set of toys you can choose to play with or not.)

I for one welcome our fully clothed, balloon-popping female overlords.

Cheers