Spam and Earn Money

Now, e-mail spamming is a common everyday event. Almost every major e-mail provider has that dedicated folder where all these pesky messages usually end up (mostly). As for the others, which might escape the clutches of a spam killer and end up in your Inbox, they are quickly relegated to the position of spam if the user happens to be well versed with the intentions of the sender.

That however is not the subject of discussion here. We're here to talk about something different. With the amount of impact this spam folder is having on our daily lives, researchers at the University of Berkeley and the University of San Diego decided to dig deep in to the people behind the propagation of these vast amount of unsolicited messages doing the rounds of the internet - often clogging vital supply lines. The researchers were interested in determining the revenue model on which these usually secretive organizations function. Yes, they do function like an organized group with some even having dedicated staff members on a payroll!
So what do the researchers do? Replicate what the spammers do. Their spam campaign included about 470 million messages - 350 million advertising pharmaceutical a product, 84 million in a postcard campaign and 40 million in a April Fools campaign. The researchers wanted to know how these spammers actually make any profit. In addition, they wanted to know if the "business" really is profitable. This was a main concern considering the fact that most of us now are capable of differentiating spam from traditional e-mails and it is rare that some one actually follows a spam link. However, the researchers did find out the following.

At the end of the study, they revealed how many of their 470 million emails actually resulted in a click and related follow through. The 350 million emails promoting a pharmaceutical venture only gave them 10,522 clicks through to the advertised website. A dismal 28 of them tried to purchase the product. Interestingly, all these 10,522 people came from different places around the world. As for the other campaigns involving the postcards and the April Fool related spam, the conversion rates were much higher. The Postcard campaign received 3827 click-throughs and 316 conversions, while the April Fools campaign delivered a click-through rate of 2721 and 225 direct conversions.

The estimated income from the pharmaceutical e-mails were estimated to be about $2731.88, which sounds hardly impressive considering you had to spend 350 million e-mails to earn that much! However, with as much as 120 billion spam messages being sent each day, the income potential does rise to $7000 to $9000 a day, which is impressive. Its sheer numbers and that is why spammers are still in "business"!