Re: opt-out registry comments

On 2011/08/03 9:27 AM, Lucio De Re wrote:
> I'm not sure (playing devil's advocate) that the state wouldn't
> prosecute spammers if it was established that they are not paying
> taxes on a very profitable acitivity. 

I don't believe it's nearly as profitable as direct marketers would have us
believe. The market is also saturated with providers of bulk email services
and address resellers.

Their target client base are opportunists 2 steps behind the curve. In time
these same clients move to providing their own bulk email services and/or
address lists to others 2 steps behind the curve, because selling products
via spam doesn't generate as much money as say conning other opportunists
with a "sure proof way of generating sales for little to no effort".

(a person only needs to setup phplist once to be able to sell that as a
service to others without the necessary computer skills)

How many successful products (clients rave about it, fuelling word of mouth
marketing; or people hear about and desire it) are the direct result of
unsolicited email/telephone calls? I can't think of any.

Usually products and services sold via spam are deficient in some way.
They're not even good enough to be verimark style products, and those
usually lacking!

Spam is just a low cost way of reaching thousands to millions in the hope of
finding yet-another-stupid-customer willing to part with their cash. It's
the same with other forms of unsolicited email like phishing. A small
percentage of recipients fall for these scams, sometimes repeatedly.

If your business model is making money off stupid people, then you want to
reach as many stupid people as possible for the lowest cost. If 1 person in
1000 bites ... you have a business.

And no matter how emotive some recipients are on the topic of spam, the
volume of complaints spammers get is very low, and often lower than the
already low number of 'dumb customer' sales.

This has been confirmed by several spammers I've interacted with.

e.g. accidental spammer: someone "new to computers" purchases a list they
"were assured was opt-in" and proceeds to use it for 2-3 months with only a
single complaint, but then find themselves listed as a spammer and ISPs
blocking their mail. "But we're the victim here", they cry, "we spent money
on this!"

e.g serial spammer: "spam generates more sales than complaints, so we'll
keep using it, but also take you off our list - next time use our
unsubscribe link"

However I've also had long-time spammers try and complain about angry
complainants who swear at them. e.g "your industry is rude, I'm just trying
to earn an income and feed my kids. I don't have to put up with this abuse
from socially retarded computer geeks"

-- 
Bretton
openpgp: http://bretton.hivemind.net/bretton_vine.asc

Co-existence / or no existence. - Piet Hein

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