--- From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavittat_private> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declanat_private> Subject: Spam survey on NPDOR - 30% of respondents buy from spammers Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 16:11:54 -0700 Organization: B40 http://www.npdor.com/ >From the home page: Have you ever purchased a product/service pitched to you in an unsolicited e-mail? Yes, sometimes the unsolicited message catches my interest - 7% Yes, but very rarely. Usually, I disregard unsolicited messages - 23% No, I always disregard all unsoliticited messages - 68% I don't receive unsolicited messages - 2% *** Note: this is a self-selected survey, and thus is not citeable as a valid statistic - but... these are compelling figures for any spammer. If they hit 2 million people, and 1 million email addresses are valid, and they have a chance of reaching 300,000 people... Even if the hit rate is only 5% for the 70,000 people who "sometimes" look at spam, that still amounts to 3,500 strong sales candidates. And, if you add in a 1% hit rate for the 230,000 people, that adds up to 6,000 leads at almost no cost. If the profit margin on the product is $25.00, and 10% convert, you're looking at $15,000 in profit per spam. Even if you dial those numbers down by a factor of 10, $1,500 per spam, done a dozen times a day, is an awful lot of cash. Thomas -- Thomas Leavitt, Sr. Systems Admin For Hire Resume at http://www.thomasleavitt.org/personal/resume/ Phone: 408-591-3342 / Email: thomasat_private / Fax: 815-371-2804 Wired since 1981. Internet-enabled since 1990. Web-enabled since 1993. Older, wiser, and poorer, post-crash. :) Join the System/Database/Network Administrators Job Search Community: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sdnadminjobs/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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