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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
--- From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt@hotmail.com> To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan@well.com> 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: thomas@thomasleavitt.org / 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/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------