Why spam exists

It exists because it works.

"But who would possibly respond to such a ridiculous email?" you might well ask..

But the cost of sending email is so cheap, that only getting 1 response for every 12.5 million spam emails sent is enough to turn a tidy profit.

Given that you can probably convince 1 in 12.5 million people to do practically anything, I expect we'll be seeing spammers around for a long time. #ddtb

Reshared post from +Michelle Marie

Success Rate of Spam
via: http://goo.gl/dCjNt

Did you know that spammers get only one response to every 12,5 million emails they send?

But what is even more interesting, yet even with this apparently abysmal response rate, it is enough for them to make a nice profit. The researchers from University of California UC San Diego sent about 469 million junk e-mail messages for the fake pharmacy campaign. The response rate was less than 0.00001%.

However, these conversions would have resulted in revenues of $2,731.88 — a bit over $100 a day for the measurement period, said the researchers.