Ever wonder why you get so much Spam? Because it works:
As one of the world’s most prolific spammers, Jeremy Jaynes pumped out at least 10 million e-mails a day with the help of 16 high-speed lines, the kind of internet capacity a 1,000-employee company would need.
Jaynes’ business was remarkably lucrative; prosecutors say he grossed up to $750,000 per month. If you have an e-mail account, chances are Jaynes tried to get your attention, pitching software, pornography and work-at-home schemes.
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Relatively few people actually responded to Jaynes’ pitches. In a typical month, prosecutors said during the trial, Jaynes might receive 10,000 to 17,000 credit card orders, thus making money on perhaps only one of every 30,000 e-mails he sent out.But he earned $40 a pop, and the undertaking was so vast that Jaynes could still pull in $400,000 to $750,000 a month, while spending perhaps $50,000 on bandwidth and other overhead, McGuire said.
“When you’re marketing to the world, there are enough idiots out there” who will be suckered in, McGuire said in an interview.
The upside, this is from coverage of Jaynes’ felony trial where his recommended sentence is nine years. Hopefully it will be upheld and send a message out to other spammers.