How Much Can You Make?

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In Chapter 2, I showed you how I could make approximately $3,000.00 selling pornography. But what about the other products advertised in spam? Have you ever wondered how much money you could make if a friend bought that box of Viagra? Or how much you could make if you convinced someone to invest in a new a home loan or that very competitively priced OEM software? You might be surprised at how much money you’ve made for spammers; from the odd product you have bought from spam to the constant banner ads you click on. With a large amount of money to be made, you can see why some of the product prices are high; the payouts made to the promoters are often significant because they need to cover their costs.

Table 6.1 compares the different revenues offered from each type of product and the corresponding price the end user pays for that product. As you can see, it shows how much you could make if you were to send one million spam e-mails and only 0.0001 percent of the people bought the advertised product. This would be considered an average to low signup rate and require that very few people buy the product. However, you can easily see where the money is. If you had the opportunity, would you spam, considering how much profit can be made in a single day? How long would it take you to make this much money at your current job?

Table 6.1: Revenue vs. Products Sold

Product Type	Price to the User	Spammers Profit per Sale	Gross Profit for 0.0001 Percent Sales in 1 Million E-mails
FastSize, Male Penis Enlarger	$300	$75 to $125	$7,500 to $12,5000
VigRX, Male Sexual Enhancer	$60 per month	$18 to $30	$1,800 to $3,000
Triplexxxcash.com, Porn Site	$30 per month	$30	$3,000
VegasRed, Online Casino	$100	$25 to $40	$2,500 to $4,000
Debt Consolidation, Financial	Unknown	$13	$1,300
Home Loan, Financial	Unknown	$1500 to $2000	$150,000 to $200,000

There is substantial money to be gained from these products. One home loan company was offering at least $1,500.00 up to $2,000.00 per home loan you referred to them. With 0.0001 percent of people taking in the offer, you would stand to make a tidy profit. Casinos also offer a good return, with the majority of online casinos paying around 30 percent of any amount the user deposits, and some paying more if you constantly send them new users.

Notes from the Underground…

Self-help Web Sites

Although very low and highly despicable, I have broken into and stolen e-mail contacts from many self-help Web sites.

Web sites designed to help people with gambling addictions are a great example. These people are prime targets for spam. If even one person signs up to a casino I promote, I stand to make serious money since I know they will gamble everything they have and undoubtedly lose it all. Another idea is to try selling them debt consolidation services, offering an easy fix for all of their money worries. Preying on vulnerabilities ensures a highly effective return. You need to be ruthless in this industry if you want to make any money at it.

On average, pornography sites offer the lowest return, a lowly $30.00 per signup. Some sites even offer returns as low as $15.00 for a full membership. This is not a significant return, and is the reason you get much less pornography in your inbox than you use to. Why should a spammer waste his time with pornography, especially when the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003 has added new legislation targeted directly at pornography spam? It’s not worth it.

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