[Info-vax] SFF and MIME

[JF Mezei]

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> It's very easy to make money on the internet.  Send me $500 US and I 
> will tell you the secret!  ;-)

And if I send you $500 to get the secret, I can then tell 5 people at
$500 each and make a net profit of $2000 :-)


I have to wonder if spam is really a valid form of advertising though.

Say you are a spammer. You advertise your services to potential
customers and show that the customers will increase sales more than the
cost of the mass mailing.

What if the whole SPAM business itself is a fraud and none of the SPAM
really pays off and only SPAMMERS end up making money ?

As long as there are companies gullible enough to think they can make
money by hiring a spammer to do mass mailing, the mass mailers will
continue to make money, even though they may rarely get a repeat
customer because once a customer has realised spamming doesn't pay, they
don't come back.

And those magic pills may also be another fraud. They advertise a
"create your virtual business" scheme where some guy pays them real
money to setup a virtual shop that sells those pills and send out the
spam to create sales. This same servive is offered to anyone who wants
in, and each get their own business name pointing to the same outfit in
india that ships placebos or copies of the real pills (india has very
relaxed copyright laws when it comes to pharmaceuticals).

(BBC once did order some of those pills and tracked the shipping down to
some indian outfit).