An inside look at one spam queen
Bulk emailers, despised everywhere and especially by me!, are sometimes nothing but a small operation such as the case of Laura Betterly working out of her five-bedroom house in Dunedin, Florida according to this interesting Wall Street Journal story (subscription required). Betterly hopes to make $200,000 this year, contributing to the over 2 billion email messages that hit inboxes each day, even though some campaigns have terrible results:
The response rate of 0.013% was "horrible," Ms. Betterly says. A great response rate for Ms. Betterly would be a disaster for a paper-junk mailer, which expects a typical response of about 2%. Depending on what she's pitching, Ms. Betterly says she can break even at a rate as low as 0.001%. It all depends on the commission she negotiates, and she's considering a few jobs that could pay off particularly well: $35 on each sale of a 3D-glasses package; $50 for a mortgage lead; $85 for a cellphone sale.
Ms. Betterly's database is her most precious asset. She bought and bartered its 100 million e-mail addresses from dozens of places, including companies such as Excite (excite.com), About.com (about.com) and Ms. Cleo's psychic Web site. She can fine-tune e-mail runs, hitting just small-business owners, say, or only golfers or music fans. She can cull out certain addresses, to narrow her geographic target. Like most spammers, she also makes money selling her list to other bulk e-mailers, and she keeps adding to her own list.