Spammer Chapter 1
By Bailey Armadale
Check your inbox. Do you see any junk mail in there? You probably have quite a bit. Individually you and your email address are not that valuable. At most that email for discount pain killers cost the Canadian pharmacy that sent it to you one tenth of a cent. So for every ten pieces of unwanted email that you find in your inbox, the company that sent them made about one penny. So really, to a spammer you are literally not worth a dime.
So why do they keep your email address around? Well, it's pretty simple. Once they get your email address and the email address of about 999,999 of your closest friends, this nameless company will make $1,000. Not a bad day's haul really. Especially considering that this nameless company has at least 20 million email addresses. In a given week they will mail to each one of these people at least 3 times, earning somewhere around $60,000. Yes indeed, spamming pays and it pays well. Want to know the scary thing? Three years ago you were worth a whole lot more to them. In some cases an email address would cost as much as ten cents per name. You only had to mail to 10,000 people to make that important $1,000. However, those were the good ole days of spamming and they are long over. Granted they still are not too bad today, otherwise we would not be using spam blockers, but with the advent of new laws and better spam fighting technology the true glory days of spam are
over.
How do I know this? For about two and half years I worked for a spammer. Well technically that is not true. The company that I worked for called themselves a "legitimate email marketing company" meaning they rented office space as opposed to just mailing out of a basement. They also had some big name clients too, which ultimately is the way email marketers separate themselves from common spammers. A common spammer sends out emails for nothing but debt consolidation, porn, and Viagra offers. An email marketer sends out emails for vacation offers, special deals on golf clubs, and occasionally actual brand name companies. At the end of the day though it is still nothing more than unwanted junk mail clogging up your inbox.
It was a good time though and while I was embarrassed to tell anyone what I did for a living the money was too good to pass up. Even if the money was not so good, the office life was unlike anything I had ever or will ever experience again, and people were drawn to it like moths to a flame. Our office had just about everything you would need. There was a fully stocked kitchen with snacks, coffee, soda, and several bottles of vodka. There was plenty of eye candy since all our under-qualified secretaries and assistants were actually hired from local bars and strip clubs. Every Tuesday a car wash service came by the office to details peoples’ cars, and every Wednesday the cocaine dealer would stop by to replenish any dwindling supplies.
Make no mistake about it, when a company makes money hand over fist and the average employee is only 30 years old there is bound to be some serious partying going on. And there I was, age 24, caught up in the middle of all of it.
Many people wonder why I took a job working in such a disreputable industry. The answer is a combination of ignorance and desperation. Prior to working in email marketing, I was living in Austin, Texas, and had been unemployed for a little over seven months, a victim of the great dotcom crash of 2000. Despite numerous interviews, I was having simply no luck finding a job. Having two different and doomed dotcoms on my resume was the career equivalent of a Scarlet Letter. Finally, I took a risk and moved down to South Florida at the urging of a friend who said the job market was still relatively good down there. One month after I moved, I had an interview and was offered a job as a Sales Assistant by The Evil Email Company, a mid-sized email marketing company, and one of the pioneers of the industry.
Like many new employees in an email marketing company, I did not really know what I had gotten myself into. I was just a young guy, broke, with a seemingly useless advertising degree, just looking for a job of any kind. At first glance, everything seemed on the up-and-up. The media portrayed spammers as guys living in basements or in foreign countries where they could not be prosecuted. The people at this company worked in a big office and drove BMWs. Besides, all the people I interviewed with kept telling me this company only dealt with “permission-based email-marketing,” meaning that the people who were on our email lists signed up willfully and of their own accord. At one time, that may have even been true, but if it was when I was hired it would not be for much longer.
Other email companies were popping up left and right like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They were spreading like Starbucks. Because so little start-up capitol was required, a good businessman could easily turn a profit within two months. So in order to stay ahead of all the new competition The Evil Email Company started cutting corners. Decisions were made to hit our email lists twice or three times as often. Instead of collecting quality data through legal channels, the company started buying bulk groups of email and broadcasting to them through loopholes in Internet law. Eventually, we were just stealing data and mailing to every single email address we could find, in hopes that no one would complain too loudly when they got some unwanted email. We were fine, just as long as we made money. No one questioned what was going on, despite the fact that we were doing was blatantly illegal.
By the time I really figured out what was going on, I could not leave. For a while, I did not care anyway. I was making too much money and having too much fun. I might not have been snorting lines with the Vice President in his office or claiming money spent on prostitutes as a business expense, but even as the guy who was known as "the quiet one", I was still getting away with stuff that would get a person fired from most other companies in a heartbeat.
A company is like a person though, and that kind of lifestyle does not ensure a long healthy run. Within four years of the company being opened it closed. The year before it closed for business, our little office of 30 people posted profits of over three million dollars, but between tougher anti-spam laws, an oversaturated industry, and some rough vices that affected nearly everyone from the CEO down to the junior sales people it crashed and burned the following year. It was a wild run though, and in that time I learned a lot about just how unethical an entire industry can be when greed takes over.
This article was previously published in Jive Magazine.
Check back soon for Chapter 2 and 3
Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE.
Or Check out Becca Costello's madcap adventure with dolphins in Gay Hawaii HERE.
And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
Check your inbox. Do you see any junk mail in there? You probably have quite a bit. Individually you and your email address are not that valuable. At most that email for discount pain killers cost the Canadian pharmacy that sent it to you one tenth of a cent. So for every ten pieces of unwanted email that you find in your inbox, the company that sent them made about one penny. So really, to a spammer you are literally not worth a dime.
So why do they keep your email address around? Well, it's pretty simple. Once they get your email address and the email address of about 999,999 of your closest friends, this nameless company will make $1,000. Not a bad day's haul really. Especially considering that this nameless company has at least 20 million email addresses. In a given week they will mail to each one of these people at least 3 times, earning somewhere around $60,000. Yes indeed, spamming pays and it pays well. Want to know the scary thing? Three years ago you were worth a whole lot more to them. In some cases an email address would cost as much as ten cents per name. You only had to mail to 10,000 people to make that important $1,000. However, those were the good ole days of spamming and they are long over. Granted they still are not too bad today, otherwise we would not be using spam blockers, but with the advent of new laws and better spam fighting technology the true glory days of spam are
over.
How do I know this? For about two and half years I worked for a spammer. Well technically that is not true. The company that I worked for called themselves a "legitimate email marketing company" meaning they rented office space as opposed to just mailing out of a basement. They also had some big name clients too, which ultimately is the way email marketers separate themselves from common spammers. A common spammer sends out emails for nothing but debt consolidation, porn, and Viagra offers. An email marketer sends out emails for vacation offers, special deals on golf clubs, and occasionally actual brand name companies. At the end of the day though it is still nothing more than unwanted junk mail clogging up your inbox.
It was a good time though and while I was embarrassed to tell anyone what I did for a living the money was too good to pass up. Even if the money was not so good, the office life was unlike anything I had ever or will ever experience again, and people were drawn to it like moths to a flame. Our office had just about everything you would need. There was a fully stocked kitchen with snacks, coffee, soda, and several bottles of vodka. There was plenty of eye candy since all our under-qualified secretaries and assistants were actually hired from local bars and strip clubs. Every Tuesday a car wash service came by the office to details peoples’ cars, and every Wednesday the cocaine dealer would stop by to replenish any dwindling supplies.
Make no mistake about it, when a company makes money hand over fist and the average employee is only 30 years old there is bound to be some serious partying going on. And there I was, age 24, caught up in the middle of all of it.
Many people wonder why I took a job working in such a disreputable industry. The answer is a combination of ignorance and desperation. Prior to working in email marketing, I was living in Austin, Texas, and had been unemployed for a little over seven months, a victim of the great dotcom crash of 2000. Despite numerous interviews, I was having simply no luck finding a job. Having two different and doomed dotcoms on my resume was the career equivalent of a Scarlet Letter. Finally, I took a risk and moved down to South Florida at the urging of a friend who said the job market was still relatively good down there. One month after I moved, I had an interview and was offered a job as a Sales Assistant by The Evil Email Company, a mid-sized email marketing company, and one of the pioneers of the industry.
Like many new employees in an email marketing company, I did not really know what I had gotten myself into. I was just a young guy, broke, with a seemingly useless advertising degree, just looking for a job of any kind. At first glance, everything seemed on the up-and-up. The media portrayed spammers as guys living in basements or in foreign countries where they could not be prosecuted. The people at this company worked in a big office and drove BMWs. Besides, all the people I interviewed with kept telling me this company only dealt with “permission-based email-marketing,” meaning that the people who were on our email lists signed up willfully and of their own accord. At one time, that may have even been true, but if it was when I was hired it would not be for much longer.
Other email companies were popping up left and right like mushrooms after a rainstorm. They were spreading like Starbucks. Because so little start-up capitol was required, a good businessman could easily turn a profit within two months. So in order to stay ahead of all the new competition The Evil Email Company started cutting corners. Decisions were made to hit our email lists twice or three times as often. Instead of collecting quality data through legal channels, the company started buying bulk groups of email and broadcasting to them through loopholes in Internet law. Eventually, we were just stealing data and mailing to every single email address we could find, in hopes that no one would complain too loudly when they got some unwanted email. We were fine, just as long as we made money. No one questioned what was going on, despite the fact that we were doing was blatantly illegal.
By the time I really figured out what was going on, I could not leave. For a while, I did not care anyway. I was making too much money and having too much fun. I might not have been snorting lines with the Vice President in his office or claiming money spent on prostitutes as a business expense, but even as the guy who was known as "the quiet one", I was still getting away with stuff that would get a person fired from most other companies in a heartbeat.
A company is like a person though, and that kind of lifestyle does not ensure a long healthy run. Within four years of the company being opened it closed. The year before it closed for business, our little office of 30 people posted profits of over three million dollars, but between tougher anti-spam laws, an oversaturated industry, and some rough vices that affected nearly everyone from the CEO down to the junior sales people it crashed and burned the following year. It was a wild run though, and in that time I learned a lot about just how unethical an entire industry can be when greed takes over.
This article was previously published in Jive Magazine.
Check back soon for Chapter 2 and 3
Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE.
Or Check out Becca Costello's madcap adventure with dolphins in Gay Hawaii HERE.
And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
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