BBC NEWS | Technology | Study shows how spammers cash in

By hijacking a working spam network, US researchers have uncovered some of the economics of being a junk mailer.

The analysis suggests that such a tiny response rate means a big spam operation can turn over millions of pounds in profit every year.

It also suggests that spammers may be susceptible to attacks that make it more costly to send junk mail.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Study shows how spammers cash in

An interesting read. It seems that the rate of return on spam is really quite low.

The response rate for this campaign was less than 0.00001%. This is far below the average of 2.15% reported by legitimate direct mail organisations.

But even with that low percentage:

Scaling this up to the full Storm network the researchers estimate that the controllers of the vast system are netting about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or more than $2m (£1.28m) per year.

Clearly it pays to be a spamer or people would not do it. Now there is economic proof of it.