What motivates spammers?

The short answer is "probability and revenue", in that if 1 person out of 10 million actually responds positively and purchases the product or shorts the stock or whatever, then if the cost of mailing is zero and the profit is non-zero, it's a winning proposition.

But I think it's more subtle than that. For example, I am getting a new variety of spam that's characterized by the following excerpt:

I look at that and it's impossible to even read it. With a little bit of effort, I can see that it's probably some pump and dump message promoting a doubtless worthless stock called CYTV [aside: a bit of research reveals that it's actually China YouTV Corporation (OTC:CYTV) and that it's trading at the depressing level of $0.49/share right now. The world of over the counter "pink sheet" stocks (typically under $1/share) is exactly the world where planted rumors of great success on the horizon are used to manipulate the stock price and is one area where the FTC and SEC are quite busy trying to police this lawless segment]

But even if you figure that stock tip messages are worth sending, surely a message sent to random people that's sufficiently full of random punctuation that it's rendered illegible is worthless!

At that point I just don't get it either.

Anyone who accepts stock tips from random strangers is probably best described as "poor", or a foolish adventurer or whatever, but even then, if it's illegible, it's not going to be "a secret leaked from their financial department" so I can't imagine that even if ten million people received the above message that ANY of them would be able to 1. figure out what it says, and then 2. respond in any way favorable to the company.

Now the economics break down: if it costs $50 to buy spam software and nothing to send that message to ten million people, but no-one responses favorably, then you've just wasted that $50 and you're down. Heck, that could buy 100 shares of China YouTV. :-)

At the end of the day, I believe that so long as the cost of sending vast numbers of messages is lower than the profit realized by the tiny faction of recipients who respond favorably to the message that we'll continue to be plagued by the bane of all email users. The depressing thing to realize is just how incredibly low the cost of entry for this bulk email marketing world is and how even if you only make $0.50 profit/sale, getting a 0.001% response could really pay for the mailing.

And it really is easy to get involved. Go and Google bulk download windows software tools email marketing, for example, and breeze through the results. Heck, go to some of the more dubious Internet Marketing conferences and you'll be able to listen to people standing on stage talking about the economic model of driving lots of traffic to your sales letter so you can be profitable with a tiny positive response.

Further, a key realization is that there are companies that send out bulk email, which means that they charge clients to send mail to what's doubtless advertised as a "clean" "opt-in" list that's a perfect match for the desired target demographics. Imagine, you can send your email message to 500,000 decision makers in your marketplace for only $250. Why not? Well, if it turns out that those email addresses were harvested from sites like professional association directories, maybe, just maybe, you won't be shown in the most favorable possible light. But the mailing company has already earned its $250 fee and it's filtered out all the rejects, bounces, and hostile email. So you pay for 500,000 to be sent, 50 say "tell me more about it please" and 7 buy it. Net result? Positive. Let's try again, but this time let's upgrade to the 3.5 million user list. After all, the "marketing" company swears that it's clean...

I realize I'm getting a bit jaded and sarcastic here, and am assuming that there are enough unethical businesses -- or, more likely, businesses that are so clueless that they don't realize that this sort of email marketing is spam -- but I would like to point out that I pay monthly for a spam filtering service and that over 80% of the mail I receive (and I get a LOT of email) is spam, usually ghastly, appalling stuff of the very worst sort. Frankly, I'm sick of it and dearly wish we could dramatically change the economic model so that it was so darn expensive to send out bulk email through a third party that it would be prohibitively expensive and would just stop.

And... maybe some day I'll look in the back pasture and the pigs will have wings. I know, I know.

Meanwhile, we all put up with it and somehow, someways, it works just barely well enough that it not only sustains, but grows, year after year.