If I Were A Spammer

If I were a spammer, I would do it so much better.  Spam doesn't fool me the least bit anymore and I have a feeling it's not working for the spammers and their miserable careers.  I've thought about it and created a guide for myself in case times turn rough and I have to resort to spamming.  (Just kidding).  I thought it would be fun to put these words of advice together anyway.

Make your email addresses seem like real people even if the domains are shady.
Most of the time when I get a spam email, the email address is complet jibberish.

Use proper spelling and grammar.
This is an obvious tip off to people who have any command over the English language.  We don't trust those who can't write well enough to make us believe they finished 8th grade.

Use sentences that make sense.
Where did you get that idea to use weird poetic almost biblical sounding text strings and do you think that it makes people think you're selling anything.  Are you?  I'm not sure this is not good marketing.

Try a different kind of subject line.
I already bought enough Viagra and bought all the stocks you suggested.  I'm looking for something else to make my life more complete.  To be fair though, some spammers have resorted to news headline type subject lines.  These almost fooled me, actually made me open the email, but I'm not the only one who has caught on in two clicks.

Create some truly funny emails or links to video clips.
My friends send me enough jokes and most of them aren't very funny.  Entertain me for real and I might just forward your spam and so will others.  Well done joke emails might even make people think your company is legitimate.

Try the "sex sells" approach.
Just paste the picture of some very attractive men or women in the email and you might get some more responses.  It works for marketers from "real" companies.  Just ask GoDaddy.com.

As a marketer, I truly believe some of my tactics would work.  I just know that if I was a spammer, I would be one of the best.  Too bad my ethics get in the way.  And for those of you who might criticize me for helping spammers, I don't think they have time to read my blog so don't worry.

+ Atul

Comments

[chancelucky]

Thanks for the business plan Atul. I've always assumed the nonsense names with the weird keystrokes in them get there because they come from countries that don't use our alphabet.

Spamming is about the only justification I can see for possibly charging a small fee for e-mail.

[ripismoney]

Thanks to the spammers for making it so easy for Gmail's spam catcher to stop their emails from bothering me!

With a blog I see a lot of spam comments filtered out, some of which are hilarious. The majority consist of a long list of links with no content at all, only written in message board-style UBBC code so that it doesn't even format correctly. It's hard not to laugh...

[chancelucky]

Actually, that's a good point though. My comment filter seems to be that often annoying thing that makes you type in random letters to show that you're a one-off commenter.
It actually works pretty well. I could see a program that simply forces the sender to confirm via one of those filters before my server will accept and send it on to me.

[Atul]

I didn't know the foreign characters caused the crazy key symbols. Even if it were true, the spammers should invest in English keyboards.

And yes, today's spammers aren't as good as I would be so thank God our filters can catch most of them.

I also had the idea to charge half or a tenth of a cent per email recipient to prevent spam, not sure why it hasn't happened yet. Or if you're not on the person's directory, you have to pay to send an email to them, how about that idea?

Did you guys get the connection when I wrote "If I Were A Spammer" to "If I Had A Hammer"?

[chancelucky]

I see it now, but I"m afraid I missed it the first time.
Where is Trini Lopez anyway?