We wrote a blogpost that touched on some of this as well: http://kymalabs.blogspot.com/2011/03/kymalabs-on-spam.html
Why Spammers Spam
21–29 of 29 posts
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#22It must work, because I'd wager that there are more spam blogs/sites than good blogs/sites. God help you if you try to find legitimate information on health or insurance.
The volume of spam blogs compared to non-spam blogs isn't an indicator of working. The volume is based on two factors:
* Automation at the high-end of spamming * Creating a wide a net as possible to pull in visitors
Much like the volume of spam emails is there because the conversion rate is so poor, so many emails get filtered. By using volume as a vector, despite the diminishing returns, spammers aim to get a decent return on their investment.
The marginal cost of email or a new spamblog is low (though email is still by far cheaper). That's the basis for them being so many of them. I know the conversion rate for email is miniscule (but multiplying that by millions can generate a decent sum). No idea about the conversion rate of spam blogs.
The source of income isn't adsense, it's affiliate products, and in those areas. Porn and pills are the one that are profitable.
And yes, spam blogs do work, they work well enough that when Google finds a blog farm and drops them out of the index, spammers take some time to figure out how they got spotted, adjust their approach or make a suitable correction, and start again. The methods of creating spam sites and blogs differ over time, but the general approach is still a core spam technique.
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#23What exactly is a spam blog? Is it the same with arbitrage? How does it know what content to display (as the author says it should be automated)?
Some spam blogfarms play the arbitrage game with Adsense, but it's more profitable for them to use GoogleAds to pull traffic in and push visitors towards their affiliate links.
Content tends to be scraped content, sometimes Markov chained or other spinning methods. The content to display is based on keywords.
Depending on the spam website solution, the automation is done on a number of levels (depending on the blogfarm technique):
* WordpressMU with wildcard subdomains based on a spreadsheet of keywords * Automated set up of Blogger blogs (either using Captcha breakers, Mechanical turk, or just asking the user to solve captchas 10 at a time) * Automated publishing of content via XMLRPC (for wordpress and/or blogger), or other interfaces. Then almost always ping-servers are pinged. * Automated creation of websites given a template and a heap of content - sometimes Markoved sometimes spun. Grabbing content either through screen scraping, RSS, text files, anything they can get their hands on. (They tried wikipedia for a while, last time I looked, they were dabbling with Yahoo answers for both content and inbound links) * automated link building. Basically finding fingerprints of known no-rel-follow tools - like Pligg, Wordpress on edu/gov domains etc. Includes automated comment spam to build inbound links.
It does surprise me the lengths the successful spammers go to in blogspam and spam websites. They figure out this is still more profitable than building real long-term value and writing interesting content. Sometimes I think it's one of those "beat Google at it's own game", and the rush of earning quick money.
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#24I get the feeling spamming is often the work of people who can ignore the fact that some economic activities are harmful or bothersome to the people they are trying to reach, and to their own brand (beyond the erectile dysfunction category, which is a whole other league).
I was once acquainted with a company that sent unsolicited mail (travel related) through one of those gazillion email databases. When I asked why were they doing it, their response was a blank stare—Well, it gives us a 10 to 1 return on investment each time we do it, why should we stop?.
It's the same reason why it's so difficult to cancel your cable plan, companies notice that if they ask their customers to fax in their contract, cancellation rates diminish to a fraction. Profit!
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#25"If it was not of value, it would not be profitable and hence, would not exist." Thievery, blackmail, extortion, etc. are all profitable, and yet, I would argue not of value. So is legally tricking people into paying for services they do not want. This is a terrible sentiment that can be used to justify any number of shady dealings. But it's also housed in an incoherent paragraph where the author briefly argues both…
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, No property or person is being harmed with spam. Time is wasted, yes. But no crime is being committed in the normal sense of the word. To compare spam to thievery, blackmail and extortion (where their is a removal of property of threats to a person) is not a very good analogy and I think taking things a bit too far. It's closer to aggresively handing out flyers on the street and…
If you are a forum admin then the value of your side will go down if you don't clean up spam regularly (and for big forums you might have to cleanup several times every single day). I'd rather compare it with gluing advertisement illegally all over the place.
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#26"If it was not of value, it would not be profitable and hence, would not exist." Thievery, blackmail, extortion, etc. are all profitable, and yet, I would argue not of value. So is legally tricking people into paying for services they do not want. This is a terrible sentiment that can be used to justify any number of shady dealings. But it's also housed in an incoherent paragraph where the author briefly argues both…
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, No property or person is being harmed with spam. Time is wasted, yes. But no crime is being committed in the normal sense of the word. To compare spam to thievery, blackmail and extortion (where their is a removal of property of threats to a person) is not a very good analogy and I think taking things a bit too far. It's closer to aggresively handing out flyers on the street and…
>> But no crime is being committed [...] It's closer to aggresively handing out flyers on the street and possibly a case of harrassment.
Well, technically littering, graffiti-vandalism, etc is also a crime. In certain cities treated harder than small thefts.
All these loophole-abusers make me really sick. Even if there's no "law" making it "illegal" it doesn't mean you have to abuse every possible loophole there is in the "system" to make some money "legally". If you are going to ignore ethics and cause pain to people anyway just grow some balls and rob a bank instead.
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#27Spam is really a theft of someone elses time. Because they only steal a little time from every victim, spammers may see it as a "small" theft. Shoplifters use a similar rationalization when stealing from a large store.
My revenge fantasy is to have spammers serve prison time equal to amount of time they have stolen from their victims i.e. ten seconds a day per victim * 1 million victims sounds about right.
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#28Spam is really a theft of someone elses time. Because they only steal a little time from every victim, spammers may see it as a "small" theft. Shoplifters use a similar rationalization when stealing from a large store. My revenge fantasy is to have spammers serve prison time equal to amount of time they have stolen from their victims i.e. ten seconds a day per victim * 1 million victims sounds about right.
Well, you could use the same rational for bad articles on HN...
Re: Why Spammers Spam
#29Do we really have to be so imprecise in our language that now "spam" in a headline can refer to "blog spam"? How about "comment spam" as well? What else is there? How about I write an article titled "spam is now illegal" and by the fifth paragraph you find out I'm talking about unsolicited faxes? To 99% of readers out there the last thing they think of when they read "spam" is blog spam.