12.5 Million Spam E-Mails to Sell $100 of Viagra

Considering how insistent and persistent the emails are, you would think there was big bucks in pushing pills that increase the flow of blood to one's penis for an extended period of time. That may be true, but only because the costs of spam advertising are so low, as revealed by this nugget in a New York Times article that reveals it takes 12.5 million spam emails just to sell $100 worth of Viagra.

So how do we stop this dread phenom? The same article says that out of all the various parties, advertisers, affiliates, spam servers, zombie spam bots and so forth in the chain, there's just three companies that handle 95% of the transactions. If their accounts were shut down by the powers that be, our inboxes could breath a sigh of relief.

from Ben Popken @ The Consumerist