[9607] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Is advertising relevant
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barney Wolff)
Fri Jan 14 01:19:30 1994
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 01:12:04 -0500
From: Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com>
To: com-priv@psi.com
>From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
>
>But even at 5% if I'm selling the right product that can be quite
>profitable. If it costs around $1/mailing and I send out 100,000 thus
>$100K sunk and get back 5,000 responses all I need is to net on
>average $20/response to break even on the mailing, not a huge
>challenge, many such come-ons will be worth much more than $20/per
>response.
Isn't the whole point of the fears that unsolicited ads on the Internet
cost not $1 each, not $0.10 each, but $0.00 each? I can send to
unmoderated lists, I can glean addresses from Usenet and send directly
through my bandwidth-priced T1, and so on. If my cost approaches zero,
I am likely to be much less careful about who I send to, and will end
up bothering scads of people who have no interest in what I'm selling
whatsoever. But I don't care - they were never going to be my
customers anyway. Especially if I load up listservs, I represent a
network nuisance, but have no motivation to quit, as if I get a return
of even one in a thousand, it's almost pure profit.
If I have a T1, I can send a 10 KB ad to a million separate addresses
in a day. (Yeah, I have to smtp on maybe a hundred connections
simultaneously.) T1 access costs me about $200 a day, so my expenses
are 2 hundreths of a cent each.
The choices to deal with this seem to be massive flaming, regulation,
or universal religious scruples that deem it sinful. Which of those is
least objectionable?
Barney Wolff, Pres. Voice: 914-591-6572
Databus Inc. Fax: 914-591-5677
15 Victor Drive Internet: barney@databus.com
Irvington, NY 10533-1919 USA "At the corner of database & datacomm"
