Probably I’m not the original creator of re-spamming and undoubtedly others have come up with this wonderful idea, but it’s a really fun one. Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of these E-mails with real enigmatic subject lines, like this latest one: ‘Conscious approvingly’. And these enigmatic subject lines are matched with real persons names (Bert Lucero) so even though they are appearing in my yahoo bulk folder I still wanted to check them out - the first couple of ones at least and then I got wise.

I’m thinking that the whole deal is precisely that, to make you wonder what the hell ‘Conscious Approvingly’ means and then you open up the e-mail to find out. It’s day trading, that one. There was absolutely nothing about consciousness or approval and Bert Lucero didn’t even send that one. I know, there is no Bert involved with any of this; he’s entirely fictional.

But here was my brainwave: I’ve got something to sell (my books) and they’ve got an e-mail address and at some point a real person will look at my reply. Voila! That’s a list I can use to interest people in my books. Maybe they won’t be all that interested in clicking through but guess what? I’m not all that interested in day-trading and I opened their stupid E-mail so … fair is fair. You wasted a few seconds of my time and I will waste a few minutes of yours.And you’re not imposing on them at all because they e-mailed you in the first place and they wanted to hear from you! So, you’re not being (possibly) intrusive like they were.

Okay, I don’t believe any of them actually have bought one of my books, although they should because every one of them is entertaining.

So far, I’ve gotten three responses to my re-spamming. The first was from a man who said he would tell his friends with children … I count that as a positive. The second was actually a response to the blog about the respamming. It was from a guy for payday loans who seemed a bit hurt that I was doing this, being critical of the way he was doing business. The third was just a response to the connection where I could opt out of their spam.

I re-re-spammed! Oh, that was so sweet. After all, instead of just giving me the option of opting out, why didn’t they not send it to me in the first place? Problem solved, wouldn’t you say? Not nice, I know but they started it.

Oh well. I can’t really say why advertisements via e-mail seem so much more intrusive then other kinds of advertisements. We watch TV and that seems to be alright, or we listen to the radio and that’s okay, too. Every day stuff comes in the mail and just as fast it goes into the garbage and that’s alright, too. It doesn’t bother me so much. E-mail (and telephones, too) are more private, I think. You want to use both for your own business and didn’t purposely expose yourself to these ads.

Spam must work, I’m guessing. If they didn’t my yahoo bulk mail wouldn’t be filled with their stuff. Like most people, I have a few mail boxes; the first one that I seldom ever use now has 20,577 e-mails (I just checked). Yahoo empties it every thirty days so there are a hell of a lot of people spending a hell of a lot of money and getting nothing back at all.

I only ever bought once. It was for business cards and it turned out I wanted some business cards and they were cheap. So, there you go. They got some of their money back for their trouble. But the rest of them?

Naaah.

It’s just too bad that the people whose time is being wasted aren’t really the ones who are ultimately wasting my time. No, they’re just some lowly, poorly paid humps who are earning a living. But my books are fun and interesting so it actually is well worth their time to click on through and they will be well rewarded when they buy and read them. My books will so totally make them forget their lowly humpdom. That’s my guarantee to you! (Assuming you’re a lowly hump).

When I reply to these Spam E-mails Yahoo will usually give me a code to type in as an anti-spam measure, so really I’m actually not spamming anybody since I’m not doing it in bulk and the original spammers actually solicited a reply from me, which counts as a response to them even if I’m never, ever going to buy jack from them. Nope, not ever. About half the time I get the Yahoo message that says: ‘Daemon failure message not delivered’ or something like that. You know, at least I tried.

I got one response from a real live human (yes, they exist in Cyberspace!). He must have gotten my re-spamming right then, because his e-mail came back within about five minutes. He said that he would forward the address because he knew some people who had ‘children’ in that age range. Oh boy. I rated these books as teen and above so I hope he doesn’t think this is for anybody who doesn’t have pubes and a cracking voice, but I wasn’t being misleading so … it’ll be okay. Nobody’s morals will be corrupted who doesn’t want them corrupted.

I’m going to continue re-spamming because even though the response is quite limited (three) it is rather satisfying to take up arms against the unwanted e-mail that show up in my bulk folder.

So, here’s my valuable advice to you: Sign up right now for the exciting world of re-spamming! And tell all your friends about it, too.

About the Author

Steve Sommers is the author of Rexroi, and Evil Super-Villains Need Love, Too. They’re at http://www.lulu.com/abeautifulcow

Day Trading Future, day trading online, day trading firm

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