Saying "No" to yet another deal with the Devil

As the CEO, head software developer and marketing guru behind SpamButcher I've made a bunch of money of the product. Yes, piles and piles of money. However, it should be said that it doesn't take that many one dollar bills to make a pile. Also, the money only seems moderately impressive compared to a full-time system administration position held for the same number of hours of time I've invested.

This is to say, SpamButcher has not made me filthy rich. I have yet to quit my day job to fight spam full-time.

However, I've always suspected I could've made a bunch more if I abandoned my principles.

For one, I could have sent spam. Certainly, I have the technical skills to be a good spammer (not that many are needed). I could even do so entirely legally. Those who think the CAN-SPAM act somehow outlaws spam are confused. It does no such thing.

The reason I won't spam is that it's wrong.

The irony behind using spam to promote an anti-spam product is also just mind numbing. It's like breaking into someone's house to leave them brochures for an alarm system.

I'm ashamed to say we once inadvertently received a handful of sales indirectly from a spam campaign. To be clear, the campaign wasn't any of our doing.

We used to run an affiliate campaign. Even though we made it clear "no email advertising of any sort" was allowed, one spammer thought he could work around the rules by placing an advertisement for SpamButcher on his unsubscribe page. The spam campaign itself had nothing to do with anti-spam software for Outlook or any other clients, but everyone who unsubscribed by definition had a spam problem.

It certainly worked.

After we received 4 or 5 sales in a single day (a lot for a single affiliate) we caught on to what was going on and immediately terminated his affiliate agreement.

We've also taken a strong stance against spyware and adware. Small software vendors can receive a payment of up to about $1 for each installation they successfully package spyware with. If it could be done without other repercussions, this could certainly make SpamButcher several tens of thousands of additional dollars annually.

But again, it's wrong - I won't do it.

So when today I received an offer to "partner" with a company called Zango, I didn't have to hesitate when replying, "no thank you."

I'm just going to keep focusing on making SpamButcher the best anti-spam software I can. Avoiding these make-money-fast schemes lets me sleep well at night and not have to deal with the FTC, angry email server administrators and hordes of irate customers.

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