It turns out someone out there actually responds to those spam e-mails. A study by computer scientists from Berkeley and UC San Diego found that spammers receive a grand total of one response to every 12,500,000 emails they send out.
 

The researchers took the approach that “the best way to measure spam is to be a spammer.” Tech Radar reports the findings:

The researchers used two of the most popular ploys currently used by spammers – firstly offering a fake pharmacy site and, secondly, offering a herbal Viagra-style remedy to boost libido.

"After 26 days, and almost 350 million email messages, only 28 sales resulted," says the research paper.

Yet even with this apparently abysmal response rate of less than 0.00001 per cent, the researchers still estimate that the controllers of a network the size of Storm are still bringing in about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or $3.5m (£2.21m) over a year.

So there you have it… annoying millions of people with messages about faux Viagra is the way to make a living in these tough times. Now go forth and prosper.