So you're staring at your inbox and there's yet another email informing you of a product that will make you 'bigger' or prolong your girlfriends 'satisfaction', with a link back to a dodgy web site you wouldn't dare surrender your credit card too.

Have you ever wondered how many people actually click the link in these emails, and how many covert into a sale? Wonder no more, because the egg-heads at the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego have done a study which they say answers the question.

Would you believe that for every 12.5 million spam emails sent, there is one idiot who follows through? With stats like that, there is hope for the human race after all. Because that means statistically speaking, the odds of your friends or family being among those 12.5 million are pretty low. That's only one person in the whole of Australia. According to one research paper:

"After 26 days, and almost 350 million email messages, only 28 sales resulted"

Spamming is one of the few business where the amount of marketing attacks sent out is drastically higher than the amount of conversions - less than 0.00001% to be exact. Yet with this incredibly low conversion rate, researchers say that some spamming networks still average a $US7000 per day income. Not too shabby, and now you understand why they wont stop.

Truth be told though they would stop, but that 0.00001% of people out there would have to ignore those emails, and you and both know that isn't going to happen.