Spamming and the law

Well what about the legal issue? Are you worried that spam will be legislated against?
Absolutely not. See the thing is that I believe that there is enough of a resistance out there that this will be challenged. There's either going to be a law against what we're doing or a law against some of the things that email marketers are doing. It's going to be a debate that has to happen eventually.

And I will represent the emailers who believe that this is a free country and that we're allowed to do what we're doing as long as we have respect for people who don't want to get what we're sending them. Then there's no reason that we need a law. And technology can fix this. But I can promise you that there's enough people out there that have a loud enough mouth that there will definitely be a point when someone like Sanford Wallace is going to have to defend what we're doing in Congress. I'm prepared to do it.

So what's going to happen if this somehow is outlawed? Are you in this for the long haul or are you thinking you'll make your money and then go retire somewhere?
Well I think I've already proven that this is a long-haul business. There are a lot of people who have jumped in and have jumped right out. We've been doing it longer than anyone and we'll continue to do it for longer than anyone. And if it becomes illegal to send unsolicited emails, Cyber Promotions has many other ways to stay in business because we are no longer really in the business of sending unsolicited emails.

Most people don't even realize this, but we don't actually spam that much anymore. Most of the people on our mailing list are there by choice at this point or at least they're indifferent to it and they haven't opted-out. And most of the new people on our list have actually subscribed. The reason why we're still getting all this attention is because the whole world thinks that all we do is send unsolicited email and now with the ISPam Network, we're definitely going to be affiliated with unsolicited email, but on a different level. Now we're going to be more of the conduit and less of the actual individual who does it.

Faxing is outlawed, so why shouldn't email be outlawed? What's the difference?
What we're doing actually would not be illegal on the fax. The provider, the conduit of the advertisements are not the people who are responsible for unsolicited faxes. It's the actual advertisers. So just to let you know, Cyber Promotions wouldn't even be breaking the law if we were doing the same exact thing through a fax.

Fax and email are very different. There are humongous differences. Email has technology to help filter. People can reject mail. It's not the same as a fax where every single fax sent to that telephone number will be printed out on the person's paper. The second difference is that only people who print out email by choice are the ones who print it. Fax automatically prints it. The third big difference is that when somebody sends an unsolicited fax, it literally ties up the telephone line. There's no such thing as tying up a telephone line with email. You can get ten emails at once. But the big difference really is the fact that email can be filtered and technology can solve the problem. With faxes, you couldn't solve the problem with technology--there's no way to filter by fax number.

I understand your fax business prompted the antifax law.
That's a rumor. We weren't sending unsolicited faxes. We were calling people and asking them for their fax numbers. Everyone thinks that Sanford Wallace is responsible for the fax law--but no one even knew who I was in 1991.

Do you screen the people who want to advertise through you?
We're very, very selective now. We used to be much easier, but now it's gotten to the point where we literally can't send out as much as people want us to send out, so we have the opportunity to screen their material. And we're so strict about adult material. We used to have ads that said: "Call a party line." Not an adult sex line, but a party line: We won't even take that anymore. Even if it has the word "bikini" in it we might not take it. We want to make sure that everybody who is on our list is not offended by our material.

Also, there's a lot of scams out there. One of the reasons that we reproduce some of the National Fraud Information Center's postings is because we don't want people to get ripped off online. If we can police our own information, then we won't need the government to get involved.

What kind of clients are they? What are they selling?
Most of the people who we service are people who work out of their own home: People who don't have the opportunity to take advantage of more traditional advertising mechanisms that cost a lot of money. We work with mostly one-to-two-to-three person businesses and we also have some larger clients as well, but we don't cater to the larger clients as much at this time.

But I can tell you, for example, we have somebody who works out of his garage in Kansas City. That's one of our customers. We also have a company that sells software in New Jersey. It really ranges from one thing to the other.

And do you check out all these companies before you agree to advertise?
We don't sit there and have an investigative department here, but any time that we get any types of complaints of any kind we're the first people to act on it. Most of our clients are legitimate business people who are trying to make an honest living.

Can you tell me how much money you're making?
I could tell you what's public information and that is we're rated by Dunn & Bradstreet, so the numbers are public. Our first year our business grossed over $800,000. And that's last year as a corporation. This year our numbers are just going to make that look like a baby. So that's really the best number I can give you because otherwise my accountant might yell at me.

What I know is that my customers are happy and that when I look at my books at the end of the month, we're showing a profit when just about every other Internet Web-based company is showing a loss.

When America Online, CompuServe, and Prodigy are so afraid because they're all losing money every single quarter--Cyber Promotions, the bad boy on the Internet, has never lost money. And we've had to pay lawyers for five high-profile lawsuits, yet we still show a profit--and that's important. It's not all about money, but money talks very loud, especially in business.

And the message it's saying is that people are willing to spend money to send bulk commercial email period. And they're coming back for more. One more thing: 83%--actually the number is about 84% now--of our clients come back another time and either use the same service or buy a different service from us in the future. So we're keeping our customers happy.