Money Talks – it’s not everything, but everything is money

Recession proof jobs

According to Peter Schiff in his book “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets,” the 10 strongest professions and industries over the coming decade and beyond are:

1. Engineering, because the abandoned U.S. industrial base will need to be re-tooled.
2. Construction, to rebuild the American infrastructure.
3. Agriculture, as we wean ourselves from imported foodstuffs.
4. Merchant marine, to transport goods to foreign markets.
5. Commercial fishing, because demand for fish is increasing in the U.S. even as foreign supply is declining.
6. Energy, because we’ll need to develop alternatives to fossil fuels.
7. Computers and high technology, one field in which the U.S. continues to lead.
8. Entertainment, another industry in which the U.S. should continue to dominate the world market.
9. Automotive repair, small appliance repair, and the like. It’s going to become more costly to replace items, making repair a viable option.
10. Tailoring and textiles, because imported clothes will become scarcer and more expensive.

He also lists jobs which are at greatest risk of decline:
1. the service economy
2. banking and finance
3. real estate
4. health care
5. travel and tourism
6. retailing.

Hence, he recommends those who are working in any of the above industries to consider moving ship.

However, JD of getrichslowly.org compared this list with the opinions of 3 other experts, and concluded that the 4 came up with different lists and hence:

Nobody can agree on which jobs are best for riding out a recession. As we’ve seen time and again when people try to predict the future, everybody has a different methodology, and everybody comes to a different conclusion. Nobody will be 100% correct.

So what ARE the most recession-proof jobs out there? He said:

I believe that in general, the most recession-proof job is the one you already have. If your current career is fulfilling and pays well, then do what you can to make yourself indispensable. Develop your skill-set. Be a valuable contributor. Keep a positive attitude. Network your way to job security. These things won’t help if your company undergoes massive lay-offs, but they will protect you from casual culling.

Good advice indeed.

Source
getrichslowly.org

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The Storm spam network makes USD210,000 every month

People don’t like spammers and hope karma gives them mesothelioma, however it’s quite educational to see how they make their money.

Computer scientists from the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) conducted a 1-month study on how spammers make their money in early 2008.

How the researchers did it:

(1) they hijacked part of Storm, a huge existing, operational spam network that controlled up to 1 million home PCs as email relays for sending spam. They did this by creating and utilising several proxy bots that got in the way of the actual Storm control system and the “zombified” home PCs. These bots managed to take over control of 75,869 home PCs from Storm.

(2) The researchers then created 2 spam campaigns, albeit fake ones:
- one: mimicking how Storm spreads via viruses.
- two: tries to tempt people to visit a (fake) pharmacy website, which then tries to sell them a “libido boosting herbal remedy”. The site was deliberately designed to look like that run by Storm’s owners; the difference was that it did not keep credit card details keyed in by potential customers.

(3) Run the spam campaign i.e. send millions of junk emails. By the end of the study, the researchers had sent out about 469 million emails, most of them for the fake pharmacy campaign.

Result:

After 26 days and 350 million emails sent, 28 sales had resulted, which would have resulted in a revenue of USD2,731.88.

Not bad at all!

That meant a response rate of less than 0.00001%. In comparison, legit direct mail campaigns on average returns 2.15%.

Scaled up to the full size of the Storm network, it’s estimated that the spammers are netting USD7,000 per day i.e. USD210,000 per month, or more than USD2 million per year!

In other words, even if only 1 email out of 12.5 million result in a sale, a “big spammer” would still turn over profits in MILLIONS of US DOLLARS every year.

Source
“Spamalytics: An Empirical Analysis of Spam Marketing Conversion” by C. Kanich, C. Kreibich, K. Levchenko, B. Enright, G. Voelker, V. Paxson and S. Savage
The BBC, 10th Nov 2008

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