This question originally appeared on Quora.
Answer by an Anonymous User on Quora
It's just like doing your regular work.
Back in 2003 when I discovered you could actually make money on the internet, I got very excited. I did not have any technical skills back then apart from knowing how to use the internet and fill up online forms.
I was the guy who would post spam comments in WordPress Blogs in the hope of getting a link back.
At that point in time, it did not occur to me that I was spamming someone. I was just doing my regular work. I used to get a list of keywords from my clients and had to find blogs which allowed comments; I used all sorts of Google search hacks to find the most vulnerable blogs where I could post my comments.
I still remember back in those days I used to get almost 70%-80% of my spam comments approved by clueless bloggers who could not differentiate between spam comments and real comments. But slowly, things got hard and my comment approval rates went down so I had to stop doing that work.
For some time, I also did various other odd jobs which could be qualified as spamming, like harvesting email addresses, bulk posting in Craigslist, Digg submissions (those were the days), spamming Stumble-upon, online directories, etc.
The point is, for me at back then, it was no different from doing any other job you would do in a office setup. I did not wake up in the morning saying:
"Hey! Let's spam the s**t out of people".
I never thought I was doing anything illegal or unethical at that point of time.
I was doing genuine work and working hard to achieve results for my clients. I worked 13-14 hrs per day earning around 20-30$ for each day of work, which was quite a good salary for a 20 year old kid in a third world country.
It was fun while it lasted; I am not proud of that, but I am not ashamed either. It helped me understand a lot of things on how to make money on the internet and I got a lot of experience doing it as well.