2005-12-02

Danger... Asterisk ahead

I think I mentioned in a previous entry that I'd leave the online marketing entries to more knowledgeable folks...  well, I came across a little memo that I wrote a few years back (long before the programs we see today even existed), and it seems fitting here...  It's not aimed at anyone in particular, but I bet you know someone!  I did rewite it a bit and ran this for a short time on some of my sites, so maybe you've seen it.  Anyways... on with the self-plagerization (is that a word)?:

WANT ADS:  BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY - SOMEONE TO SIGN UP FOR MY FREE PROGRAM (I'LL EVEN SIGN YOU UP, SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO). THEN THE NEXT DAY, QUIT YOUR JOB, SELL YOUR COMPUTER AND JUST SIT AROUND THE HOUSE WATCHING TV.  IN RETURN I WILL SEND YOU A CHECK FOR $8,463.12 EACH AND EVERY MONTH, FOREVER, GUARANTEED*  CLICK HERE

P.T. Barnum would be proud! - There are many incarnations of Mr. Barnum's philosophy, fabled in song and story.

When looking for opportunities either online or off, always assume that you have to "do something"... here comes an old cliché (I got a million of them): There is no such thing as a free lunch.  The price you pay can come in many forms - Time, work, thought, money, energy, time away from the TV... In the internet age, we are bombarded with hundred of programs that appear too good to be true, free lunch, easy money, or other promises.  Are they all scams? No. (Though some of them are). Others are legitimate, but "promise" only the best case scenario - and they can back it up on paper...  It's a mathematical possibility to make the promises into reality.  You'll have to watch out for two things:  The word "if" and that dreaded asterisk.

Barnum understood the numbers game.  I've came up with this idea many years ago:  If I'd make a nice sign, a good display with a fancy looking funnel with a fan atop of it, I could sell air at 25 cents a minute -  if you paraded enough people in front of the display, a certain percentage of people will consider it a great deal. "It's not the deal you get that's important, it's the deal you think you get". (Of course I used that as an illustration - if only I had known that someone would later be making millions with the rise of "Oxygen Bars")

There is a song, whose title came from another cliché - "The big print giveth, and the small print taketh away"  If the Big Print contains phrases such as "up to", "as much as" or "as little as", and of course, the word "Free".  These are all signal flares!  In order to do what ever it is they say you can do - rest assured - you have to do something.  I read somewhere that 80% of the MLM recruits who join what ever program it is - Never sell anything or recruit anyone - once you get past the first head-in-the-clouds period - which lasts about a week! Is it the program that failed, or did the recruit just not do what it took to succeed? Perhaps a little of both - when looking at advertising, you never see the negatives, even when the "negative" is simply telling a new signup that they will be required, if they want to succeed, to DO SOMETHING - even if it's wrong (which would then require you to learn from your mistakes).

I've talked to people who complained constantly that they've joined hundreds of programs, and never made a cent.  When I asked what they had to do, I was told - "They (whoever "They" are) said all I had to do is join - then I'd make money"... And this took how many tries?? One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over - expecting a different result.  Drop a bowling ball on your foot a few times, and I'd hope that eventually you'd get the idea that it will hurt every time.