When the “Internet Snake Oil Salesmen” come to your town….
Recently I had a conversation with a lady who is interested in having her own web presence or entity. She’s in her fifties and was looking into making some extra money online. She explained that she had gone to a seminar put on by some travelling Internet “experts”. The same old pitch by the sounds of it; give them $3000, pay a monthly fee of $29.99, and receive all the help they need to succeed with an online business. The lady I’m mentioning happens to be the mother of a childhood friend, so I was quite happy to hear she had not taken the bait.I’ve seen these travelling road shows come through town more frequently in the last few years. I liken them to the snake oil salesmen of the wild wild west. They ride into town, promise an instant cure to all your problems, collect their money, and head out. Sure the odd person really follows through and succeeds but it’s rare. The hard working netrepreneurs follow through with the services provided by the “Internet gurus”, but they could have succeeded without ever paying for expensive domain and hosting fees, monthly membership fees, bloated pay per click costs, or ridiculous web building services. Since the services provided are all all legit, it’s technically not an illegal scam. The services provided are way overpriced and the quality of the web building tools are so weak that the user (or sucker) is handicapped from the very start. Read more »
