Con artists the world over must have had a grand party when the internet was invented. No longer did prospective peddlers have to drive around in a beat up station wagon, selling their wares to whatever small town sucker happened to be bamboozled by the fast talking sales pitch. The simplicity of the internet (when it comes down to it, its point and click) and the extent of its reach mean that more shysters can connect to more suckers twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, all with the wonderfully intimate anonymity that only the World Wide Web could possibly provide.
Now, there are far too many dodgy internet scams going on out there to cover in one blog post, but in my daily perusal of the world’s best resource I came across the wonderfully vague technology of the hologram infused ‘Powerband’ (generic term, the different makers have different product names). I’d love to tell you what these things actually do but I don’t have much of an idea myself. Essentially marketed towards athletes, the bands claim to use a hologram to tune into your body’s natural frequency, thereby assisting with balance, power, fitness and general good looks.
Now you may be thinking, ‘well of course it’s going to sound stupid, simplistic and faux when you boil it down into a sentence. I bet they can explain their product a lot better.’ Well I’m afraid that I have simplified a little bit, but not much. One of the makers of these powerbands, ‘Power Balance’, have summed up their product in two succinct paragraphs:
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| Ahh, now I get it. |
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see that a company can explain something that claims to increase your body’s core strength by 500% in two generously formatted paragraphs, I conclude that they’re either making more money than Nike, Coke, and Microsoft put together and therefore don’t need a long-winded explanation of their product, or bullshitting. Since after a quick perusal of the share market pages I didn’t find Power Balance on the ‘startling improvers’ list, I was forced to conclude that maybe Power Balance were stretching the truth a bit. Of course the amazing thing on the internet is that nobody really minds if you stretch the truth a bit. In fact, it’s expected. If everyone on the internet was honest then why would we visit?
The fast talking sales pitch might not have much of a place on the internet but con artists realized that the internet is such a magnificent place that your virtual headquarters can look as dazzling as the big boys. This just isn’t true in real life, where selling products out of your shed or the back of your car doesn’t compete with a flashy, edgy Apple store. But, thanks to the wonders of the digital age, for a relatively small fee your digital home can look as good as any. Compare the Eken power band website (another powerband marketer) with the Apple:
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| www.apple.com |
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| www.ekenpowerbands.com.au |
Both are pretty slick interfaces. Now, compare the digital headquarters with the real life buildings:
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| Apple, Inc. |
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| 'Poweband' HQ |
Ok, so I made that last pic up, but you can see the point I’m trying to make: on the internet, as long as you have a budget of around 200 bucks, nobody knows if you’re based in canary wharf or on a rusty houseboat at the end of a wharf. Gone are the days when you had to outlay millions of dollars for some prime office real estate. Now, with the advent of cheap web-hosting and a lot of quality free web design products, you have absolutely no reason to have an unprofessional online presence.
So why not give selling a make-believe product online a go? You'll be surprised how stupid people are.
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