It is not a secret that one of the easiest (not sure if entirely ethical) ways of making money online is selling advice on … making money online. But it is not only a dodgy end of the market where skillful and well connected sales “spinsters” can create mirages of success with smoke and mirrors. Take, for example Groupon, with their claim of “hundreds of thousands” of registered users – acquired, mind you, in a very unethical way where the advertised deals require a sign up, only to reveal that these are really only “examples of future offers”. I bet many of those “hundreds of thousands” feel conned, especially since the is no way to opt out from Groupon’s mailing list, leavening the only solution - blocking emails from Groupon as unwanted spam. I doubt investors are interested in this part of the “business” as long as numbers are rising…
Another example I wanted to highlight today is ourpatch.com.au I referred to in one of my earlier posts. On paper, the “success” of this venture could be an envy of any start-up: run by a serial entrepreneur, on track to earn $1 million in advertising revenue from (merely) 140,000 unique monthly visitors, operating in an attractive niche (regional Australia). It was mentioned in 2009 as one of “The digital dozen - the next big things online”. It also received NSW/ACT Regional Business of the Year award that year and there were high hopes to “…break into the US to take a slice of its US$97 billion local advertising market”. Well, it turns out it was all a mirage…
A frank admission by van Wyk, a key person behind the venture, in a recent interview puts things into perspective. The idea wasn’t his own: “We started the business when somebody phoned and said, ‘I’ve been running this site and all you have to do is copy what I’ve been doing and the rest will be easy’.” – a big score for the spinster who sold him on this concept! The opportunity was never properly researched: “We started the business based on the belief that our model had already been proven in a number of towns… Unfortunately, the model – and the success of the model – had been fabricated.” – hardly an exemplar of how to start and run a business. The spinster was probably long gone by then but it didn’t stop van Wyk to put his own spin on things… earning in the process $695,000 from advertisers (thanks to association with another of his businesses). However, there is a hint in the interview that those advertisers have realised things are not as they seem (no mention of revenue outlook so, the chances are, things are not “looking bright” any more). Publicly admitting a failure is brave but rare so, van Wyk deserves a credit for sharing his story...
A simple conclusion can be drawn from the above examples that business is not a fair game where the best one always wins. Prospective investors seem not to care about ethics too much, as long as they can find dummies who will pay more than they did. So, the lesson is that “talking up” your business, even if it is flaky on the edges, is a vital part of building your brand. Others do it without any scruples. Just try not to overdo it, not to lose all of your credibility if the future doesn’t work out the way you let everybody to believe it will…
Now, talking about the unashamed spin… did you know:
aus-emaps.com is the only online publisher offering an interactive map with the latest 2011 version of Australian postal boundaries. You can’t get it from Australia Post or Google, neither from Bing nor from Sensis… Next time you need a useful map - think aus-emaps.com!
Why you would need such a map is a different story… read more about it in the Australian Postcodes User Guide
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