We all get used to receiving spam in our emails, including offers that are too good to be true, but receiving regular snail mail offers about internet opportunities is something I hadn't received too often. Recently I did receive an internet offer through the mail and decided to check it out.
The information I received was very official looking about an opportunity to attend a conference that would provide information about a legitimate opportunity to make money online. Just for attending and bringing a guest we would each receive a free gift and if I was one of the first so many to register and attend the conference, I could receive a special gift.
The conference did promise to hit on some topics that I am curious about since I am trying to make a living working online so I called and registered to attend. Basically the conference was sort of a live infomercial talking about how easy it would be to set up an account with them and sell your products online. It didn't matter if you didn't have a product to sell, they would show you how to choose a product to sell.
What they were really after was getting you to sign up for a full day of an internet marketing seminar where they would teach everyone about internet marketing tools and tricks that would help make your site successful. Fee $99. Free gift for attending. A 7" well, sort of a netbook. No brand anywhere on it and I still can't find what version of Windows is on it.
If you registered for that workshop you would get two months free webhosting for a site you could make or they could make for you (for a fee). I'm the first one to admit, I don't know anything about internet marketing so I registered for the workshop. I needed the information.
I didn't really want the website, I knew I wasn't going to pay $30 a month webhosting to open a store and try to sell what hundreds of other people are trying to sell. I wanted some insight to something I didn't understand.
So I go to the workshop and take notes, absorbing what I could. They asked that no one ask questions and it was soon obvious why. The next level of the sales pitch. This one was the knock out punch. Well it was a one, two combination. Punch one was the next level of investment in my future. I was just lacking enough from the next level that the next level was definitely the better choice.
So, the conference was free, workshop was $99, punch one was over $3000 and punch two was $6000. Most of the workshop was going over the packages but in a little bit different way than you would expect. There was enough training mixed in with the sales pitches that it was possible to gain some knowledge.
Most of it was showing you the hard way so that you would get that 'I couldn't do this on my own' feeling then show you that it was included in the package. It is a genius sales technique.
It was a lot of .... you need this, that, and the other for your site and this is what it costs to gather them on your own. Wait for people to get that overwhelmed feeling then tell them, those things are included in the package.
And of course the more expensive package contained unlimited on just about every area that the less expensive package either offered just one or none of. So if you're going to do this, why not go with the best.
In addition to your initial investment, you have the $29.99 a month and the annual or monthly fees for a merchant account. If you want your own domain name, you would have to purchase that and add it to your account.
Now before I get too carried away, I must say this is a legitimate company and the offer was genuine. The problem is the room was filled with people that are desperate to earn money. Whether it's to support a family, supplement their social security or to make extra money; there were people in that room that $6000 would put them in a real bind.
The worst part was that they offered financing. I never heard the terms but I found the financing part to be in poor taste. Some of the people in the room were barely computer literate and freely admitted that. The don't know anything about the internet and were spending a lot of money to take a chance at making money.
The people providing the workshop even said how long it could take to get your first sale and that 95% of internet businesses don't make money. The deals that no one even knew about before the workshop were today or never deals that people couldn't really make an educated decision about spending that kind of money.
I'm not sorry I went because I did learn some things. I am disappointed that the workshop was not what they said it would be. One of the things they were supposed to do was look at what you are doing now and give advice on how to improve.
Mostly I wanted to share this information because I believe the whole process was a little misleading and if I had known what the workshop was really about I would have looked at other options and might have thought it was worth the money. I keep thinking about the people who weren't skeptical enough and agreed to pay that much money that will take a long time to make back considering all the competition on the internet.
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