Digital Snake Oil

So, I’m stuck at home with a nasty case of the flu, and a vast spectrum of aches and pains that don’t seem to want to go away anytime soon. All bets are off on sleep tonight. Out of sheer desperation, I turn to the one proven insomnia-buster left in my arsenal: infomercials.
Well, not really, they just happen to be on. Seldom, if ever, do I put up with an entire half-hour of paid programming. Back in my days of running the control board at TV stations, the beginning of a paid program was my signal to double-check my tracking and skew, set the audio levels, find an open satellite dish (or even resort to watching the Sunday morning gang feed of Roseanne episodes for the following week), and for God’s sake, find something else to watch. Anything else.
But tonight, in the midst of my misery, I flipped past something that sent chills up my spine. Granted, I’m experiencing chills and fits of fever as it is, but this was another kind of chill. My instinct toward righteous indignation was asserting itself.
The infomercial – running on my own station, no less – featured Home Improvement’s Richard Karn hawking a fifty-buck package called The Internet Business Toolbox. Containing numerous CD-ROMs and booklets and videotapes (of which more in a moment), this package – so we’re told by our paid celebrity spokesperson – will allow you to get your very own web site up and running, and the catchphrase “You can start making money on the Internet NOW!” was repeated ad nauseum. (Why a videotape? I thought that video instruction manuals presumed a literacy-challenged end user – not a likely target audience for this product.)
The package contains access to an Earthlink user account (probably a low usage account with only a few hours a week), Netscape Communicator (ostensibly to help you program your web site), and other goodies, including a number of turnkey programs supplied by the manufacturer to allow you to accept credit cards, or to allow you to make commission from selling a preselected variety of products. Another option suggested: starting a business selling search engine placement for other people’s web sites.
“You can start making money on the Internet NOW!” Thousands upon thousands of dollars per month, we’re told by a handful of satisfied onscreen customers. The general insinuation here is that you can blow fifty dollars (plus shipping, natch) on this package, quit your day job, and you’ll become, as Mr. Karn puts it, a “cyber-preneur.”
It ain’t necessarily so, boys and girls.
Long before Mr. Karn was hawking this latest in dozens of shady “instant profit” schemes in overnight paid programming blocks, I already established commission-based marketing relationships with an online video/music store, an online book store, and an online toy merchant for my web site. In some cases, the commissions are generous. I’ve gotten a check or two. But these commission checks would never, in a million years, allow me to quit working and bask in the “cyber-preneurial” glow. It’s just as well. If I stay this sick, I may not be around for that million years.
Now, I can’t vouch for whether or not the materials contained within the Internet Business Toolbox package include any caveats advocating common sense and realistic expectations. But I do feel that it is extraordinarily irresponsible and dangerous for the producers of the Toolbox’s infomercial to even so much as suggest that a quickly-cobbled-together construction kit web site, which revolves around a pre-existing set of profit options, could become a primary source of income.
I also found it conspicuous that no mention was made of thing such as the costs incurred by keeping an internet account open, registering a domain name, and other inevitable maintenance costs. What about the service allowing one to accept credit card orders? In order for such a service to exist, the providers of that service must be making money, and it’s reasonable to assume that they make it by charging businesses that use it.
I also foresee a problem with the potential bumper crop of home business web sites that this product portends. This product is not aimed as people who know the ways of cyberspace. It’s aimed at people who hoping to get rich quick – a demographic that doesn’t give a flip about netiquette. This is the kind of online business that will generate unwanted commercial e-mail that will annoy and inconvenience thousands, a practice referred to as spamming.
I know that people are trying to make a buck, but when someone spams me, I don’t care what product or service they’re selling. I report them to their ISP with every intention of having their account revoked. Most ISPs prohibit spamming – at worst, it could result in a groundswell of complaints that could potentially get that ISP removed from the internet backbone. To avoid doing this, ISPs regularly eliminate user accounts and web sites that have proven to be a problematic source of spam.
So let’s say that some budding Internet Business Toolbox “cyber-preneur” spams me, offering to put my web site on every search engine in the known universe for only a few hundred bucks. Hypothetically, their account might get canceled, their site removed by the ISP, and this person has blown God only knows how much money only to lose it. Is this because I’m mean? Well, in all likelihood, yes, it does, but that’s not the primary reason. I do my best to uphold netiquette. I don’t mass-mail advertising for my site. I expect others to behave similarly. I’ve turned in almost 200 spammers as of this writing, probably half of them advertising adult web sites. If I had children who had their own e-mail address or had access to mine, I wouldn’t want them seeing that sort of thing. I’m no innocent, but truth be told, I hate adult oriented spam. Ergo, I routinely report spam.
Mark my word, this venture will generate more spam. People trying to hawk their wares will carelessly – not even knowing that it’s a nuisance – send out mass e-mail. And someone will report them, and boom! One less “cyber-preneur.” Fifty dollars, down the drain. I won’t even go into the financial repercussions of some hypothetical situation where someone thinks they’re going to get rich overnight, and wind up pulling in a single $20 check every month. Most of us who are already on the web know that the chances of making a real profit from a grassroots business web site are slim. It disturbs me deeply that this product is aimed at people who don’t know this.
The Internet Business Toolbox is not, at its heart, a bad idea. It is, in fact, rather a good one. But the emphasis needs to be changed, and a sense of responsibility needs to be conveyed to those considering purchasing it so they can “start making money on the Internet NOW!”
Why do I get the distinct sensation that this valuable primer in the responsibilities involved in running an online business has been omitted from the Internet Business Toolbox?
Sorry, Al. This thing doesn’t need more power. It needs to go back to the drawing board.