Peter Sinclair: The business models from hell

"It's HERE !!! The ValueNet Global Co-Op - GET PAID TO GO SHOPPING!!"

"ValueNet Global Co-Op.com, the world's Largest Shopper's Co-Op, will PAY YOU A COMMISSION simply for telling people about our Global Co-Op Center!! ... AND you will earn 30% on ALL first level shoppers, 15% on ALL second level shoppers, and 15% on ALL third level shoppers!! ... and it is FREE for life!!! Free to join, free to shop, free to refer shoppers ... just plain free and easy! Visit our website and take a look at what is going to change the way the world shops!!"

"Opportunity for a lifetime of residual income ... revolutionary plan promising to produce the world's largest single-source shopping portal almost overnight ... and you get paid BIG to help make it happen! It's as easy as 1 ... 2 ... 3 - and it's FREE!!"

This is a small but representative sampling from the hundreds of websites - thousands, probably, by the time you read this - that can be conjured from the void by typing the words "Valuenet Global" into a search-engine. Heavily embossed with the e-marketer's logo - multiple exclamation marks!!! - they herald a fresh dose of snake-oil being brewed up on the web: BigCo-op.

It was with a profound sense of fatigue that I read a press release relating to the latest struggle between hope and experience issued last week over the signatures of Bob Bilton and Bee Choo Tee on behalf of its local manifestation.

In faintly Asian English ("check out the company at this site, which is very extensive with most information you'd care to have ... ") I was being offered a preview of RhinoCity, the training and administrative site for BigCo-op.

"Today, a development site for the shopping site is available through RhinoCity called ValuenetCo-op, but only contains 400 merchants. On Thursday, when BigCo-op is due to go live, they will have 2400 merchants ... "

The idea seems to be a hybrid between the co-op concept and a pyramid-selling scheme - a profit-skimming interface between shopper and merchant - ostensibly involving some retail heavyweights.

You are invited to pay $US495 ($1105) to become one of BigCo-op's licensed Independent Business Associates, but under the terms of a "special offer" will be "refunded" $US350. You pay the balance of $US145 by personal cheque; for, worryingly, the organisation's credit-card company will no longer accept yours, allegedly for fear of charge-backs.

I gleaned these facts from a rambling streamed-audio address by the company's founder, J. Albert Sweeney, on the RhinoCity site, and it's a delight - the authentic, vaporous, rapid-fire utterance of MLM (multilevel marketing) at its most beguiling. Connoisseurs of vintage snake-oil won't want to miss this.

You can also read his four-year-old Vision Letter, "a vision that has consumed his every waking minute since that day," and take a photo-tour of the company offices.

It's not so much the volatility of the online market which astonishes me as the sheer stupidity of some punters, along with their gullibility, credulity, naivety, cupidity and any number of nouns ending in "ty."

Electronic snake-oil seems to be even more potent than the original. It's odd that in a cynical age so many of the highly technologised are still sucked in by its excited punctuation and get-rich-quick vocabulary.

FreeBanCo, AllAdvantage, PriceLine the internet is continually spawning these business models from hell which flourish briefly, then wither overnight.

I suppose it's reassuring, in a way. At least one of the eternal verities still holds good: in cyberspace, as elsewhere, there's one born every minute.

Bookmarks:

MOST PUTDOWNABLE: On the Edge

The Beeb launches its first e-book, based on the dot.com drama series Attachments about a cool start-up. Containing the "intimate confessions" of two of the chief characters, Jake and Luce, it will be out in paperback soon; but fans who can't wait can get an e-copy right now for just under £6 (only £1 cheaper). Viewers accessing the website must register, pay and download an encrypted version to prevent it being copied or e-mailed. Viewers who love the series, though, may be outnumbered by the other sort, who have set up their own website to say so (www.everyonehatesattachments.com).

Advisory: word is that TV1 viewers at least need not hold their breath.

MOST NEEDED: Jargon-Free Web

"Please don't write to me about 'solutions' any more, they have become a problem ... " This plea, from the Wall Street Journal's Rob Calem, is at the philosophical heart of this new site. Marketers, copywriters (and columnists) take note - "just say no to jargon." Anecdotal evidence from Yahoo! suggests that a new "solution" is hitting the newswires about every eight minutes, so the Gable Group have devised the Jargonator, "a premier tool for rating the jargon content of copy." Try it yourself - my offering ("a seamless, robust solution for mission-critical initiatives") only scored a 6. Don't miss their excellent LAQ ("lame-ass quotes"), and enter the jargon contest.

Advisory: WebWalk's mission is to present innovative journalist-to-consumer (J2C) e-column solutions to the cutting-edge reader ...

Links:

Valuenet Global

Rhinocity

AllAdvantage

PriceLine

On the Edge

everyonehatesattachments.com

www.jargonfreeweb.com


E-mail: petersinclair@email.com