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Behind The "Work-At-Home" Street Spam Signs
Sabalon writes: "If you live almost anywhere in the U.S. then you have probably seen tons of the 'Make thousands working at home' signs tacked up almost everywhere. Cockeyed.com has an interesting story of one persons quest to uncover the source behind all this money just waiting to be made, the company behind it (or not behind it for legal reasons), and an oversaturated market." Spam, just another medium.
here in the south bay, the 'make thousands from home' people appear to be paying people to put up thousands of 'lose 30 pounds in 30 days' signs.
now those are a mystery.
go get it
It's been cached in google.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
I don't know about you,
But every time I see these I make sure to take them all down and through them in the trash.
I figure that if it's on public property and I'm a tax payer.
I have a right to remove them if I see fit.
Now if IBM got fined for the Love Peace Linux graffiti.
I wonder what these guys get.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.
Rob Cockerham, a very pleasant guy who is sort of everybody's favorite mad inventor in this area (midtown Sacramento) runs that page... At the risk of dooming him to eternal slashdottedness, I urge you all to spend a half hour poking around the site at his various experiments. I have been lucky enough to be present for the polarbear/ketchup-packet extermination, for instance, and saw his fake banana sculpture at the mall on many visits. What a nice fella.
Work from Home.
There are about 23,958 of these signs in Sacramento. That is an exaggeration, but they really are everywhere. They are nailed to telephone poles and zip-tied to chain-link fences. There are new designs all the time. All of them have a mysterious lack of information regarding what company or scheme they are promoting.
I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers. I never bothered calling the numbers, although I was curious. When I was working at MCI back in 1998, I learned that all toll-free numbers reveal your phone number when you call them, so I didn't want to call from my home phone.
While taking photos for the "Why would anyone want to visit Sacramento" story, I was spending a lot of time driving around taking photos. I tore down a bunch of these signs, but it seemed like a hopeless endeavor...there were hundreds of them, and they've been around for years.
Finally, one night on Yahoo Messenger, my friend Ross suggested that I do some investigation and report on what I find. He suggested that I call them up from a pay phone & track down what they were all about. I wasn't too excited about it, after all, I was sure it was a scam.
The very next day, I wrote down seven of the toll-free phone numbers and called them.
The first one was 800-326-2016.
I was sure I would just be listening to message-machines, so I wasn't nervous about calling them. The first one was a message about how mail order is the best business in the world, how it wasn't a "get-rich-quick scheme", and about how they "need help in their business". It asked me to leave my address at the tone, so they could send me a 14-page report. The message didn't say what the company was...just that it was a Fortune 500 company, described as the "fastest growing company in the industry".
Alright, well, I hung up without leaving a message. Then I called the next three numbers.
800-756-8424, 800-296-7519, and 800-213-6421.
They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive "Ya know". In the upcoming days of phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the "ya know" message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, "20-year industry leader" and "tap into mail-order". This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.
Well. I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs.
I walked down to the mini-mart with my head spinning. All of these signs...all of this trash...all over Sacramento. One company was responsible. I had to track them down & I had to expose them! Also, I had to get photos of the offending signs & start keeping track of the numbers so I could build a convincing case and find the whole story. Maybe my sign-sample just happened to have one source.
On the way back from the mini-mart, I found a little one of these dumb mini-fliers taped to a news stand. It had the tell-tale figures of my mystery company, $500-$3,000/mo pt, $3,000-$10,000/mo ft. I immediately knew...it was the same people.
It was exciting... I was almost scared.
This company obviously had lots of people working in all sorts of ways trying to recruit new people into the business. I figured it must be a multi-level marketing company, like Amway, but I wasn't sure what the company was yet.
The next day I woke up early and took more photo of signs, making note of the phone numbers. This isn't hard in Sacramento...they are all over the place. I found about 15 varieties in West Sacramento and Downtown. I also photographed bunch of "lose weight now" and "I lost 30lbs. in 30 days" signs, and one "Sal's Tacos" sign.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
oops that is
o me.html
http://bowser.stanford.edu/workfromhome/workfromh
still nothing on second page -- does anyone else have it?
Here in Portland OR many people have taken up anti-spam measures. In Southeast Portland these signs don't last long before being torn down or, even better, defaced. A group has made giant stickers saying, "I AM UGLY LITTER" and pasted them over these "work from home/lose weight now" things. Very cool.
:)
Off-topic, billboard defacing is quite a sport here. You may have seen a March of Dimes billboard feature Daisy Fuentes and the tagline, "Daisy takes folic acid. Do you?" The "folic" has been blacked out on many of these
Off-off-topic, Kate Moss was featured on a billboard for milk some years ago, when she was doing the Calvin Klein "Obsession" ads. There was a huge photo of her with a white milk "moustache" and the tagline, "Calcium. It's my obsession." The following letters were paint-bombed out on several of them - "Cal" & "i" - needless to say, they were replaced pretty fast.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I read the site a week ago. The end conclusion is that an MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) is behind all of this: Herbalife.
The other interesting part of the story is that just today, a group of VCs bought out Herbalife which floundered after its founder OD'ed.
My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign. It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it.
I trusted the information. "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth.
It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it.
Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them. This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.
With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around. I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message. I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track. Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages.
Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well. Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches. These "success stories" were their undoing.
Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch. An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife. That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%.
I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam". They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento. The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up! I was impressed!
Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was.
Eventually I found it. About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round". They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs.
I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!
Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 20 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business. They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors".
These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them, the hatred subsided.
I have the 2nd page, no pics, at http://www.mindspring.com/~bencochran/wfh/workfrom home2.html
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
Here in Columbus, somebody has methodically gone to every one of these signs and cut away the 'W' in 'WORK FROM HOME'.
I figure maybe Saruman's hiring, or they have some vacancies in those endless Warhammer armies.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
There are good Multi-Level Marketing companies out there (or is it called Network Marketing now?). I used to work for a magazine that profiled and reviewed MLM companies. There's one key thing to look for to see of a MLM will actually work and last: What do they actually try to sell? If an MLM focuses 98% on signing up more people, and completely ignores the product, or discourages ever actually selling the product to consumers, it generally won't last. The companies that actually focus on their product, and only use the multi-level aspect of it to really market and distrubute, those are the ones that tend to last, and people actually can make a business out of.
Which is ironic, because they recently put out a press release about street spam:
Herbalife Names Compliance Officer to Ensure Distributors Adhere to Marketing and Sales Policies
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 21, 2002--Herbalife International, Inc. (Nasdaq:HERBA - news; Nasdaq:HERBB - news) today announced the appointment of Timothy J. Sweeney as senior vice president for finance and compliance.
Since assuming his position in early February, Mr. Sweeney has been reviewing and strengthening Herbalife's marketing and sales policies. One of Mr. Sweeney's primary areas of responsibility is to ensure that the Company's distributors adhere to Herbalife's rules.
``Herbalife enjoys a valued reputation as a respected manufacturer and marketer of nutritional, weight management and personal care products, and it is important that this continue to be protected,'' said Frank X. Tirelli, president and chief executive officer of Herbalife. ``Tim is an extremely diligent and accomplished professional. We are very pleased to have him in this position.''
As one of his first acts to protect and enhance Herbalife's good reputation, Mr. Sweeney contacted the American Association of Code Enforcement, a professional association in the United States and Canada, to discuss issues associated with the use of signs by Herbalife Distributors. As a result, Mr. Sweeney recommended and Herbalife agreed to prohibit Herbalife Distributors from posting advertising signs on any public property or on any private property without the express permission of the owner, even if such posting is allowed by state or local laws.
``Our new policy is good for Herbalife and for our image,'' said Mr. Sweeney. ``The proliferation of signs is simply not consistent with the excellent image of Herbalife products, the professionalism of our dedicated Herbalife Distributors and our efforts to be a good corporate citizen.''
Rick Wolf, president of the American Association of Code Enforcement, added, ``We are all excited about Herbalife's voluntary response to our concerns, and we look forward to continuing to work with Mr. Sweeney to protect the Herbalife image by ensuring that its policies are enforced.''
Herbalife manufactures a wide range of nutritional, weight management and personal care items and markets them in 54 countries worldwide through a network of independent Distributors who purchase the products directly from the Company. In 2001, the Company had net retail sales of $1.66 billion.
The pyramid scheme, err, company responsible, has just been sold for $685 million, after the head shyster OD'd on alcohol and anti-depressants.
w jones/20020411/bs_dowjones/venture_group_to_buy_he rbalife_for__685_million
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/do
All of these signs were promoting the products of one corporation, but they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck. I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself. They had, through their actions or inaction, created a chain of events that created a rag-tag marketing steamroller. This "Work from Home" steamroller continuously plasters my town with cheap promotional signs. My solution in the past had been to tear down the signs, but I began to realize that wasn't a solution at all. I needed to do something else. I didn't know how to proceed. My mind was a like a blender for two days, whirring with guerrilla tactics and diplomatic approaches. Could I stop an entire corporation? Would they slap a big lawsuit on me? Did they make big donations to local politicians? Does anyone else care about this enough to join me? What if I just made new signs that said "herbalife" with an arrow pointing to the other signs, could I get other people involved? There are laws against these signs in West Sacramento (link) and in the City of Sacramento (link), but the Herbalife Corporation can't exactly be held responsible for what their "independent distributors" do, can they? They seem to be shielded by a layer of independence and artful camouflage. I could feel myself losing steam. I didn't know how to focus my energy, and it was all getting wasted tracking down Herbalife websites. The incredible maze of the whole operation astounded me. The Herbalife name was so hidden, it was ridiculous! At some point, I remembered that old commercial from 1971 with the crying Indian. I looked him up on Google and found, not only his photo, but a quick-time copy of the commercial! (link) This was just the kind of motivation I needed. Here is the text of the Crying Indian commercial from Keep America Beautiful. This was exactly what I needed to hear. People had been fighting big-business pollution for years, and that was what I was going to do. The first step is to link Herbalife with these signs in the minds of as many people as possible. My best connection to people is my website, so if you could please send this web address to a friend, I would appreciate it.... particularly if that friend runs CNN.com. Of course, most big-time community leaders that might be able to steer Herbalife into a change don't spend much time surfing the web, so I am also working on a letter-writing campaign to raise awareness. I organized the 65 or so sign photos I had taken so far and arranged them onto a single sheet. I added some text, "on telephone poles, mailboxes and newsstands, they litter the landscape. Can you believe they are all from one company?". I asked my sister to help me compose a letter to mayor Fargo and the next day I sent off my first envelope of anti-marketing material. I would also like to discourage new potential Herbalife customers from getting involved with this company. From what I have learned so far, it is very, very difficult to profit as an Herbalife distributor.
If you run your own business, such as drumming up business for someone else, you can claim milage, gasoline, and a 1/4th of your living space expenses as a business expense..
If your business consists of putting up ugly signage, but you get thousands of dollars back from the Fed in taxes, wouldn't you do it?
What if you really needed the money.. I mean, so badly that you would be willing to walk around at 3am, tacking paper to signs.. You'd do it.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Print up a bunch of stickers that read something along the lines of "This sign is from a Herbalife distributor", and label them all. After all, they put the signs up, they should be properly credited (and fined). Do it long enough, and the company gets associated with the signs. Once that happens, the municipality can (and likely will, under the pressure of pissed off citizens who now know who they are upset with) go after Herbalife. Just because they aren't directly responsible doesn't mean they have no legal culpability, especially when a whole city goes after you.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I lost 30 lbs in 30 days for 30 dollars! Ask me how!
Step 1: Assemble a surgical scapel and an industrial shop vac.
Step 2: [You don't really want to know. You can guess.]
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Those are legit. You lose 30 pounds in 30 days by walking your ass all over town hanging more of the damn signs.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Herbalife, a lesson in small business
I'd like to make this information available to as many people as possible.
This is the story of how Herbalife works. I've never actually been an herbalife distributor, but I've interviewed a couple of them to get this information. If you know more about it, or find any errors, please email me.
1) you call a toll-free number of one of their current distributors, (not the herbalife company itself), leave your name, address, and phone number.
2) That distributor sends you a free 14-page booklet.
This booklet is red, yellow, blue or green. It has NO information about what the home-business actually is besides "Mail-order". It contains eight "success stories" from happy people that make $8,000-$15,000 per month.
It seems to concentrate on the fabulous vacations that this kind of money can buy. Interspersed with the success stories are paragraphs of text that challenge you to buy into this scheme, like "Choosing to succeed can be frightening", and "Success is our birthright and we cannot allow our fears to keep us from it.", and "only desire and determination matter".
3) If you call the number on the back, you will be given the option to pay $36 for the first information packet.
If you decide to pay this, you will get a "decision kit" package. It will have one videotape, an audiotape, and another booklet. Still, no mention of Herbalife, just "success stories". If you want to take the next step, you will call another phone number, and really talk to your real, human, independent distributor.
4) He or she will send you a second set of tapes for free.
One audio tape and one video tape. These are more success stories and motivational speeches. If you call your Mentor back, he or she may tell you it is Herbalife at that point. To get started in the actual business, you have to spend more money for an "IBP".
5) The IBP, International Business Packet is $195
The packet contains the manual, notebook with forms, procedure, some actual products and books to get you started. This is where you first hear the name "Herbalife" if your distributor didn't tell you already.
Once you purchase the IBP and complete the Distributor Application, you qualify for a 35% retail discount.
(The IBP contains a catalog, order forms, 3 manuals (Success Starter, Welcome & Sales and Marketing plan), samples of 1 Thermojetics bar, 1 peach mango drink mix,1 chocolate shake mix, 1 vanilla shake mix, 1 herbal concentrate, 1 herbal aloe, 1 balancing system, 1 "lose weight now ask me how" button, price list and other various forms)
You are now ready to proceed as an independent herbalife distributor.
6) Then, you have to decide how dedicated you are to the Herbalife business, which is based on how much product you buy for resale.
When you get the IBP and sign up for your HAP, you qualify for 35% below retail, but if you want to get a better price on your products, you need to become a "Supervisor".
HAP stands for Herbalife Advantage Program, and it is a package of stuff that you are required to buy every month. They want you to be using the herbalife products, so that you can accurately describe their qualities to potential customers. It is not to be sold, just used by you. It is $80 worth every month. The HAP can be set up to automatically charge your credit card or checking account.
7) To become a supervisor you must have 2,500 VP. VP stands for "value points", and are awarded for goods that you buy from herbalife. Some information indicates that you must recruit 3-5 people under you to become a supervisor, but others say you simply need the VP. If you leap into Herbalife determined to start at that advanced level, you need to buy $4,000 worth of products.
This allows you to get the products from Herbalife at 50% below retail. (the $4000 worth of stuff costs you $2000).
To help you with your big purchase, they send you a list of the top 100 credit card companies in the country.
You may also be encouraged to buy a website to sell Herbalife diet and skin products for $315, and a site to promote the "work at home" business for another $315. And it doesn't stop there. I downloaded a PDF which describes Silver, Gold and Platinum E-Commerce Business Packages from $952.90 to $1994.22.
You can subscribe to a toll-free number for $6.95 a month plus the price of the calls. You can expect a $25 bill each month.
TouchFone is the company recommended in the IBP.
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
PROFIT !!!
sulli
RTFJ.
Since the /.'ed page appears to be posted in multiple copies already, how about a couple viewpoints from someone whose mom actually tried this?
:P )
This definitely has to be involved in the whole Herbalife Independent Distributor scheme. Just to satisfy your curiosity, yes it is a MLM. You sign up under another distributor (the person that lets you in on what the product actually is, etc.) and they get a small cut off of your sales. Quite pyramid-like, since the best profits come not by selling the product itself, but by recruiting other independent distributors underneath you. (Otherwise, you probably *could* make money, but not the amounts you hear glamorized).
Now, the rest of my information is, to be fair, several years out of date. I can only relay how it was all seemingly setup in the early-mid '90s. Basically, the top-level Herbalife company (corporation? I wasn't too sure exactly) works very hard to keep a legally viable separation distance from all the indenpendent distributors. (This is perhaps why the company doesn't get in trouble for the street spam, since, as another poster pointed out, the ID's are the ones putting them up.) This went so far as prohibiting ID's from using any sort of Herbalife company logo on business cards to maintain a clear separation. (IN fact, the letter of law at the time was that you were only allowed to say "Independent Herbalife Distributor" in a plain font face. Nothing else.)
The signs you see all over creation that make no reference to the product or company arise from this same seeming need to maintain separation. You, as an ID, are not allowed to advertise what the product is or might be; you have to entice interest in the customer, and after *they* make the initial contact can you explain what it all is.
They even went so far as laying down policy on accepted forms of advertisement with respect to various media. Mom, trying to play fair and honest with them, inquired about constructing a store-front web site. They gave consistent, repeated, flat "No"s when she described it. They only saw a web site as a means to advertise for potential business, not as a possible means to *DO* business. (Remember the time frame involved here: early-mid '90s.) The company's own site was the only place permitted to have logo's, product information, etc., and even *they* themselves didn't have a mechanism to take money. (Since, I guess, only the ID's were allowed to move merchandise and collect cash directly.) It was weird.
Now, it got interesting to see that the only people making cash were the select few people at the top of the pyramid. The dominant exceptions are people that are providing these signs for ID's to put up. (Wonder why they all look the same in every city? There's a place that an ID order's them from.) In store product demo's and the like were also something for and ID to spend money on. (Physical stores. You could have the product displayed all over the counter, but don't you dare have any mention of Herbalife in your store window for passer-by's to see.)
Needless to say, it is in fact quite hard to actually set this up as a lucrative business. You really need a big downstream pyramid of ID's underneath you, but then they are competing against each other (and you, perhaps) to get the same thing, so any normal size town (or sub-section thereof) can get saturated by various ID's competing for either customers or other ID's). Mom worked at this for over a year, and I don't think she ever really turned a dime over in her favor.
(Oh, and if any company Nazi's start looking for her as a result of this post, she has a different last name than me.
When is someone going to do something about this plague of spam?
Now, whether you are a regular distributor or a supervisor, you need start selling the herbalife pills or the herbalife "work from home" business. Good luck!
,hand then put individually too."
You will need to sell a lot of pills to make back the money you have invested. As a distributor, you will have spent at least $240 in materials to get started, and you are probably anxious to get that money back in sales. If you are a Supervisor, you have an easier road, but it is a lot longer, because you are trying to make up for buying that initial $2,000 in product.
You will most likely spend the rest of your "herbalife" sales career trying to earn back your original investment.
Green and Beige Set (60 and 60 pills each), 30-day supply
Regular Distributor buys at 35% discount
Supervisor buys at 50% discount
Retail $30 (plus $2.10 shipping) Cost $19.50 (plus $2.10 shipping)
Profit per set $10.50
To make back initial $240 investment you must sell:
23 sets of Green and Beige
Retail $30 (plus $2.10 shipping) Cost $15.00 (plus $2.10 shipping)
Profit per set $15.00
To make back initial $2,240 investment you must sell:
150 sets of Green and Beige
Making the $2000 initial investment to become a supervisor may seem like a good idea, but it is extremely rare for someone to sell enough Herbalife to make back that money. Take a look at the variety of herbalife products that people are trying to unload on ebay. Anyone with more than $100 in products probably bought a giant batch to gain supervisor status, not realizing that the market for home-sold diet pills was totally saturated.
There are two main groups of people that you should consider selling to:
all the people you already know
the masses of people you don't know
Now, the people that you know might buy some of your products. Make a list of the people that you know and try to imagine yourself approaching them about a great way to lose weight. Maybe that isn't going to be as comfortable as you would like. Still some people may buy your products just because they feel sorry for you, especially if you have been in trouble with the law or have been living on the streets.
As far as the "work from home" part of the business goes, you probably don't want to sell that to people that you know. Odds are that they will just lose the money they invest in it, and then they will blame you.
Selling to people that you don't know is tricky. You have to make contact with people who are interested in what you have to sell. This can be pretty expensive.
You will probably want to try newspaper ads first.
They will probably fail. One woman I talked to put small ads in her local paper for four weeks straight. She spent $31.50, which didn't break the bank, but she only got 4 phone calls, and no one bought any pills from her.
You can try putting an ad in the phone book. Of course, you will have to compete with the other people in there. Sacramento is bursting at the seams with distributors, and it really shows in the white pages here.
Your "Mentor" will encourage you to go to mall parking lots and distribute 1000 fliers a day, but most people don't like that idea.
Once you start in the Herbalife business, you will find yourself in a number of socially awkward situations. No one likes fliers on their windshield, so you will probably be half-sneaking around the lot, arising the attention of security guards. If they see what you are doing, they will chase you off.
I think it is tacky, and half the time they end up on the blacktop.
A cheap way to reach out a lot of people is to send out unsolicited email.
Everyone on the face of the earth hates this. Please don't do it.
Herbalife will probably sell you some chintzy marketing merchandise, like bumper stickers and magnetic car signs, key chains, mugs, t-shirts, pens, paper weights, squishy herbalife balls. This is fun stuff, but lets face it, that kind of stuff is more for YOU than for your customers.
No one ever called a number on the side of a car to buy weight-loss pills.
The sales method that motivated me to write this story in the first place is the cheap sign nailed on a telephone pole. These are illegal in Sacramento, West Sacramento and many other areas of the country. I believe the reason they are illegal is that they are ugly.
Some people don't find them ugly at all, but other people go to great lengths to tear them down in their neighborhood. I guess it depends on your own sense of aesthetics. I don't mind fallen leaves on the sidewalk, but other people feel strongly enough about them to buy leaf-blowers and rakes.
Here are 40 more photos of signs on telephone poles and fences.
Sometimes people only cut away part of the sign, such as the telephone number.
This may be for two reasons. The first reason is that some signs are difficult to remove without a crowbar. They often have long nails and nickle-sized washers holding them on the pole, so it is easier to just cut part of the sign off.
The second reason is to have a discouraging effect on future sign-posters, indicating bandit sign posting is not welcome. A clean pole seems to be an invitation to some sign-hangers.
I've heard that it is forbidden for distributors to indicate the herbalife name on the "work at home" and "use a computer" signs.
I believe this is because they don't want their company name to be associated with these cheap, illegal signs. It might also be because if you knew all these signs were for herbalife, you would recognize how saturated the market was already.
These signs cost about $1.50 each when ordered in quantities of 100 or more.
You can buy them at Witness Designs in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "where God does signs and wonders, and we do signs and windows".
Another cheap method of advertising is to create small paper or plastic pouches filled with tiny paper fliers.
I've seen them on ATMs, newspaper stands, phone booths, gas pumps, church pews, in toilet stalls, library cubicles, and on drive-thru menus. These pockets really look crappy, so you will have to be pretty self-serving to put them up around your own neighborhood.
Some herbalife distributors refer to them as "hot pockets". Because these pouches are a new form of advertising, they may not be a law against them in your area yet.
It is common to see these tattered plastic envelopes half-full of colored water. What a mess.
When I first began researching these Herbalife signs, I found a website called, "your body is a miracle", which, to be fair, doesn't have anything to do with herbalife, but has this sickening line: "These are GREAT Work From Home Ads for PLASTERING EVERYWHERE YOU GO." and continues, "Get some double stickytape and then put them "EVERYWHERE "you can think of. Laundry Mats, bus stops, telephone booths, put them on the inside of bathroom stalls, telephone poles
An herbalife site on Angelfire has this catchy poem: We will be what we will to be. For failure finds it's false content, In that petty word "Environment" But our spirit scorns it and is free.
I have no idea what he is trying to say here, but I don't like it.
On the official Herbalife site, they have a bunch of "success stories", one of which is the story of Katiuzka Vera.
In her story, she describes distributing 1000 fliers a day for 90 days. Can you imagine? 90,000 fliers. Think of all the time that takes, and how her city looked afterward. Jiminy. And she netted 225 customers. That is 400 fliers for each and every person she made a sale to.
Another Herbalife "Success Story" describes the work of Diana and Nile Eddy:
"Every day for weeks we packed up our car with flyers, staple guns, heavy tape, tacks and our children. It was a family affair," she explains.
I'd like to show her a trick with that staple gun and heavy tape.
The sticky backs of "hot pockets" leave distinct adhesive rectangles wherever they are torn down. They are all over the curbside features of downtown Sacramento.
Here is another excerpt from an Herbalife "success story": Matthew and Michelle Leavitt
There are about 1,000 homes in our neighbourhood," he continues. "Every other week we put the same flyer under people's doormats. It wasn't long before we had 10 new Distributors in our neighbourhood alone." Now, Matt and Michele spend a maximum of two hours a day, five days a week, putting flyers on cars and under doormats in front of people's homes.
That's right, these goonies of herbalife/quixtar/amway are out in full force trying to sign up as many unwitting subjects as they can. Here's my personal story:
I started my own website, tigerslash.com, and in an effort to promote it I made my own bumpersticker and put it on my car. One day when I was getting gas, a "successful" looking "businessman" across from me asked about tigerslash.com. I told him what it was, briefly how I made it, and things like that. He then proceeded to ask me if I was willing to work on other internet projects, and I said "if I have the time, maybe."
Well, I thought I was going to make some extra bucks on the side for a little web design, and Mr. X made me think the same thing when he followed up with "I run a website and I need some extra help with some of it." Then he proceeded to give me his business card, and I gave him mine, and he said he'd call once he'd consulted his associates...
Well he did call, so I thought I was going to make some quick cash for a little web work. We set up a meeting for that thursday and when it came around, I was interested in seeing what needed to be done. Well, I show up at the office and he presents me with this flyer about Britt Worldwide and all this information about their web strategy and "e commerce infrastructure." This is when the bells started going off in my head.
Mr. X then proceeded to elaborate on the whole mission, online sale of products combined with multilevel marketing. It was called Quixtar, the next big thing, and it sounded like a great scheme... if you were an idiot. I didn't beleive one word of it. I sat through about 30 minutes of this and took the brochure politely and left.
When I got home, I went to the website and started shopping. Amazingly, everything was overpriced. I thought "how in the world would they get people to buy this?" The fact is, the only people who do are the ones coerced into joining, so that they earn "points" with their purchases. If you're at the top of the pyramid, this is great, but if you're the average Joe, all you're doing is paying their salaries and getting $5 a month in return (after spending hundreds on "great products.")
I did some more digging and low and behold Quixtar is nothing more than Amway with a new name. It's the same owners, same company, but they don't say a damn thing about it when you ask them face to face. What a scam.
Needless to say, I was pissed. This form of Spam had approached me with a technical need in my field of work, then proceeded to waste my personal time travelling to, meeting, and researching these people. All that effort to find out I had been recruited for Amway. That's the worst type of spam ever.
~ now you know
After hacking through the initial 'contact' page which goes to GREAT lengths to make sure you didn't enter a dummy email address or phone number (pattern matching, predicted strings, etc) I was sent to the following link [Distributor ID removed to make sure he can't profit from it] page. It's a server that they pay for (one way or another) to have a tracking link.
The result, for $39.95, you get sent to you 'free shipping' your Information Decision Package (Gee, sound familiar) that contains 'EVERYTHING' you need to know. (yeah right)
I also immediately began receiving emails to the single-register email address I setup. In 24 hours, I've received 4 messages so far.
My FAVORITE part is on their contact page . Throughout the whole site they tell you that you can't contact them before you order your $39.95 IDP, however on the contact page they have this to say:
Meaning, if your not stupid enough to pay $40 for something you know absolutely nothing about, your smarter than we are and you'll see what kind of financial idiots your looking at.How fun, how timely!
I'm just getting to this, so it's probably going to be buried in deep. If you get this far, I hope you enjoy the information!
Garth