Nationwide Domain Name/Yard Sign Conspiracy

robertjmoore writes "Everywhere I go lately, I see these lawn signs that say "Single?" and then give a URL with my town's name in it. Being a huge business intelligence geek with too much time on my hands, I decided to track down who was behind them and wound up uncovering ten thousand domain names, a massively coordinated and well-funded guerilla marketing machine, and the $45 Million revenue business hiding behind it all. Hot off the presses, these are my findings."

Comments

Re:Guerrilla Marketing

[MrSparkle]

Guerrilla Marketing indeed. The article itself is a slashvert for the author's company. Nice.

Re:but do they work ?

[0100010001010011]

If you're looking, I'm a big fan of plentyoffish.com. I'm a bit biased since I met my current girlfriend there. It's 100% free. Minimal (very very minimal) ads and ... I like it is all.

Re:Together

[Marxist Hacker 42]

$3600 actually, and that's where the somewhat comes in. It came to prepaying $100 for each introduction, used or unused, in blocks of 36. I only needed 5- so you could look at it that I was taken for $3100.

Women were charged significantly less- my wife bought in blocks of 6 instead of 36, and I was her 12th introduction.

The cost included at that time "therapy sessions" which allowed you to discover and refine what you wanted in a mate. Given the gals I was introduced to- I was either confused or they weren't using that part correctly.

Re:but do they work ?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Ok, here's a negative- they took me for $3100 for introductions contracted for that I never used because they required guys to buy in blocks of 36 introductions where they only required women to buy in blocks of 6.

Of course, I haven't had contact since they closed their Oregon office a year after I got married....

Re:Together

[asylumx]

RTFA, it explains this (in my own words): The localized domains give the impression that this is a local shop so the perceived likelyhood of finding a match are higher.

Re:Well done

[ShaunC]

I'm more concerned about the "send us your old and worn out gold jewelry ads".

Rob Cockerham recently tested out their scam by sending them a bunch of junk spray-painted gold. They sent him back a check! It was only $1 or so, I guess it's a consolation prize they send to anyone who bothers to mail in an envelope.

Someone else tried it with actual gold and found that the prices they're willing to quote you (at least initially) are way below the true value, but if you complain about their offer, they'll make a reasonable one.