Site Takes Money from Cannabis “Addicts”
January 24th, 2007 by Alex
In the internet advertising industry there are many different ways to scam people out of time and money. You can promise Free $500 Gift Cards, offer Debt Consolidation or sucker people into completely worthless programs. It’s not hard to spot these sort of operations and one happened to come across my inbox the other day – Cannabis Addicts.
Advertising efforts like this are half-thought out at best. More than 9 out of 10 are completely bogus with false promises and the goal of getting as much cash out of you as possible. Cannabis Addicts is similar to many other ‘program’ type offers that fall into different industries. Here’s an example of one for
Trump University (with a cheesy signature at the bottomn just like Cannabis Addicts) and a slightly better designed
Stop Smoking offer. Simple to build sites like this can earn upwards of $5,000 a month by preying on gullible people.
All these bogus sites tend to share the same characteristics:
- Long, overblown product explanations
- Plenty of fake “customer” endorsements
- An expert system creator to add credibility
- Some random advertising company hiding behind it all
So, what’s the end result of all this? If you want to quit smoking pot, which is totally cool by me, do it the right way. Talk to a doctor or a friend who’s done it successfully. Don’t be another victim and pay out of pocket for some lame attempt to rip people off.
Update: Turns out that Cannabis Addicts has their own weblog. The posts seem genuine enough, but you can always tell the real motivation by how many times the owner links back to his own products. In the end, it’s all a money grab.
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