Summersault Blog

We received a bit of mail today from the organization “StoresOnline.com”, which is hosting two marketing events in Richmond, Indiana on December 11th at the Holiday Inn. Their pitch is that if you attend their 90-minute “conference” presentation about how to make money on the Internet, you’ll get a free meal, a free personal organizer, and priceless knowledge. It seems that the reality behind the free offers is a bait and switch scheme, which has been documented extensively on sites like TheRipOffReport.com. The reports include some heart-wrenching stories from people who invested quite a bit in StoresOnline.com (Aka Imergent Inc Aka Inetseminars.com) thinking they were going into a legitimate business, only to find that the promises made to them were empty ones, and that when they asked for a refund, they were referred to lawyers or not even called back at all. Yikes!

In general, even though the popular narrative about the Internet boom is that lots of people are making money overnight, remember that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and so on. Never hand over your money to anyone promising you big bucks through Internet commerce just because they’ve got a flashy presentation and give you free food. Using the technologies of the Internet to build your business takes good planning, solid partnerships, and technical expertise - there’s no substitute, and especially not in the form of a 90-minute sales pitch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 3:23 pm and is filed under Website Design, Richmond Happenings, Internet / Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.