“Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape | Hacker News Reader

“Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape

themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com

228 pointsrjmetricsjake26 comments

I wonder how much of the company's secrecy is a reaction to the expected illegality of placing these lawn signs. I see them frequently on municipal or state property, and I'm sure they are frequently removed by public works crews. If cities could easily find the person responsible and bring littering/vandalism/whatever fines against the parent company, this business model would be nonviable. I suspect the system of sub-companies, satellite offices, and probably "subcontractors" that this organization uses is basically an elaborate legal ruse. Like how the mafia never has the top guys do anything illegal.

Perhaps some ambitious state attorney general will bring these guys up on RICO charges. :)

I doubt it would be difficult to track these people down if they were doing something illegal. There are a number of strategies:

Lookup the Whois record; if it's a proxy, subpoena them. Repeat until you have the real company.

etc, etc.

They probably are doing a lot of little illegal somethings. The issue is that each violation is minor and each "victim" has no idea of the scope of the operation -- so it's natural to just throw away the sign. This is the sort of pathology that has prompted the creation of class action lawsuits and the national do-not-call registry.

I would love to see them get in trouble, but I'm just saying that tracking them down is not the hard part. Convincing someone to file charges is the hard part.

I was wondering what the background was also, as those signs are posted everywhere around where I live. Great investigation.

Even if the article wasn't worth reading (which it was), the first (and so far, only) comment is worth it alone: "You are the Upton Sinclair of lawn signs"

thanks yan

The article is nicely written, good work, but I think the conclusion is obvious: it is profitable to be affiliate marketer in dating business, if you work hard on it.

These signs are basically physical spam. They're also popular with the kind of scammers who buy old people's houses for cash, and 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I yank them out whenever I find them.

1-800-GOT-JUNK isn't a scam -- it's a real, hugely successul business.

True. The link is http://www.1800gotjunk.com/us_en/

What about the "earn $3,000/month from HOME!" signs?

Unrelated to Got Junk -- just correlated by a latent factor (telephone poles).

Some of the work from home ads are for jobs as "Financial Officers" or "Package receiving" where the "job" is receiving stolen goods or fraudulent payments and shipping them out of the country.

Ya, they were ranked "The Best Company to Work for" in British Columbia in 2004 and 2005. I'm not sure what that says about Vancouver and British Columbia in general though.

That is an awesome article. When I started seeing these signs, I swore it was an internet franchising scheme.

Also note, it was an awesome way to drive traffic to his company -- and let us all know what they do! Looks like it was even submitted by an rjmetrics guy.

Also interesting ... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=355833

These signs are litter. The losers who post these signs are littering on public property and they can and should be fined for littering. Anyone who finds these signs can and should dispose of them.

I just passed this along to the tech editors at Slate, who, I think, will appreciate a nice piece when they see one.

Great work!

I was thinking "franchise" from the first bullet point. The global reach of the internet is great, but many needs are local (think fast food). One solution to this problem is franchising. But, if the capital costs are low, you can do it with a single company and local offices, as they did here.

This model could easily be copied in another country (e.g. here in Australia), but it doesn't sound very groundbreaking (or much fun).

Half-way through, I felt a strong suspicion that the article would turn out to a device for gathering leads for "geekdating.com"...

Looks like a lot of their customers aren't too happy: http://www.ripoffreport.com/searchresults.asp?q5=the+right+o...

It's crossover affiliate marketing, and I've done it before. Pretty decent margins.

One example: you've got companies that do zip and email submits for $1-2 a lead, and their incentive is a free $500 gas card. So make a website that redirects to the offer and print out stickers or other physical media with the offer and the site. Then pay someone to go around to gas stations and put the stickers on the gas pump handles.

One weekend, I trekked down to South Jersey to visit my parents in my hometown of Glassboro.

I cannot believe there is someone else on the internet who shares my hometown. Literally, Nowhere, USA. And one who found those signs as baffling as I did. Astonishing.

as much as you hate those....you gotta admit this stuff probably has incredible success rates. You start seeing those all the time you will go check it out. And one sign is probably seen by thousands of people, the one day it survives.

My question though, is why doesn't the city/state do something about it? I mean this is like littering but with your home address listed on it. Can't the cities/states charge a removal fee for this road spam?

$3-15k a customer? Is that per franchise, or per person being matched by the service?

that's the conversion value.

Maybe I didn't see it, but at any point did you just sign up on one of the web forms and see what response you got?

I tracked one of them down (from the signs in my town) to Aventura, Florida.

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