

“Single?” Lawn Signs Conquer the American Landscape - rjmetricsjake
http://themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com/2008/11/06/single-lawn-signs-conquer-the-american-landscape/

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shimon
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. :)

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

Sign up with your information, when they start asking you for money, serve
them with papers.

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

etc, etc.

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shimon
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.

~~~
jrockway
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.

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yan
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"

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rjmetricsjake
thanks yan

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greyman
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.

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ksvs
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.

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

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

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

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polvi
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>

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snorkel
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.

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brandnewlow
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!

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13ren
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"...

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

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steveplace
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.

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aswanson
_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.

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vaksel
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?

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

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joshwa
that's the conversion value.

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GavinB
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?

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

